Perhaps Paradise Park wasn't quite right.

February 13th marked yet another Jambo meet up, this time in the familiar settings of Danemead. We had been there once before for our back to basics camp, but this time we would be walking from Danemead to Great Amwell, about four hours away.

Now, what with us being teenagers, and it being very early on a Sunday morning (well I say early, it was about half nine), we were all pretty tired, and cold. Luckily, we set off very quickly with out any time to think about how cold of tired we were. We were in the patrols that we have been in for the last couple of meetings, and we are beginning to think that these could be our patrols for the Jamboree. Which would be great because my patrol is pretty awesome. Anyway, we set off walking at a good pace. One of our patrol members seemed to know the woods quite well, so we were thinking, yeah, we are going to make this in good time! We had a pretty fast group, chatting, listening to reggae, laughing but walking steadily.

Unfortunately, maybe it was our lack of knowledge of how to read a map, which is unlikely, or our reliance on the person who knew the woods, which is unlikely, or even some dark wizard leading us astray, which is most likely, we, um, got lost. Quite badly. We had ended up walking in quite a large circle for about two hours, and ended up at Paradise Park, a nature reserve about a hundred meters from where we started. And yeah, we felt pretty stupid. Luckily, we have such wonderful leaders that told us to go back to the car park where we started, and take a shorter route to the lunch spot. When we arrived we got a fair few laughs and teases, mostly because we had turned up 45 minutes late, but after eating a surprisingly amazing lunch, we were up on our feet and raring to go again.

Despite our major deviation from the route the first time, and major lateness, we ended up turning up at the finish point at the same time as everyone else. It MUST have been our immense walking skills, and one of our leaders promises he didn't change our route to a shorter one. After a bit of relaxing, some washing up and some hot squash, we tidied up, sorted out some badges and then packed off home. Much to the delight, I'm sure, of my parents, I turned up on the doorstep very muddy, very messy and very happy.


All in all, a very nice day, thank you guys!



H