This term has included another milestone for the group – the launch of a Squirrels Drey!
Just under twenty 4 and 5 year olds have joined the Drey, which had its first session after half-term. They have already enjoyed a great mix of activities and we all look forward to seeing how they grow and develop. I want to give a big thanks to Kirsty for helping to launch the Drey, and to Nic and the rest of her volunteers who have taken up the mantle to run this new section – THANK YOU.
The rest of the group have had another great term, with over 120 young people and adults attending Escapade 2023, the district camp at Walton Firs in June.
The group now has over 195 young people and 80 volunteers, and continues to grow. None of this is possible without everyone’s help. Thank you to everyone that helps out, we wouldn’t have such a vibrant group without everyone of you.
Liam
Group Scout Leader
Squirrels
What a privilege it has been to see some of the youngest members of the community become members of the 1st Molesey family and join the first Squirrels Drey in Molesey.
We have had an amazing term with the Squirrels and loved getting to know each other through lots of exciting games and activities. We have made trebuchets, fruit creatures, listened to stories, played games, met Chris and his police puppy Guinness and even churned our own butter using marbles. We have played different team games to help us to learn that it is taking part that counts, not winning!
We ended our first term together with an exciting trip along the river on the powerboats. Some of us even had a go at driving the boats. We loved our first experience on the water and can’t wait for the autumn term for even more fun together! We’d like to say a huge big thank you to all of the grown ups who have helped set up the Squirrels Drey and took us on the water as we couldn’t have done it without you!
Beavers
Beavers engaged in lots of fun activities this term and we’ll highlight five of them here for you.
On St. George’s Day Scouts remind themselves of their Promise and Scout Law. Not that a Scout ever forgets either but, on St. George’s Day, they make a special point of thinking about them. We are incredibly lucky in Molesey that we have a well organised event, when the three Molesey Scout groups joined by some others in our District are able to march in full uniform with flags to St. Paul’s for a service. The Parade is also a great opportunity for the community to see us, as it attracts crowds of parents and other onlookers when we march down Walton Road, Kent Road then Church Road accompanied by music from the 3rd Molesey (Matravers) Scout and Guide band. Look out for us on the nearest Sunday to St. George’s Day.
Our King’s Coronation tea was fab! We celebrated together by decorating with paper chains, making jam sandwiches and decorating biscuits for our tea as well as colouring specially designed Coronation fuzzy art bookmarks as keepsakes.
We have previously kayaked with Beavers and we’ve taken them power boating on the River Thames but this is the first time we have taken them sailing and power boating on Island Barn Reservoir. It was a beautiful summer evening up at the sailing club and whilst the Beavers enjoyed these exciting water-based activities (as well as earning their Time on the Water and Nautical Skills badges) parents were able to enjoy watching them from the club’s outside area. We received great feedback from parents, so we pass on our thanks to Tuesday night Scout leaders and Explorers/Young Leaders who helped us to make this event happen.
“Raingutter Regatta with Dads”. This is a fun activity where the Beavers build a sailboat that is wind-powered by blowing on the sail. This year we combined this activity with Father’s Day, where we encouraged Beavers to design and build their boats at home before bringing them to the Raingutter Regatta to race their boats in water-filled rain gutters. Beavers learn skills building and decorating
their boats, they learn that rules must be followed and more importantly sportsmanship. It’s a fun activity for young people and adults alike! Our thanks for all the dads/granddads/special persons who came along and helped make this a successful event.
Escapade, otherwise known as District Camp, occurs every three years and is held at Walton Firs Activity Centre over three days for the older Sections with Beavers joining us on Saturday morning until Sunday morning if they are camping (or just Saturday for day visitors only). This year saw over 200 Beavers participate from the District including 17 from 1st Molesey Beavers (4 as day visitors). Despite the heat a lot of fun was had with a day filled with so many different activities including tug-of-war, stomp rockets, campfire popcorn, cooking sausage dampers, circus skills, maze, bouldering wall, inflatables, adventure course, crafts and more. At the end of the day, we also took part in the district campfire where we joined in with campfire songs before heading back to our Group campsites for settling down to sleep after a remarkably busy day. For our Beavers this meant a bedtime story before cosying up in sleeping bags in our very own bell tent before lights out. Our thanks to all the leaders and parents who helped make this event happen for our young people.
Monday Cubs
The Monday Cubs have focused on being busy having lots of fun outdoors!
We’ve covered activity badges like Sports Enthusiast and Athletics at the local park, Environmental Conservation at Molesey Heath, and bushcraft skills at Polyapse Campsite joint with the Thursday Cubs.
The Cubs have also been able spend lots of time on the water term this term improving their kayaking skills.
We loved being part of SCRAM 2023, which was a day of amazing activities organised by Surrey Scouts – more than 3000 Cubs got together to take part in a day full of so many fantastic activities at the Hook Road Area.
Do you spot anyone familar in the video below?
But the highlight of the term was district camp at Walton First with the whole of 1st Molesey – our water slide went down really well!
At 1st Molesey we are fortunate to have leaders and instructors with special Scouting skills. Max and Giles ran a brilliant Cubs Sixer camp in May which we joined up with friends from 9th Walton Cubs for.
This is the first time we’ve offered a greenfield camp to our Cubs with a chance to sleep out in the woods in a hammock – what an adventure!
Thanks to all the volunteers that have made Monday Cubs a brilliant success this Scouting year. We can’t wait to see what next year holds!
Tuesday Scouts
Summer term kicked off with sailing basics at Island Barn, learning with our young leaders Will and Max how to rig and derig the boats, and getting our scouts out sailing, canoeing. Molesey Sea Scouts have been lucky enough to receive a donation of an “Argo” from the Royal Navy which has enabled our scouts to get the feel of a larger sailing boat under the tuition of Chris and Kelan.
It’s fair to say that we’ve seen some great sailing skills demonstrated by our scouts this term – it’s not easy figuring out how to sail to a point that the wind is coming from!
Second half of the term we’ve been out on the kayaks exploring downstream to Hampton Court, upstream around Plats Eyot and from Walton-on-Thames – around Walton bridge and of course our super Scouts tackled the weir which is probably our longest and most challenging round trip.
We also repeated a Scout favourite this year with the River Mole adventure, dealing with the twists, turns and tight spots of a technical, but beautiful nature paddle with the inevitable creepy crawly making an appearance for good measure!
We’re really proud of our super young people in Tuesday scouts, all developing their water skills, confidence and stamina. We have to take a moment to recognise all our new scouts that have only recently joined the group from Cubs – and how they get truly stuck in, it’s been especially fantastic to see how they’ve developed this term.
Wednesday Scouts
Another busy term packed with new skills, adventure, and opportunities to challenge ourselves!
We have 35 young people and an incredible team on Wednesday evenings and we’ve loved the opportunities the summer months and warmer weather has provided to gear-up the adventure and provide greater challenge.
We’ve enjoyed loads of evenings on the water and even welcomed some of our youngest Scouts by investing them afoat!
Since the end of the Spring Term, the scouts have been offered 15 nights away including bushcraft camps, a trip to SantaPod raceway, district camp and 7 nights in the New Forest.
It’s not long until we embark on our adventure to Kandersteg, Switzerland with Surrey Scouts in just under 2 weeks time, we can’t wait!
Our oldest few Scouts took part in a challenging 35km canoe expedition, including the entire length of the Wey Navigation – 4 Gold Awards and 5 Expedition Challenges presented, a fantastic effort!
Our Scouts are great at helping us plan a programme that challenges them to try new things and we’re proud that we have kept our activities relevant, varied and listened to what they want to do!
This summer we’ve also explored Bushy Park by bike, swung between the trees at the Sandown treetop adventure, and ended the term with a trip to the Shepperton Splash water assault course.
We can’t wait to welcome some new Scouts and adult volunteers to the Wednesday evenings in September, have a great summer everyone!
Thursday Cubs
Cubs have had a very full term and loved having the opportunity to get together with the Monday Cubs to make the most of the many bank holidays we have had this term. We spent an evening in the park playing a variety of different sports to work towards our sports badge. We would like to say a big thank you to Mr Joicey, a coach at Molesey juniors, for supporting us with his impressive football set up and knowledge. We also enjoyed an evening with Monday Cubs at Polyapes where we built our own shelters and camp gadgets using tarps and different knots. We also used the flint and steel to start our own campfires. Our young leader Flora had built an epic fire by the end of the evening!
We demonstrated great team work to build our Moana style float for the Molesey Carnival. Giles, along with many adult helpers, demonstrated a great deal of patience as the Cubs and Beavers worked together to build a very impressive raft. We were delighted to have won a prize, for the third year running, and all of the Squirrels, Beavers and Cubs looked amazing in their tropical Hawaiian outfits!
It has been a busy term for our Cubs to get out and about and we not only enjoyed SCRAM but also camping at Walton Firs just a few weeks later!
Despite the somewhat gloomy weather over the past few weeks, the weather has been kind to us on Thursday evenings and we have been fortunate enough to take the Cubs out on the water several times. Their skill and confidence to kayak have grown enormously and it is safe to say they are very competent kayakers! We look forward to spending as much time as we can on the water in the autumn term.
One of the traditions we have at Thursday Cubs is to leave the final night of the term in the capable hands of any Cubs who are leaving us. It is always an evening filled with pride as well as sadness as we enjoy the activities that the Cubs have planned for the rest of the Pack. The Leaders have no idea what our oldest Cubs have in store for the night but once again the last Pack meeting of the term was hugely successful as William and Benji planned and delivered a great night for us all to enjoy. We finished off with s’mores around the campfire as William and Benji shared their Cub highlights with us and gave the new Sixers some advice to follow. Well done, we wish you both lots of luck at Scouts!
We can’t wait for more fun and adventures with Thursday Cubs in the Autumn Term!
Explorers
Our usual term on the water got off to a slow start due to poor weather. British Canoeing and indeed the Scouting Association recognise the Environment Agency’s cautionary procedures for strong stream conditions on the River Thames, which meant we started off the summer term with activities that we normally reserve for the Spring and Autumn terms, such as smores on the campfire and ultimate frisbee. Even so, we managed to provide three sailing sessions on Island Barn Reservoir and four kayaking sessions, which included the River Thames from Sadlers Ride, on the River Mole as well as around Desborough Island from Cowey Sale.
A few Explorers have also taken part in other events offered, such as the Military Musical Spectacular at Horse Guards Parade, Dragstalgia camp at Sant Pod, RYA First Aid training, Escapade23 (District Camp) and we look forward to the upcoming week camp at Ferny Crofts in the New Forest.
Three of our Explorers participated in Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) hike expeditions organised by Dragon DofE and four participated in their Silver DofE paddle practice expedition organised by 1st Molesey on the River Medway in Kent. The highlight of their expedition was experiencing the thrill of going down the shutes they encountered at various point along the river. They can now look
forward to their DofE Silver qualifying paddle expedition next month, which will be held on the River Thames commencing on the edge of The Cotswolds on into the Oxford region.
Well done to all of the DofE expedition participants; we congratulate you on your achievements.
A message from our chairman
What a fantastic round up of another active term learning new skills and having great adventures. As we sign off for the summer holidays I wanted to take the opportunity to update you with news and diary reminders from the Executive Committee.
AGM
Our AGM will be on Friday 15th September. The evening kicks off with a BBQ from 5pm and the AGM starts at 7pm. We look forward to seeing you there!
Exec Committee Meeting
The group’s trustees meet every month, with the next one at 7pm on Thursday 7th September at the hut. Please feel free to come along and listen.
Calling all tree surgeons!
Are there any tree surgeon parents out there who could help us? We need to cull, clip and prune quite a few of the trees at the hut. It would cost the Scouts £2,500 to get this work done. If we have a skilled parent who could share their expertise we could set up a working group to help get the job done and save the scouts signficant funds. Please do contact us at info@1stmoleseyscouts.org.uk if you can help!
Bruce Burrowes
Chair
Save the date!
Molesey Beer Festival – 6th & 7th October 2023
The Molesey Beer Festival will return in October!
It’s one of the group’s biggest fundraisers, and a fantastic social event for all the family, so do put the date in your diaries.
We’ll get straight to the point: we don’t necessarily need hours of your time to help put on the festival in October. But we do need some of it!
Without volunteers we can’t provide the rewarding experiences we want your young person to enjoy. Scouts cannot run without some kind of exchange. Your time = adventures for your young person. When people volunteer it allows us to raise the funds for the activities we provide.
We have made a success of Molesey Beer Festival 2 years running. It’s established now and we hope to sell out this year and use it as a budget fattening opportunity for the Scout group.
We are delighted to announce KWW Solicitors as headline sponsors of the 2023 Molesey Beer Festival
Here’s a message from them:
“KWW Solicitors is thrilled to be headline sponsor of this year’s Molesey Beer Festival. The Walton Road law firm has been a feature of life in East Molesey since way back in 1953, which makes 2023 its Platinum Anniversary.
“The opportunity to sponsor such a great local event in a very special year for us was too good to miss,” said KWW’s managing partner David Anstee, pictured here (right) with fellow partner and Head of Property Salvatore Sole.
“We are looking forward to helping the organisers raise as much money as possible to support the 1st Molesey Scouts and help them through these tough financial times.”
KWW specialises in a range of popular legal services including will writing, lasting powers of attorney, conveyancing, family matters and dispute resolution. The firm is authorised and regulated by the SRA and holds the prestigious Conveyancing Quality Standard.
Thank you to Not Just Travel for continued sponsorship
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