We've recently been asked by the District Commissioner to report on what we've been up to over the past year-and-a-bit ahead of the district annual general meeting (AGM). It made us step back a bit as we realised just how much we've got up to. Here's some of the highlights

Activities have included
May 2019       CS Platinum / Bronze DofE practice expedition in South Downs
                         CS Diamond / Silver DofE (team 1) qualifying expedition in Black Mountains
                         Kayaking at Godalming
Jul 2019         CS Platinum / Bronze DofE qualifying expedition in North Downs
                        Gilwell 24
                        Visit to Sayers Croft
Aug 2019      CS Diamond / Silver DofE (team 2) qualifying expedition in New Forest
Sep 2019       Took part in Scoutshoot ’19 at Bisley
Nov 2019       Survival camp
                         Pine Pull at Farnham Heath Reserve
Jan 2020        Night hike
Feb 2020        Survival camp
From March to end of July 2020 we went online, meeting every week. During this time we did a number of quizzes, had a wild food/foraging evening, had three virtual campouts in our back gardens, met online twice with an Explorer Scout Unit from Switzerland, had an Art Club, heard from two guest speakers (a BBC journalist and someone who had taken part in the Marathon Des Sables), invested new members, awarded DofE and Chief Scout certificates and the Explorers also ran several sessions on an international theme to work towards their Chief Scout awards and built their own websites as part of their digital citizen badge. We have had so much good feedback and gratitude from parents for keeping going throughout the summer, many saying that it was the highlight of their son/daughter’s week.
 
Aug 2020    Started back with face to face meetings, with two campfires a local walk and two kayaking sessions at Godalming
 
Badges & awards given
DofE bronze award x 2
DofE silver award x 1
DofE gold award x 2
Chief Scout Platinum award x 3
Other badges awarded included: survival skills, hill walking, hikes away, nights away, paddle sports and time on the water
 
Young Leaders
We also ran 2 Sunday morning sessions opened up to young people across the district and covered more of the modules for Draca Explorers. 5 Draca Explorers received their Young Leaders module A badge.
 
We are very chuffed that we’ve been able to achieve so much for the young people.

A huge thank you to all our lovely Explorers who got stuck in and helped paint the fence at the Haslemere Youth Hub on Monday evening. The fence was painted in no time at all, many hands making light of the work. And it was surprisingly sociable (even with distancing) too, who'd have thought it?!

Thank goodness for technology, it was fantastic for Draca Explorers to be able to meet online while the lockdown restrictions were in place, but my weren't we ready for ditching the screens and seeing each other again. During August we were able to put together a risk assessment to account for new measures relating to Covid-19 and once this was passed we started meeting together again in smaller groups. A couple of campfires, kayaking sessions and local walks and gradually a sense of normality begins to return. 

It was an ambitious undertaking, as after all the time could be filled with awkward silences, but we had a really good online meeting last night with a group of Explorer Scouts in Switzerland whom we have never met.

The Explorer Scout age group in Switzerland are known as Pioneers and this group we met were named “Piostufe Salander” from the group Pfadi Lägern. Pfadi means Scout and Lägern is the town where they are from in the northern part of Switzerland midway between Zürich and the border with Germany.
​
Each side exchanged descriptions, comparing aspects of Scouting and what they get up to. The funniest bit was when Jonti described what we’d call a mountain in the UK; a mere foothill compared with the mountains in Switzerland. It cracked our Swiss friends up! There were indeed a few awkward silences and it took a while to get the tech working so that all 25 of us could see and hear each other, but by the end of the evening everyone wanted to meet up again.
Thanks to our new friends from Switzerland and to our own explorers for joining us. Ironically, during this time of lockdown and limited travel we've achieved so much toward our international requirements for badges and awards!
Some pictures from our meet up below. A highlight was how they get their scout names. In the UK we have pack names for leaders, based on jungle book characters (the best name being Colonel Hathi, of course). Swiss scouts get names awarded to them during cub camps, usually during a naming ceremony, though their safeguarding rules would appear to be more open minded.

Never have we appreciated online services quite so much now that we are staying at home. It's been great to stay in touch with our Explorers by continuing our Monday night meetings using Zoom. Over the Easter weekend we also had a 'virtual' camp out, with several of the Explorers taking up the challenge to camp in their own back gardens. Another 'night away' chalked up for them!

Who needs supermarkets when food is on your doorstep. Well almost! Some amazing wild foods foraged from back gardens and on the once-daily walks from the fabulous Draca Explorers. We were hugely impressed. To see some more, head over to padlet
And tonight we've been plotting for what we can do over the coming weeks. I can feel some great creativity coming on...

Well ... who'd have thought just a few weeks ago Explorers would be SOOO interupted that we can't even have our Monday meetings?!? 

Ahhh ... who cares, let's carry on anyway. We're meeting on the now world famous Zoom thingy, you should all have links to our meeting room. Thanks to Claire last week we could even sit round the virtual campfire and eat marshmallows!. 

Ahhh ... who cares, let's carry on anyway. We're meeting on the now world famous Zoom thingy, you should all have links to our meeting room. Thanks to Claire last week we could even sit round the virtual campfire and eat marshmallows!.
​We set a wild food challenge but after the further lockdown please only do this if you can based on what you can forage in your own gardens (if you have one). We'll set up another meeting for next week. But keep up the chat online via this group if you want - now, more than ever, it's important that we stay in touch, stay calm and STAY AT HOME!!!
 
First ones in from Jon (wild nettle and wild garlic with wild bunny rabbit [wild? they were furious!] stew) and Andy (wild garlic and not so wild spinach dumplings and not so wild chicking stew)

​New challenge next week ... but we're always looking for ideas if you have any!

Well you couldn't accuse Draca Explorers of being indoorsy sort of folk! The past two weekends have seen storms across Britain, so we were very lucky to have planned our winter camp for the one weekend when the weather was just about warm and dry enough to do a camp.
Lucky for us we were able to use the brand new tarps, hammocks and underblankets which the District supported us to buy. And they were just the job, slung between the trees on the Camelsdale camp site. The weekend was focussed on survival skills, so making a camp gadget (a dead fall trap), eating without utensils, cooking over an open fire, looking at snaring small mammals, learning about hypothermia and a foraging walk were just some of the activities. And it was a bit of a foodie camp too, with sea bass cooked on a stick over open flames, slow cook rabbit stew and a veg soup flavoured with foraged three-corner leek.

It hardly seems like any time since we were ringing in 2020 but we've already had four sessions of the new term. Where does the time go?? January has been mainly rainy, damp and cold so it's been a good time to brush up on some indoor skills and do a bit of route planning for this year's expedition season. Too much indoors is never good for the soul, so (second time of trying, we were defeated by the weather at first attempt!) we got out for a bit of night navigation training on Blackdown. And very muddy it was too!

Well, we've certainly had an action packed year in 2019...

• 5 expeditions (two Chief Scout Platinum / Bronze DofE and three Chief Scout Diamond / Silver DofE)
• A frost camp at Camelsdale, including making a prototype fire shelter
• 24 hours of uninterrupted action at Gilwell24
• Taking part in the 2019 Scoutshoot at Bisley
• Lots of fun kayaking with the Godalming District Scout Canoe Club
• Bouldering, high ropes and caving at the treasured Sayers Croft
• A survival day with our very own outdoors enthusiast JT (sadly we didn't get to camp due to the stormy weather)
• Driving experience on the 'Top Gear' track at Dunsfold with Jeremy Neaves
• A brilliantly informative kit talk at Cotswold Outdoors in Guildford
• Pulling pines on RSPB Farnham Heath

We've also had local experts come to teach us about a variety of things including bats, archery, self-defence, healthy lifestyles, CPR and using defibrillators, the work of Oxfam, nettle cordage and whimmy-diddles and we've done a load of Young Leader training modules.
Phew!
So lovely to end the year on a high awarding the first of our bronze team his Bronze DofE. Well done Jamie! Oh and we remembered to have some fun and games too!! Happy festive season everyone.