2020! A year to remember! Explorer Cubs have managed to make some fantastic memories and despite having to cancel our Summer camp this year, we have still achieved so much!

Firstly, a HUGE well done to Raksha (Hayley R) who successfully achieved her nights away permit this year for both indoors and outdoors camping. Where are we off to first?? 🙂 Raksha planned and provided a superb overnight camp out which we all loved! We used our pioneering skills to build awesome pirate themed constructions and wowed our very special guest Stuart!

We got incredibly muddy on our hike around Barbury Castle (Poor Akela being the first to fall in the slippery mud – very quickly followed by lots of Cubs 🙂 ) and were finally able to put our Map reading skills to great use after having spent some time learning about them!

We learned about various ways of communication and passed coded messages to each other using various techniques including ‘flag semaphore’ which Explorer Cubs found very interesting. We were given the opportunity to try our hand at pyrography and created a fantastic wooden display for ‘Chinese New Year’ which is displayed proudly on our notice board at the Scout Hut.

Whether we met face to face or virtually over zoom, we have completed various tasks working towards our badges including our ‘communication badge’, ‘home help badge’ ‘photography badge’ and most recently our ‘community impact badge’. The Cubs have been busy reaching out to our local community, asking for donations of items to give to our local care homes, for residents who have been deeply affected by COVID-19, especially over the Christmas period. Explorer Cubs entered our first ever ‘Scrap Heap Challenge’ which we loved and spent much of this year continuing to develop our team-work skills, hopefully meaning next year we will do even better.

Whilst 2020 might have been an unusual year, for us it has still been a great one – although we look forward to a time when things can go somewhat back to normality and we get to play dodgeball again 🙂 🙂 🙂 . Well done to all involved and a HUGE thank you to everyone that continues to support Explorer Cubs despite the current challenges we all face! Especially to you Hayley Roberts, your knowledge is invaluable and having you onboard means our Cubs have an experience second to none!! What a great team we make!! To all of our Cubs who have worked so hard towards achieving their Chief Scout Silver Award and who because of ‘lockdown’ were unable to meet the final requirements or whom had to move on without a proper ‘explorer’ goodbye and good luck… We wish you all the very best and send you our final B.R.A.V.O!!!

Hayley – Akela