As some of you may be aware, this year is the Senior Section Centenary. Across the country, lots of events aimed at the Senior Section are being organised. One of these was our region's recent trip to London for a wide game. We weren't given any details, except that it would involve being in a team of 4 and travelling across London completing a mission. As we have 4 Senior Section members helping at our unit, we decided to sign up for it.
We got to the train station at 8:45, ready to get on the train. We managed to get a table seat and pulled out or maps to get planning our route and making a list of all modes of transport we could think of. When we got to the next station, we bumped into several other Senior Section members heading to the same event, who had the same idea as us - plan the route on the way there.
We arrived at London Paddington and, when the clock hit 11am, we were given the signal - let the competition begin! Almost immediately we spotted a teen on a skateboard so we accosted him and took a photo - he seemed a bit confused... We ran around in the station for a while, getting as many obscure pictures as possible - including scissor lifts, piggy backs, and our own feet!
We then headed out into the streets of London. We took a fair few of the obvious photos - London cabs, buses, vans, and cars. A few of our photos took a little more work to get though - notably, the police van who asked the criminals in the back if they were OK with the photo, despite us not being able to see them; the people in the back of a cab who posed too; and the woman in the elephant onsie who was protesting about elephants not being used in circuses..!
We also went to the transport museum to see if we could get in. The answer was, yes, under 15s could go in for free, so the other 3 went to do some speed photos, while I waited in the shop and took a few photos of my own - a child's pram, a wheelbarrow (bizarrely full of plushie moles), and a ride-on suitcase! The others did the whole museum in 15 minutes flat - a pretty impressive feat!
We paused for lunch in a MacDonalds and then our quest continued. We focused on the landmarks more in the second half of the day - heading first for Trafalgar Square. There was a pretty large festival type thing going on so we stood on a wall to get proof we had been near, if not quite in, to it. We then rounded a corner and found an ambulance and proceeded to try and persuade the driver to let us through the barrier to take a photo with it. He said he couldn't do that but he was happy to pass a wheelchair through the barrier so we took a photo of that too!
We then headed down towards Downing Street to see if we could take a photo outside number 10. Unfortunately the answer was no as we hadn't pre-booked but we took a photo of the gate and a police officer and hoped that would count! We also went to Baden Powell House, Horse Guards Parade, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace, before finally arriving at the Girlguiding HQ.
We sat down to work out how many point we had got (which took a long time) and came to 468! All the other teams were comparing obscure photos and looking round the shop before the winner was announced - it was us!
We were given a goodie bag which contained lots of sweets, a phone case and a Senior Section Spectacular badge for each of us. Everyone who attended was also given a LaSER London Challenge badge as we had completed it by taking part.
It was a great day out, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to do something similar! There isn't much time to stop and see much, but you get a pretty good overview of London.
A selection of our photos:
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