Pouring concrete is all in the preparation, so after a successful weekend of digging, cutting, sawing, nailing and general heavy lifting we had a mould ready to pour the concrete into.

We arrived at our storage site bright and early on Saturday morning to find a 40tonne Mixamate lorry already there and waiting for us!

We were pretty disappointed when the driver of the lorry told us that he wouldn’t be able to drive over the kerb and into the yard – and that we would have to wheelbarrow the concrete all the way by hand. However, lots of Explorers were soon arriving with wheelbarrows and it suddenly seemed much more manageable.

At bang on 8am the lorry started pumping out concrete and while mums and dads made bacon rolls and offered “helpful advice” to everyone that was wheelbarrowing concrete from the lorry to the mould, a team of Explorers was busy wading making sure it was going to set completely flat and level between the sides we had made the weekend before.

We were half a cubic meter out in our estimation of how much concrete we’d need but fortunately the lorry driver had a bit spare on the truck that he mixed up for us. As a former Scout himself he was very impressed with the hard work the teenagers had put in and was happy to stay the extra time to help out some Explorers!

The last thing to do was to put in some handprints and write the date. We were all done by midday and left the concrete to cure, hoping that we wouldn’t find a set of fox prints across it the next morning!