Explorer Scouts are young people, usually aged between 14 and 18 years old. They make up the fourth Section of the Scouting family. There are many types of Explorer Scout Units, some may be linked to your local Scout Group, others may be based around different activities.

Not all Units meet each week, because you will often be out and about at weekends or in the holidays doing activities. There will be times when you will be busy doing other things such as exams, and being an Explorer Scout will have to fit around these.

As an Explorer Scout, you will get the chance to work with other Explorer Scouts in your District, not just your Unit. By doing this, you will get the chance to do many more actvities, not just the ones your Unit organises.

For more information, please click on this link: Explorers

What have some of the Suffolk Explorers been upto?

Recently Deben district held their annual Phoenix camp in Landguard fort. Being a link camp deben district explorers and the elder deben district scouts atteneded it so that the scouts could see what explorers do, the whole purpose of the camp. Arriving on Friday night everyone was excited to see each other again after the last district event and we all quickly unloaded all of our stuff in the gun rooms we were staying in.

We all went and claimed our cooking rooms as well as discovered a face in one of the windows on the upper floors, in the light we realised it was just a model but it was rather creepy in the dark. On the first night we all went off on an audio tour but many groups digressed into just wandering around the fort in the dark exploring tunnels and jumping out at each other seeing who could produce the best scream.

On the Saturday morning we were split up into teams. We were all competing against each other for Phoenix eggs. Otherwise known as Ping Pong balls. Teams got them for completing tasks and then got extra eggs for doing the tasks better than everyone else. We did archery, where we had to shoot ships in order to get the eggs. We also did air rifle shooting as well as various crystal maze challenges that the Network set up. One such challenge was that there were four pieces of rope, four pulleys in the corner of the room and the task of having to get a candle from one side of the room to the other lighting the candle on the other side which was a lot harder than it actually sounds.

On Saturday night we all went to the beach and had a camp fire which was surprisingly cold. We walked back from the camp fire to a rave in the fort itself. This was the highlight of the weekend as nothing can beat having a rave in an interesting place! We danced along to classic songs like Ghostbusters as the leaders were convinced the tunnels and rooms were all haunted. However as nobody saw any ghosts on the night of Friday 13th we all concluded that the place wasn'thaunted. It was sad to have to pack up on the Sunday but we did so in good time and finished the camp, for the first time in scouting history, early! We played around in the tunnels for a while until investing all the new Explorers. Just as it began to rain we all left for home, an obvious sign the camp was just not meant to end.

by Becky Kent - Raedwald Explorer Unit