Bracknell Scouts, The BT Giant Sleepover 2008

At 10.50am today (19th June) confirmed participants in this year’s event broke the Guinness World Record of 33,093 – well done everyone!

Our Giant Sleepover was in the usual trend having 105 Beavers, Cubs and Scouts from the 9th Bracknell and 2nd Easthampstead Scout Groups attending the event, with so many of them we had to stagger their arrival and departure times to save absolute mayhem in the car park at Earleywood campsite.

The Scouts arrived on the Friday evening at around 7pm so that they could get a head start on the assault course that they were putting together, from what we saw and found out on Saturday they had a late night and were a bit behind schedule on Saturday morning.

The Leaders and Explorers / Young Leaders from the other sections along with some very helpful mums and dads ( thank you ) arrived at 10am on Saturday, to put up the very many tents for the Cubs and to set up the rest of what needed doing before the Beavers and then Cubs arrived.

Here are six of the teams, our photographer Karen couldn't catch the other 4 before they dashed off to their first bases.

After getting all their gear in the right places, Beavers to building and Cubs to tents we gathered them all together for the serious stuff like site rules and where everything was, then it was time to split them into their activity teams.

Once gathered they were all off to their bases which included kim's game, water game, assault course, egg throw, hoops, string trail, wellie wanging, frizbee game, crossing the Zambezi and bean bags, some bases today and the rest in the morning.

Next on the program was dinner for around 130 so we were rather glad that the showers that were forecast had not hit us, eating outside was possible but inside would have been a real problem. Thank you to our two cooks. After the washing up time was marching on a bit so it was camp fire time.

The camp fire turned out to be a bit different to say the least, the huge fire ( too big ) was set up during the day with a zip line for lighting purposes, after planting our fire lighter up the tree so that the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts didn't see him made a bit of an episode out of the whole thing. Lets just say that the lighting didn't go quite to plan and after setting the tree alight and putting it out with a few words thrown in as well our fire lighter slid down the tree without being seen by most. Some of the younger ones believed that the tree actually spoke and we went along with that.

While the camp fire was going on a reflective trail was being setup for the Beavers, they had to follow a trail of reflective strips and glow sticks, great fun and they got to use those torches. The Cubs and Scouts had their own wide game at this time as well.

A quick drink for them and BED, how long will it take for them all to go to sleep, we will never know as it did go on a bit.

Morning, Breakfast, washing up, teeth cleaning ( world record no 2 ), Scouts Own ( our version of a service ) in the site Chapel and back to those bases that we didn't do yesterday.

2006. The 9th Bracknell Scout Group first joined in with the Giant Sleepover on the 2006 event, we had 23 Beavers, 30 Cubs, 9 Scouts, 2 Explorers and 17 Leaders / Helpers from the 9th Bracknell Scout Group to break two world records.

2007. We invited the 2nd Easthampstead Scout Group to join us, between us we had 39 Beavers, 2 Brownies, 50 Cubs, 11 Scouts, 3 Explorers and 22 adults / helpers / leaders.

2008. Along with the 2nd Easthampstead Scout Group we had 39 Beavers, 49 Cubs, 17 Scouts and 25 Explorers and adults

The BT Giant Sleepover is an annual event that schools, scouts and guide groups can use a as a fundraiser. And it is an event where kids can have a great and memorable time with their friends before setting off for secondary school.

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9th Bracknell Scout Group, Birch Hill, Bracknell, Royal Berkshire. UK. RG12 7WW