Expedition Hike Camp Triumph
Although it was organised as a bit of an experimental format camp for us (just like BP’s original), 3HH’s Scouts more than rose to the occasion. This 30km round trip expedition was intended to give the Scouts a little more added adventure, try their hand at Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) style lightweight hiking and to generally mix things up a bit. And what a complete success!
We’ll add more photos when we have 2 minutes to gather ourselves, but as a quick snippet of what we got up to please click on the photo below…
After an early Saturday morning start from the HQ, four patrols set off on foot for Polyapes campsite near Oxshott carrying their essential personal and safety kit. They hovered up the miles reaching the site by mid afternoon, and quickly cracked on with getting hike tents pitched and cooking dinner on lightweight Trangia stoves. The evening was capped off with a first class private fireworks extravaganza hosted by the site’s Service Crew who kindly invited us along to share their display grade pyrotechnics! 
On the Sunday, we tried our hand at building natural bivvy shelters, surveying the site to create our own accurate scale maps, geocaching (a form of hi-tech treasure hunting using handheld GPS devices) and planning our route cards for the return journey – as well as indulging in some much welcomed “chill” time. The day was wrapped up with packing away our hike tents, and constructing shelters to sleep out in from tarps, ropes and the occasional hammock.
There were mixed reviews for the military 24 hour ration packs that we lived on, but the Yorkie chocolate bars cheekily branded “Not for civvies!” did seem to get universal approval.
Monday morning arrived all too early. After a hot breakfast and mugs of tea, the patrols were soon on the road again headed for home displaying some top notch navigation skills. The 30km overall route seemed to have presented little problem for this fearless bunch.
Having worked with a number of older DofE groups in the past, it was brilliant to see these 3HH Scouts show such fantastic camp craft and expedition skills. They are a huge credit to themselves, and far exceeded our expectations. Well done to all.
A massive thanks to Rich M, Paul F, John W and Andy W for yet again giving up their time to make this event possible. It wouldn’t have happened without you guys!
Simon