29Th Belfast Venture Scouts Attend

29th Belfast Venture Scouts attend

Ballyhornan County camp – D.I.R.T.Y weekend (: Oct 2011

On Friday 8th October 2010, ventures and leaders from 29th Belfast met at the new scout hall ready for an eventful county weekend that lay ahead of them. The bus would have left on time if silly Courtney & Ruby had not have forgotten their sleeping bags (how can you forget those) & Eileen (it wasn’t me) didn’t forget her scarf, this time.

Once everyone had arrived, we got on the bus & picked up Rose from the church car park, and away we went

As is usual on these camps Pat decided on a shop stop in Crossgar, we all got out of our beautiful coach & into the shop to stock up on sugar for the weekend, not long after we were back on the road the sugar kicked in and everyone started to liven up.

When we arrived at Ballyhornan we were directed into our respective dorms, boys to the left and girls to the right, so once everyone had their bags out of the mini bus & into their dorms it was time to go exploring & make some new friends. Ballyhornan scout centre is a collection of 4 ex Army buildings situated beside the beach. It has a variety of sleeping, dining and recreation rooms. It is a warm as toast and very comfortable. Anyway getting back to the weekend, we had about half an hour to sort out our rooms half an hour before Daly called all the troops together for the first time to meet in the main hall for some ice breaker games. At first we all had to get into our own groups and line up, then we were giving challenges such as , sort ourselves into ages without talking, giving us a chance to bound with other people who were going to be spending the rest of our weekend with.

Once everyone had completed these challenges we were all numbered 1 to 4, and each number was a group, e.g. all the number 1s were group number 1, and all the number 2’s were group number 2 etc. These groups were going to be the groups we stayed in all weekend...Eileen didn’t seem to mind her group as she was the only girl among 4 other boys.

The groups had a chance to get to know each other as they were put round a table & told to talk to each other. After roughly 15-20 minutes of talking & bounding the first activity of the night began, the movie quiz J

The quiz was excellent fun & it gave ventures an opportunity to make new friends & find out what other people in their group were interested in.

The time flew in as the quiz was really fun, nobody realised the time & by the time the quiz had finished it was near half 11.

It was time for supper and as everyone was a little peckish, we wondered what was on offer. We weren’t disappointed as Pat and Richard had cooked a massive collection of their famous sausages, so sausage sandwiches tea or Juice and was the order of the day.

After this the ventures were allowed to do what they wanted, so a game of football was played, girls vs. boys, this game was interesting & ruby certainly enjoyed herself. Any excuse to run after boys eh ruby ;).

The game didn’t last too long as the ball was kicked over the fence by a few boys from 10th Antrim. So as the ball was gone, we had to think of something else to do, so a trip to the beach was in order for who ever wanted to go.

Courtney & Cliodhna must have thought they were in sunny Spain at midday as they decided to go for a swim in the sea...not too much of a good idea, when you realise your in the middle of the sea, with all your friends watching you & you have no towel to dry yourself.

By the time all this had happened it was now into the early hours of the morning, and some people wanted to go to bed. Niamh & all the others in her room had already got into the room & pulled al the beds together to make one huge bed, sounded like a good idea at the time, but when there is roughly 10 people in one bed, it does tend to become a little too warm.

Saturday was movie day, at 11am, just after breakfast everyone was called together told to get back into their groups from the night before to complete activates planned for today.

We had 2 special guests joining us only for that day; it was the Wonderful Emma Curry & the awesome Clare McKnight who had both come down to enjoy the craic of Saturday.

The activities were set up by Daly & the other venture leaders, the idea of today was for the groups to work together to try and complete 8 different challenges set up around the campus & the beach, these activities ranged from things like, sand sculpturing, starting a fire using only stones & sticks to building airplanes. All in all it was a great day & everyone who joined in enjoyed themselves.

Saturday night was Oscar’s night; everyone got themselves dressed up & headed over to the main hall for a lovely prepared meal cooked by Mark Craig & our very own Roisin. During dinner, our Aggy arrived, which made the smile on Kelly’s face go from ear to ear as he was happy to know have another 29th Belfast boy to join him.

After dinner it was time for the movie making, Daly told each group to make a movie about whatever they wanted of about 3 to 5 minutes long, clearly some people did not hear him as Courtney’s teams made a documentary on Ballyhornan lasting a shocking 25 minutes long.

Once the movies were made, they were given to the leaders to put on to the laptop ready to be seen by everyone else, it was a very good night and some of the movies were very good & a lot of hard work & imagination went into them.

As nobody slept the night before, come midnight, once all the movies had been shown, some people had had enough and went off to bed as others stayed up & continued talking with all the other troops.

We were now into Sunday morning, the last day of the camp.

Breakfast was served around 10am, and after breakfast it was time for our award show, the awards were based on the movies made the night before, meaning that some of them were stupid yet necessary awards. Courtney’s group own won the longest short film award, Angie’s group won best soundtrack in a short film & Ruby’s group won best horror film. Kelly won an award for being the most helpful person all weekend.

It then came down to awards going to the ventures themselves, Courtney won biggest melter of the weekend & best narrator of a movie. Making her very happy about herself. Eileen won best excuses used at the weekend with her winning yet original phrase “it wasn’t me!” She even answered those words to questions like “Can you pass me the salt”

Finally it was time to say our goodbyes so as everyone went around getting numbers & facebook names, pictures were taken of each group individually & then finally everyone together. It was a great way to end a great weekend.

Venture scout. X