80th Anniversary Celebration

To celebrate 80 years of scouting in Weston Green, we invited everyone – young people from all sections, their parents and carers, leaders, ex-leaders and well-wishers – to a party at our home base at All Saints church.  The car park was transformed into an outdoor bistro with an impressive selection of free drinks, and nearly endless supplies of pizza provided by our on-site Dough Shack van.  The area around the church became an off-beat scout-themed funfair, where you could test your strength tossing a haybale with a pitchfork, check your aim firing wet sponges at human targets, see if you could light a fire using a flint and steel, and reward your success with toasted marshmallows.

The evening was the first real opportunity for everyone to meet face to face since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.  We plan to follow this with other events, including our popular family camps, although we can’t guarantee that all events will come with free pizza!

It was also a chance to remind everyone that the scout group relies entirely on volunteers to keep running, and to advertise some of the opportunities that are open for parents and other adults who can spare a few hours of their valuable time.  We received many offers of help, which our leaders and trustees will follow up in the coming days and weeks.

The group started 80 years ago in wartime, and had to contend with air raids disrupting its early meetings.  We haven’t had to cope with that again, but our current leaders did a great job of keeping scouting going through a global pandemic.  So happy birthday to 1st Weston Green Scouts, and here’s to the next 80 years!