I’m not talking about the paperwork (there’s so much paperwork!). I’m talking about what it’s actually like on camp, all those things the Going Away With licence don’t prepare you for.
1) The girls will sneak electronics in
Part of the charm of camp is having time to digitally detox. You tell the girls not to bring phones because they’ll get lost or smashed, they’re not covered by insurance, there’s nowhere to charge them, there’s no signal on your campsite in the middle of nowhere and yet phones will appear. We had one girl who argued ferociously “it’s an iPod, you didn’t say we couldn’t bring iPods!”.
I mean, it’s up to you if you’re going to let your kids bring their precious electronics but I personally have dealt with the crying when one of them vanishes (it turned up in the wrong pocket of the wrong bag) and I’ve had enough of it. I’ve also been on a camp where a kid decided to phone home crying and homesick after lights out and the first the leaders knew of it was headlights through the tent at 1am. Fine, be homesick and go home early but it has to be handled through the leaders! Besides, it’s a security risk because one of them will tell the entire internet where they can find a group of undefended children in unlocked fabric houses. Let them enjoy engaging with real life for once and make it clear to the parents that any electronics found will be confiscated – they can’t argue if they knew the consequences going in.
2) They won’t sleep the first night
Once you’ve won the battle of the tent that no one wants to put up because it’s too much work and survived the first evening, it’s bedtime. It’s very exciting, sleeping in a tent. No matter how many sleepovers your girls have done, how many school residential trips, even how many camps, it’s so exciting to be sleeping in a tent with your mates that no one will go to sleep until at least 3am. Girls who would normally sleep through the night will suddenly desperately need the toilet and at least four others will go with her for the excitement of it. Chatting will become shrieking because they have no idea how non-soundproof the tent is and the leaders will be up all night pleading with them to go to sleep.
I find the best way of winning this battle is to tell them they don’t have to go to sleep but if they’re going to be awake, they have to do it quietly because I want to go to sleep. Not having the order “go to sleep” hanging over them is surprisingly conducive to getting them to go to sleep.
3) Biscuits first thing in the morning are a good idea
We generally set breakfast time for around an hour and a half after wake-up. That gives them time to get up, get dressed, get ready for the day and get breakfast cooked. It’s a long time to wait, especially for people like me whose blood sugar tends to go a bit funny with no food for so long in the morning.
What we do is the leaders sit outside in the early morning sun and dew with a cup of tea and a packet of mixed biscuits. Once a girl is dressed and ready, she joins us outside and is offered biscuits and drinks. It’s a nice calm morning ritual and fuels us ready for the long breakfast-making haul.
4) You need more bread than that
Bless, my main leader ran her first camp and planned bread-based meals for about two-thirds of the meal. There were eight to ten girls, because it was a first assessed licence camp, plus three adults and a young leader. She brought two loaves of bread. This applies to any foodstuff but the bread particularly sticks out.
My Guides have always operated on a food budget of £5 per person per day but I went to a county training day and they were horrified, said that was out of date and they budget for closer to £10 per person per day. That gave us a budget of around £300 in total and we could definitely have had more bread.
5) Get the girls to bring a cake
You can really stretch that food budget if every girl brings a cake or a pack of biscuits or something for elevenses. We have elevenses and fourses and pudding after every meal (except breakfast) and no one really notices the extra cost on top of a camp of a cake. We give an extra point to everyone who brings a cake and two points to anyone who brings a homemade one, but you have to recognise that not all parents have time to make a homemade cake the day before camp. I definitely wouldn’t have time. You can offer a choice of two or three different cakes at every food break and everyone can have seconds and thirds until everything’s used up by the end. You’re living outside, living a more active life than usual. For once, let yourself have the extra calories.
6) Arrive and leave in uniform but don’t expect anyone to wear it in between
It’s a well-worn lie that you’re not covered by insurance if people don’t arrive and leave in uniform but it remains a popular thing to do. It’s the time when other people are likely to see you and it’s always good PR to see Girlguiding groups around the place in uniform.
That said, take it off at the first opportunity. It’s unrealistic to expect them to wear it for the entire camp. No one has spare uniforms. Maybe fundraise for a set of custom-printed t-shirts or hoodies, maybe buy a load from Primark and dye/paint them as an activity, maybe request a colour theme (it used to be that you took all and only blue clothes to Guide camp) or maybe just request things like no strappy tops or teeny-tiny shorts. Make sure the parents know there’s a high chance anything that goes to camp will come back wet and/or muddy and don’t let them come with “these are my new trainers, my mum’ll kill me if they get dirty!” because that’s a world of tiresomeness for leaders and a world of worry for the kid who can’t join in properly.
7) Ration the washing-up liquid
Get the girls to do their own washing-up – we assign each patrol a leader and they wash up the leader’s things too and they take it in turns to wash the cooking stuff – but if you give them a whole bottle of washing-up liquid on the first day, it’ll be gone by bedtime. We buy large bottles, maybe even the bulk catering size, and put a bit in used bottles. Even if they use it all up, they’ve only used as much as you give them.
(Also, be aware that their washing-up is terrible and if you give them your own plate, it’s going to have been washed in the most cursory manner in a bowl of liquid swimming with ketchup and grease and filth. I so prefer to wash my own stuff.)
8) Keep the matches in a watertight box
My own old Guide leaders kept the matches and the teabags in an old ice cream tub. That was just habit, I never thought about why – until the first camp I helped run without them. We put the matches away in the mess tent the first evening and even though it was a dry night, the matches were too damp to use in the morning. Turns out Badger had a good point. Ever since then, I’ve kept mine in a tupperware box with a clippy lid to make sure they’re dry – nothing worse than getting up in the morning and you can’t cook breakfast.
9) You don’t have to fill the days with adventurous activities
We do get into the habit of providing adventurous activities. Are we subconsciously trying to compete with the Scouts, with their reputation for adventure and their adventurous Chief Scout? Are we trying to forcibly drag the ancient and revered tradition of camp into the twenty-first century? Are we making the most of having an archery instructor in the district?
Adventurous activities are fun! Of course I recommend them but actually, girls enjoy the simple life too. They’re just as happy to sit out in the fresh air doing a craft or playing a wide game or just sitting in the branches of a tree chatting. Add as many adventurous activities as you can afford if you want but equally, you can minimise them or miss them altogether and everyone will still enjoy their camp.
10) Whatever else you do, camp is the thing they’ll remember
I ask my new Rangers “What did you enjoy doing at Guides that you’d like to do more of at Rangers?” and I get blank looks. “Ok, what did you enjoy doing at Guides?” and I get “CAMP!”. They’ll hate putting the tent up, they’ll be moody and tearful the second day because they’re over-tired, they’ll gorge themselves on sweets and make a mess in the tent and it’ll be the thing they remember enjoying more than anything else you could ever do during meetings.
The Internet's Brown Owl 
Leave a comment