Welcome back to our final term for this Scouting Year and we hope you all had a restful Easter Break.

To mark our Centenary Year we are having a private screening of the Jungle Book at Lisburn Omniplex on the evening of Wednesday April 27th around 7:15pm. We should have full information etc early next week.

We plan, with the lighter nights and weather permitting to start our new outdoor programme from now until we finish in June. We aim to concentrate on various  methods of backwoods cooking, fire-lighting. We will try to demonstrate  various methods of both lighting fires and cooking, such as earth ovens , Swedish Candles etc. We will also do ropes, knots, lashings and pioneering the aim being to construct simple but useful camp oriented gadgets. These skills will also be in keeping with the Centenary Camp programme and also counting toward the NI Cub Challenge Award.

The NI Cub Challenge Award is a relatively new award for Cubs in NI and is geared toward challenging our young people in the outdoors, the programme consists of 35 different challenges of which Cubs must complete a Camping/ Nights Away Experience along with 17 other tasks, most of which we do through our Pack programme, Camps and Nights Away. Most of our Monday night Cubs will have completed the NI Challenge  by this coming June, these tasks will normally be completed over the 2.5 years  Cubs are with us. The Camping/ Nights Away is a compulsory requirement through the staged programme, only those Cubs who attend a Camp or Nights Away experience will achieve this Award.

The Centenary Camp planning is progressing well with all Cub Challenges, bases and sub-camp pitches all completed, we now just have to put these in their place on a large camp-site but like any camping expedition in ” Our Wee Country ” the weather would be our greatest enemy and as this Centenary Camp is a full on outdoor experience we really pray for a fair and sunny weekend. We do however hope to have several marquees in place, just in case.

There will be four sub-camps on the site,  sub-camp BALLOO, sub-camp CHILL, sub -camp BAGHEERA and sub-camp KAA.  1st Hillsborough will be in sub-camp BALLOO, we will be in this sub-camp with, 1st Whitehead, 1st Carnfunnock, 1st Kilbride, 1st Jordanstown, 6th Lisburn, 1st Cullybackey and 7th Antrim. Each sub-camp will have around 130/150 Cubs and supporting leaders.

Explorer ans Scout Leaders along with a number of young leaders from the County will man all Camp Challenge bases.

There will also be a Security Team on site at all times. The site will also be secured and manned overnight.

We will also have in place a full risk assessment of the site, most of which we have already surveyed with a full assessment don on the 2 days prior to camp day.

We will have a first aid centre on site manned by both St Johns Ambulance and several doctors who are also Scout Leaders.

There will be adequate toilets on site to accommodate the numbers attending.

I will publish the full programme and timetable in the coming weeks.

We will also be having Birthday Cake and I’m glad to say that I am not responsible for baking enough Birthday Cakes to feed 800+ hungry mouths, I can however tell you one that one of our talented leaders from  the County will be doing just that. 3 cheers for that lady.

In 2016, Cubs celebrate 100 years as part of Scouting.  It’s going to be the wildest birthday ever! Have a look at the Cubs 100 video: