After a wet and windy weekend in Snowdonia we returned on Monday night to the mammoth, and unenviable, task of drying out all of the patrol tents, jurte and mess tent. Luckily we were able to book the Sheridan Hall at Scout Park and we hung all of the wet canvases on chairs to dry overnight.

The next afternoon saw us folding everything up and tetris-packing it back into the shed, which, including a small break to play “the game with no rules”, took the whole afternoon and most of the evening. The following afternoon, we turned our attentions to the Summer Term and our DofE expeditions.

Over the years our Vango Spectre 300s have seen a lot of use, providing us with shelter on expeditions to Snowdonia, Scotland, the Rivers Severn and Wye, and all over England, and yesterday we gave all 14 of them a thorough overhaul. We scraped pegs clean, stitched up rips, replaced bent and broken pole sections, and now our fleet of tents is good to go for another 5 years.

Next we pulled out the Trangias and gave them a scrub. We also decided to invest in some of the gas conversion kits to make them more efficient (and less smelly!) to use.

A big well done to all the Explorers who came to both of the work days and got all our equipment sorted for the summer!

– Written by Marlon