We met at the church on the evening of Friday 26th September to make our way to Polyapes for our annual family camp. The theme for this year was space. On arrival, the cubs and scouts made their way to the tents, which had already been put up, whilst the parents found a bunk bed in the hut. After dinner, the youngsters went exploring, whilst the parents chatted away.
Once the youngsters had gone to bed, the parents were set a five point challenge. Complete a word search, make an alien mask, build a rocket, create cocktails for each of the planets in the solar system and dress a space waiter.
Saturday morning dawned very misty and quite chilly. After breakfast, some of the parents organised games for the children whilst the leaders prepared games for the afternoon, meals and went to fetch the beavers. After lunch, one of the leaders, Clifford Smith, was awarded his 30 years service award by Tricia Griffn, a Deputy County Commissioner. Then it was time for the games!
We started with four games, where all teams took part. Space invaders - where in threes in a hoop, people had to run up and fire wetted paper pellets at a picture of an alien space ship - with mixed success. T
hen there was Parachute Planets, where teams tried to eject everybody else's ball off the parachute apart from their own. Then there was Rocket Fuel, involving transporting water and adding food colourings. Finally there was Air Supply, where everybody had a balloon tied to their ankle according to their team colour and then they had to try and burst the other colours balloons. This game, and some of the more physical games on Sunday were run with Beavers/Cubs, Scouts and parents separately to ensure the smaller ones didn't get flattened!
After a well earned break, each team then went round five 
different bases. These were Death Star Parking (try and fly a frisbee through a slot in a death star), lob the alien, transporting rocket fuel (cup of water) around an obstacle course, pick up stars and Solar System (trying to throw boules to hit planets - bowls and billies according to size, and placed in relation to their distance apart).After a superb dinner, the beavers and cubs watched Star Wars whilst the scouts played games. After they had gone to bed the parents tackled a big quiz about space movies.
Sunday started misty again, but the sun was o
ut by the time the games started. The Space Hopper relay had some memorable moments, Top Trumps was based on Star Wars, and a large Star Wars poster had been cut in to 20 pieces, and had to be put back together, once each team had 
identified there own pieces. Finally there was Quidditch, including the snitch. After sorting out the tents, the final event was a Food Relay, where each team member in turn has to come up an eat an item of food without using their hands.Then it was lunch, back up and go hope. Hopefully the 12 beavers, 14 cubs, 23 scouts, 29 parents and 9 leaders all enjoyed themselves.