We are in the season of school camps at the moment so our patrol was down to 3 people this week, so what we learnt this week you will all be able to show to the others next Tuesday night.
We started, as always, with a game. Each Scout was given a bottle of water with about 2 inches of water in the bottom, they then stood in a line at the start of a row of cones. Every time a leader called out ‘flip’ they had to flip their bottle and try and get it to land upright, if they did they moved forward one space. First to the end was the winner. We played the game 3 times, with the last being left hand only, and ended up with 3 different winners.
Then on to knots, and a few new ones this week that none of the Scouts had done before. Firstly we looked at West Country Whipping, which is both a way of stopping a natural rope from fraying and also a decorative knot that can be used simply to make an object look nice. If you need a reminder take a look at the example on Animated Knots website. The important things to remember are keep doing the same knot, i.e. don’t reverse the order, and ensure the knots are all one above the other. We completed our whipping with a reef knot.
We then did a round turn with two half hitches:
Followed up by a revision of the timber hitch we briefly looked at last week and carrying this on to a diagonal lashing. We looked at two different ways to start the timber hitch, and discussed how it only has strength while under tension. The latter point dictating the direction the diagonal lasing needed to be started.
Keep practising, as mentioned already you will be showing the Scouts who were away this week how to do all these knots soon…
Lastly this was a good chance for the boys to put in some work towards their patrol activity, by filling out the C4 form and making a list of requirements for the day. To do this they used a copy of the day plan the others had already produced earlier. These C4 forms will be sent out to parents very soon.
Next week we should be back to more usual numbers.
