This year, the Explorers have been focusing heavily on the enormous and vast topic of bushcraft and survival.

 

This has seen them learn multiple new skills and have the chance to practice ones they have learnt previously. They have learnt different knife skills and put these to use in making a try stick, fire lighting with minimal equipment, always a favourite in backwoods cooking, and teaching a new skill to someone else to name but a few.

 

After Christmas, we began to focus on the correct clothing for outdoor activities, the ways in which we lose body heat, how to help prevent the loss of body heat with the 4-layer clothing system, and 10 items to take with you while hiking.

 

More recently we have focused on Navigational skills, basic map reading, 5 main colours on a map and what they can tell you, how to identify 5 major and 5 minor terrain features and how this is used when planning a route, how to use a compass, take a bearing and how this can help you navigate, how to find north without a compass during the day using methods like stick and stone and a watch, during the night using different constellations, and then onto emergency aid.

 

We plan on putting all these skills to good use on our upcoming summer camp, where we will be completing an Expedition (to go towards their Chief Scouts Platinum Award) and Two nights of Survival camping (in view to complete the Survival skills badge) these are just some of the activities planned.

 

We currently have 10 Explorers with a possible new starter and 1 more transitioning from Scouts in September.

 

Chris Brown (EL)

Louise Brown (AEL)