Surf Camp 2019

For the 19th year running, we set our sights for Cornwall and made the journey down to Polzeath for our weeknd of gnarly waves and struggling in and out of wetsuits!

The thought of piling down in a few minibusses is now a distant memory; this year our party of 69 (!!) scouts, leaders and young leaders enjoyed a smooth ride down in our ‘luxury liner’ of a double-decker coach!

After a plain-sailing journey down, we arrived at Nine Ashes, and promptly began to occupy every rentable building on site. This year, we also had use of the activity barn, providing some ‘rustic’ accommodation for the majority of the boys, some of whom were appalledthat the leaders had ‘turned off’ the fire overnight…

Friday howled a hooley, and by Saturday the worst if the weather had passed, leaving us with a largely lovely weekend! Saturday begun with breakfast rugby, where we enjoyed watching England giving the Aussies a good old thrashing! I learned during the interval that this was acheived by one team scoring more rugby hoops than the other…

A couple of hours of orienteering followed, allowing scouts to enjoy the great outdoors… and the leaders to enjoy several cups of tea.

It was then time to hit the beach! After causing as little havoc to Cornwall’s roads as possible, the coach dropped us off in sunny polzeath (next to grassy Noel). As has come to be expected, Surf’s Up, unphased by having 8 surf groups worth of scouts, did an awesome job looking after everyone and made sure we had a great time. We had a lot of first timers this year – all of whom looked like the real deal by the end of our Sunday session!

This year’s theme was Wild West, and after much deliberation (and learning that many of the classic westerns weren’t age appropriate!), we settled on the excellent Back to the Future III. As usual, the costumes didn’t disappoint; we had bandits, cowboys, saloon doors and a number of horses, who just couldn’t stop foaling around!

After a wonderfully clean and crisp Sunday surf, we gathered on the beach to welcome Marshall, Elijah, Albert, Callum, Alice, David (all Wednesday) and Jonathan (Friday) to the troops. After almost a year, we also invested Wednesday leader David into the group, who’s been an invaluable addition to the team. Well done all for surviving your first 62nd camp, here’s to many more!

Total; 51 scouts, 5 young leaders and 12 leaders…!

Surfing Photos