This evening we finally managed to get back up to our local campsite and went grass sledging and did archery. We had a 2 hour meeting instead of our usual 90 minutes and split the girls into two groups as there could only be 12 doing archery at one time. I took the first group through to get the grass sledges and our first challenge was pulling them up to the top of the hill! They are stored in a shed at the bottom of the slope and are quite heavy! We took 6 sledges and eventually made it to the top. We did a quick safety brief on how to slow down, turn, stop, and where to walk to pull them back up to the top and then we set the first girls off. The rule is that no more than 2 people can be on the slope at a time which is pretty good because it spaces out the girls eventually as it takes them a while to pull it back up again. We only had one major crash where one girl couldn't work out how to steer and crashed into the strip of long grass that runs up each side of the run and flipped out of her sledge. She claimed her wrist was hurting but she could move all her fingers and then part way up the hill swapped hands so she was pulling the sledge with that hand so I was happy that nothing major was wrong with it! I spent most of my time at the top giving girls push starts, chatting to the ones who were waiting at the top, and ensuring everyone had an even number of turns. We then swapped groups and I stayed at the grass sledging area. We got the first group to leave the sledges at the bottom at the end of their last turn and the second group pulled them up to the top (we thought it was only fair as the first group had to pull them up before their first turn too!). I gave another safety brief to the second group and then set them off as with the first group. The second group was a slightly older group (we had let them decide what group to be in) and so they needed less help to organise themselves and so I chatted to the other leaders about some plans for next term and pack holiday.
As we neared the end of the secod hour, we got the girls to wait at the bottom with their sledge after their last turn. It worked out quite nicely that everyone had had 6 turns and we had one sledge left at the top so we loaded it up with all the water bottles that had been left at the top and got one of the girls to pull it down for us! We then watched the last few girls have their turn at archery and then we did the Brownie circle and gave presents to a Brownie, a Young Leader, and an Adult Leader who are all leaving us before sending all the girls home.
This was a nice relaxed evening and didn't require much work from a leaders perspective, except turning up and using the equipment! And the girls thoroughly enjoyed being outside and having fun. If you have a campsite or activity centre nearby that you can use, definitely look into it for an evening in September when it is still warm and dry enough to make use of it!
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This is our last meeting until September, regular posts will resume on September 10th, although look out for an exciting announcement coming in the next few weeks!
