Charnwood 2019 - The Mud Edition

>>  Saturday, August 24, 2019

I love Charnwood, it is an international camp in my county backyard that whilst it is a lot of work to organise for it usually feed me a Guiding high enough to limp me through some otherwise saggy years.  And so Charnwood 2019 started, a hot week leading up to it and a scorching 37C on set up day.

Note the grassy path to the right of this picture dear reader, it matters.

Over the course of the first 3 days of camp we had a months worth of rain.  Rain that had us bailing out collapsed tents with bowls.


 Rain that had us paddling in sleeping tents.

 Rain that started to affect the paths.
 Was flooding the main walk ways on our sub-camp.
 And started to turn mud to soup.
Rain that had us evacuating children on more than one night, carrying kit, helping children move to emergency tents and marquees. Some going home late at night, 100s sleeping in rows in event marquees and even car runs to tescos at midnight to buy up all the (dry) sleeping bags they had.

And on no sleep I was digging a mini trench in the pouring rain around my own tent to divert the stream that was about to flow through it.





 My tiny trench was nothing compared to some of the big ones that some of the scout units dug to try to stem the tide.
 We even had 1 dry day but the mud did not even begin to dry up.
 Cars could not get in or out.  Emergency straw and wood chips were laid to create roads so the parents could pick the children up













And the whole camp was called off 3 days early.
 The mud was just too unmanageable.

The areas where the activities were happening were not too bad.  The marquees could hold 1000s of children but ultimately the sub-camps where the sleeping, eating and toileting mostly happened were in a sea of mud and it was becoming increasingly hard to do anything about it.
 and so in rather a flat end they all went home leaving behind the international participants that could not be 'rehomed' to scout huts around and about and were happy to stay












I was there Thursday until the following Friday and exhausted I went home, but straight back again on the Saturday morning to litter pick our sub-camp field.  Many units had left in a hurry and sadly I picked 3 dustbin bags of rubbish but a lot of it was soggy cardboard that had been soaking up mess tent mud.
















 This was the main walk way for about 3000 campers to get to the activity areas.

We really did try to clear up the mud to make it work but it was like Canute.





On the night  after most of the children  and their leaders had left I took my camera on a walk to the toilets.  The toilets were clean and did not smell but the mud was everywhere! 






It's such a shame it ended this way as so much work goes into making this camp absolutely amazing and activities are incredible.  The evening parties, bands, discos.  The daytime climbing walls, inflatables, zorbing, carting, crafts, culture, so much, so many, too many to list. So many volunteers working tirelessly.

I have never been so tired in my entire life, we did the jobs we went to do and dealt with the conditions on top of it.

I'm torn between never wanting to go on another camp ever again and desperately wanting to get on another camp to show that nothing will ever be this hard again!






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