Milton Keynes and Aylesbury Scout Group looks back on a 'great year'

2022: A Great Year for Scouts

What a great year it’s been for Scouts across the whole of Buckinghamshire, including Milton Keynes.

We started the year with an increase of six to 18-year-olds being involved in Scouts.

This was quickly followed by the opening of some Squirrel Dreys (boys and girls aged four and five).

Squirrel Dreys were brought in by scout groups across the UK after a two-year trial in Northern Ireland.

It represented the first time the Scouts had introduced a new age group in 35 years.

We were also able to bring back our endurance events which involved a 10km hike for Cubs (boys and girls aged eight to 10) and a 40km hike for Scouts (boys and girls aged 10 to 14).

Shortly afterwards, we were able to run our orienteering event in Wendover Woods.

With team and individual events, this was a great success with route-finding skills and observation being the key to finishing in excellent times.

A Beaveree (boys and girls aged six to eight) was very successful. This attracted over 800 children. The children had the opportunity to climb, abseil, do some crafts, go on inflatables and in zorbs. Other activities included a string trail, water rockets and face painting.

Two sleepovers at the National Space Centre were held towards the end of the year. Over 500 Beavers attended these. Plenty of time to visit different parts of the Centre, plus planetarium shows and some teamwork all went down very well.

We were able to have a “top awards” event where children, young, people and adults were presented with the top award for the section they are involved with. These included Chief Scout Awards, Duke of Edinburgh Awards and prizes for length of service and quality of support.

We’ve also had many Groups who went camping and had sleepovers. Some of these sleepovers were in Group HQs whereas others were in museums and on boats.

As we look forward to 2023, we already have teams registered for the Endurance events, and two sleepovers at Conkers have been arranged. Fifty-four of our Explorer Scouts (boys and girls aged 14 to 17) and six of our brilliant volunteers are going to the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea. They will meet up with 50,000 Scouts from nearly every country in the world. We also have another 50 Explorer Scouts visiting six countries in Europe as part of their Grand Tour.

One of the key goals we have for this year is to offer more children and young people the experience of Scouting. We have hundreds of children and young people on our joining lists and we are looking for volunteers to help give them experiences they would not get elsewhere.

If you want to know more about becoming a volunteer, or are interested in your son or daughter joining, please visit www.scouts.org.uk/join.

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