what didn't go wrong!

We arrived early afternoon in brilliant sunshine and thought it would be a great camp with weather like this and it was, until the early hours of the next morning, when the rain started (or perhaps I should say monsoon). Have you ever seen the Winnie the pooh film with the rain that came down and flooded right into piglet's house, well our camp at Bull River was just like that. The campsite had a very apt name for those few days, the rain and wind raged like a bull and the stream that flowed through the site as a result looked like turning into a river if the rain had not finally stopped by the next afternoon.

We also had flying tents, the wind was so strong it broke the poles in one tent, which then collapsed to one side pulling the pegs out and ripping one of the guy ropes off the side with such force it took the re-inforced tape off the tent with it. Luckily no one was in the tent at the time. But we decided that it would not be safe for the girls to sleep outside so evacuated them to a hall, whilst the leaders spent half the night taking the remainder of the tents down in the dark.

Next day we had fun trying to cook in the pouring rain, to speed things up we got out an extra gas ring that looked quite innocent until we lit it, where upon flames flew about 30 centimeters in the air from every possible hole they could find to come out of.

Did you watch I'm a celebrity, get me out of here, with the mud slide challenge, well what we had was almost as good. We had two streams building up quite nicely running through the middle of the site and a really good mudslide leading from the woods to the tent area.

We had promised the girls a camp fire and not wanting to let them down we decided as they had been told they would have a camp fire, we would give them a camp fire, we had damp wood, damp matches and leaders standing over the fire with coats held out to shield it from the rain. It did take a little longer than usual, but eventually the girls had their fire and even though everything else was damp the girl's spirits were not, they had a great time singing around the fire despite the wind and rain. It was going to take a lot more than a bit of bad weather to spoil their holiday. Our fire was so good it kept going for two days even through the rain. Brownie Guiders could beat Ray Mears any day.

It sounds like the ideal camp for many accidents, but the only accident that did occur was when one of the leaders slipped on the wet grass during a tent chase across the field. She managed the most graceful, slow motion fall ever seen, ending up with the wettest mud-caked trousers ever seen on a camp

Having had all this happen you would think we would have been put off of camping for life, but by the end of camp, although we were really muddy, had no clean, dry clothes left and were absolutely exhausted, we all agreed we had still had a thoroughly great time.

We would also like to point out that no girls were harmed during the making of this camp