Weekend camp programme

[Big John]

Hi All,

A couple of people had mentioned doing weekend camps with Scouts & Explorers in previous threads and I said I would post our programme here as a starter.
This will be our third year of doing it with our explorers. The first year we stayed in a hut on the Friday night and they made their own shelters for the saturday night - we did cheat though 'cos we knew there was a large dump of sheet metal on the site that they used.
Last year and this we have told them to bring a tarp/basha to sleep under for both nights, with the opportunity to make natural shelters for the saturday night. We try to change the set activities a bit each year - we've had firelighting on the programme for the last couple of years so we've dropped it this year, we did traps & snares last year as well.

We're expecting 4 patrols of 4 or 5 and have 4 bases (stands) for them to do in the activity sessions - sorry but I can't make that part of the programme space properly to make it easily readble. Feel free to ask any questions.

Itinery Survival Camp 2005

Friday
Am/pm leaders arrive at site and set up group tarps (at least 4+central leaders shelter), wood pile, scout out areas for stands, shelter and basha areas, prepare stands, set up own bashas

1830 – participants arrive at meeting point, are allocated patrols, quick verbal kit check and hike to site
1930 – Arrive site, set up bashas. Leaders start fire for evening meal
brew kits allocated
2100 – hot soup and rolls served
Saturday
0700 – Rise, fires started in patrols, bread mixed and allowed to rise
Leaders start fire, prepare breakfast centrally, and any last minute preparations carried out to their stands
0745 – Breakfast served
0830 – Commence baking bread.
Knife and Axe lesson each group with their own leader
0900 – Stands start- 1 hr each, quick changeovers:
A) Wood carving-spoons/spatula/chopping boards-John
B) Bows- Duncan
C) Water collection, filtration and purification – Nick
D) Weather prediction using clouds and signs (1/2 hr + camp
challenges)- Mark
Patrol 0900-1000 1000-1100 1100-1200
1 Wood carving Bows Water
2 Weather prediction Wood carving Bows
3 Water Weather prediction Wood carving
4 Bows Water Weather prediction
1200 – lunch-bread (baked earlier) cheese, ham, soup etc.
1230 - prepare evening meal (rabbit stew)
1400 – start building shelters (survival challenges also running during this time on an ad hoc basis
1800 -cook fish and prepare to eat (sun down)
1830 – 1900 eat
PM – evening session on woodland foods, mental strategy etc?

Sunday
0730 – rise. Fires lit, breakfast (omelette with bacon and bread) cooked in patrols
0930 – final activity session as follows
Patrol 0930-1030
1 Weather prediction
2 Water
3 Bows
4 Wood carving
1030 – put bread on individual fires
1100 – start preparing pigeons
1230 – eat lunch
1300 – clear site
1400 – depart site, hike back to meeting point
1500 – pickup at meeting point

Menu to follow.

 

[Big John]

Here's the menu for the above. We try to get as much 'natural' and local food as possible - it's not living off the land but we've kept the processed & packet foods to the minimum but at the same time avoiding spending the whole weekend just preparing & cooking food. We bake bread from packet mix in an upturned biscuit tin or pot/dixie - works quite well.

The rabbits and pigeons come from a game butcher, rabbits come gutted but with their jackets still on, pigeons are complete. Fish come complete from Safeway (you have to be careful as some supermarkets get them in already gutted!). We tried spti-roasting the rabbit the first year but it took ages and in the dark it was very hard to tell if it was properly cooked - stew is much safer.

Brew packs (per peson?):

1x large pot chocolate powder
1x small pot milk powder
1x small pot sugar
1 x bag coffee powder (more available on request)
4 x tea bags

emergency snacks
2 x snack size mars/marathon bars


Friday evening
Tin soup (keep tins for brewing up in over weekend)
Bread (bought)

Saturday

Breakfast:
Porridge (with powdered milk and raisins), honey, bread

Lunch:
Bread mix 2 small packs per group of 5
Cheese
Ham on joint?
Cup-a-soup
Apples
Mars bar

Evening meal
Rabbits-1 per 2
Carrots, parsnips, gravy granules, herbs, pepper, potatoes, onions, turnip/pumpkin, rice
fish with guts
marshmallows
popcorn

Sunday

Breakfast:
Eggs, milk powder, bacon (on the bone), bread (Omelette)

Lunch:
Pigeons (one per person), leeks, garlic, onions, corn on the cob, bread mix (2 packs per patrol of 5)

Also:
Cooking oil-1 x large
2 x bags plain flour

 

[Womble]

looks very good!

 

[Pignut]

Looks brilliant!

I Have poached the idea (Hope you dont mind)

And am going to tailor it a little,

Will let you know how it goes if you are interested

 

[Buckshot]

Exactly my thoguhts.....
Thanks John - looks good :You_Rock_

Mark

 

[KIMBOKO]

Thank you for posting your whole camp program. I have copied it off to a friend who is also organising a Survival camp at halfterm. There may not be many leaders here but I always feel that sharing ideas help everyone either directly or just to stimulate the "leetle grey cells".
I just wish there was a Similar Scout run forum for doing this!.

 

[Big John]

I Have poached the idea (Hope you dont mind)

Not at all, hope it's of some use. Do let me know how you all get on with your respective camps - ours is this weekend, I hear the weather forecast isn't too good so that will make things interesting!

I'm in Dehli at the moment, flying back thursday night and off to camp Friday evening - at least I should sleep well!

There are Scouting forums elsewhere, although I've not seen one on Scoutbase. There is one on the general news servers, alt.rec.scouting or something, it's very well used but it tends to get bogged down with all sorts of other issues - this place is nicely centered round campcraft and the like which I think is nice!

 

[PeterW]

John

One of the things we (I run one of the 'unofficial' survival/bushcraft schools in Scouting) found was not to try and cram too much into a weekend, and that meals take 3 times as long to prepare as you would think...!!

We used standard UK ration packs as the basis for a 36 hour overnight course, supplemented with wild food extras. At around 4000kcal, they weren't going to go hungry...!!

Glad to see a few more people getting their Scouts and Explorers outdoors..!!!

Cheers

Peter

 

[Dennis Mapletoft]

John you had better make plenty, from my experience when they smell that bread cooking there aint gona be enough mmmmmm fresh bread and fire smoke and a mug of tea what more could you ask for? Yours Den

 

[miniac]

Quite right

I have been a leader for as long as i can remember, running camps and stuff. Never tried anything as "full on" as that though, sounds FAB. I am just starting to go back to trad camp skills with my explorers and with advice from Gary and JP from Bearclawbushcraft, am going to start some knife, axe and saw work into my programmes. Axe and saw I can cope with but the thought of giving a sheath knife to 15 year old is scary . Any suggestions??

 

[clownman]

we ran a survival camp last september with our scouts, probably the wettest weekend of the year. We had 15 come out of a troop of 30 and not one of them wanted to go home. We pretty much had to abandon the programme cos the weather meant it took all our time to keep the fires going. End of the camp soaked to the skin they all asked if they could do it again next year.

We allowed ours locking blade knives, though a couple did bring fixed blades. At the end of the day, if they are taught to repsect their knife as a tool and can follow that, then I have no problems allowing them to use them all weekend. Break that trust and they lose the knife, simple.

Hopefully next year the weather will be a little kinder to us and we can include some of the things we should have done in the programme.

 

[brancho]

We allowed ours locking blade knives, though a couple did bring fixed blades. At the end of the day, if they are taught to repsect their knife as a tool and can follow that, then I have no problems allowing them to use them all weekend. Break that trust and they lose the knife, simple.

Nothing wrong with a correctly used fixed blade