Camp Pictures (and not a feather boa in sight)

Not to mislead any blog reading types out there.. there won't be any pictures of me looking camp. Just pictures taken whilst I was away camping with a group of church youth.
It was a good (exhausting) few days camping on a river bank down in a limestone gorge in the Forest of Dean. The weather held well, except for on Thursday but we were raft building and jumping into the lake off a bridge anyways so it didn't make any difference.

The week started well with my group of 7 plus my Dad and I arriving first and cleaning all of the ground sheets ready for the youth coming. I'm glad to say my boys helped willingly, even putting up the tables and chairs in the food tent. As groups arrived we had games of football, badminton and knife-throwing (less asked about that one the better). In the evening we went out into the woods and played some large scale hide and seek/block. It was good fun and we all seemed to come back with lots of scrapes and no complaints.

The next two days were spent doing a variety of activities; archery, raft building, canoeing and problem solving. Since I was the only one who knew how to walk back to camp from the archery site I got to do double archery and missed the canoeing.. but I didn't mind.

On the second evening we went quite far out and found a great place for wide games. With the river to the south and a limestone cliff to the north it allowed an easily definable to boundary to be made in which we could run riot. Everyone enjoyed clambering through the woods in the dark and falling over. I hid in a cave during the first game and put my camo netting up over the small entrance. One of the young men came close having heard me telling others to be careful and just as he was about to put his hand in I jumped out! Hilarious doesn't even begin to do justice to the look on his face and the height he jumped. During the second game I hid beneath two logs and cover my self with my camo jacket and then piled on the leaves. I had to give myself up because no one could find me even though they were practically standing on me! In the end we headed back to camp all very tired and dirty. I mean I could feel stuff crawling over me.. eugh. It was into the shower block for me.

By the third and last evening they were too tired to play any games and it had gotten late. We had spent the afternoon having a great barbecue (I ate 5 burgers) and running around a small park.

All in all it was good to be the youth and share a variety of experiences. The morning and evening devotionals were great and there were no problems with any of the youth. Especially touching was the way that one member of the group, a lively kid with various special needs was always included and made to feel wanted.

If only all teenagers were like those on camp!