by Ian | Mar 22, 2013 | JOGLE
Saturday 9th of May saw the launch of Hampshire’s new Scout Ambassador, James Ketchell, with a ride around various Scout huts in Hampshire meeting fellow Scouts and undertaking a few challenges en route. We thought this would be a great opportunity for the JOGLE team to meet up, support James and gain some valuable experience of group riding.
We met up on the Friday evening for a productive team meeting and stayed the night at Ferny Crofts, 0630hrs on Saturday was the less than welcome alarm call and by 0800hrs we’d sorted our kit out, filled our faces with porridge and were ready to depart along with James, the Ferny Crofts Gold Team and the other Scouts who were supporting him. Our route took us from Ferny Crofts across the Hythe Ferry through Southampton and on to Testwood Lake, here we left James to one of his challenges and headed out to Lyndhurst and back where we were able to practice our group riding and change overs. It took us a little while to get ourselves organised but by the end of the loop we were beginning to get the hang of it.
We rejoined James and the rest of the riders and headed for Romsey Scout Hut for a very welcome lunch, from there we headed to Chandlers Ford, then on to Whiteley and eventually ended up at Lyons Copse where the ride finished with tea and cakes! We covered around 60 miles over the course of the day, met some great people and ate some lovely food. As our first training ride together it was very successful and helped to iron out some potential issues, we’re now looking forward to our next group session in the Lake District, bring on the hills!
More photos from the day can be found on James’ Flikr page here
by Ian | Mar 20, 2013 | JOGLE
And… We made it into the Romsey Advertiser…. I spot, Alan, Craig, Chris, Smudge and the side of Toms head.
by Ian | Feb 1, 2013 | Trip Report
This year for our January Training Weekend saw us visit Dartmoor for the first time in a while for our ML focused weekend. The rain had been coming down hard all week, so expectation weren’t high for a sunny weekend in Devon.
23 of us travelled down (13 Nepal Expedition Team Members, 3 Ferny Crofts Bursars & 7 HSX Members) to be based out of the Tavistock Scout Hut which like all Scout huts seemed to come out of the same mould (picture a scout hut, it looked like that).
Saturday morning after an epic breakfast and a Mountain Rescue lecturette from Richard Batstone the Nepal team headed out for an overnighter starting from Two Bridges very close to Dartmoor Prison, which looks very oppressive from the outside. They were heading North for a few kilometres before camping out overnight.
The Bursars went on some Micro Navigation Skills Training with Dave, Rich Brimelow & Chris Laws. The rest of us headed up to Okehampton camp to take in the scenic North Moor.
Sunday we swapped over and met the Nepal team from their very wet overnight camp, luckily only one tent got flooded throughout the night, unluckily it was the leaders tent!!! Bad Luck chaps…
All in all a good weekend, thanks to Steve Knaggs for organising..
by Ian | Nov 9, 2012 | Event Report, News, Team HSX, Video
Our very own Lucky CFO Alan Braithwaite went out into the New Forest yesterday with two other lucky readers of Trail Running Magazine, the Editor & a photographer to do an article for next autumns edition of Trail Running Magazine.
We can ensure you it will be worth a read.
by Ian | May 1, 2012 | Training, Trip Report
Day One
The Bursars, Russ and Slattergator travelled up early Thursday in the Russ bus we left just before 5am! The early start gave us an enjoyable afternoon walking up Skiddaw and then we found a little man with ice creams on the way down. Later in the day we met up with the other Torneo that contained the Nepal team plus Hannah, Besty and Chris Laws.
That evening due to a slight hiccup in the accommodation we had fish and chips for dinner, we then got to Great Tower where due to the hiccup we were to spend the night on the floor in the ecology room (luckily they had new mattresses for us to sleep on). Before we splet though Ollie (Event Director) and the other drivers did spend some time planning the next day whilst the Nepal team and Bursars explored the site – for many of us our first trip Great Tower.
Besty, Hannah and Chris Laws made a good choice by opting to sleep out overnight, rather than sleeping in a room with 20 other people. Everyone else arrived late that night – we did all switch to HSX time (1hr forward to make the most of the daylight hours).
Day Two
Breakfast was at 7:30 – two brioche (different shapes) and a cereal bar as there was no where to cook. We then split down into three groups – Multi pitch, Walking & Nepal team. The multi pitch team went to the Langdale Valley and climbed up near Stickle Tarn, for some it was our first multi pitch, so we mainly concentrating on gear placements. The walking group met the three over nighters (apparently Chris still snores) and did a 12km walk up Hellvelyn. For theNepalteam this was their first group activity to Bowfell.
That night we moved into Windermere lodge where after dinner in preparation for his ML Assessment Steve Knaggs gave a talk on flora and fauna. Educating us on everything from symbiotic relationships to Parmelia Saxatilis.
Day Three
The Nepal team plus a few others went single pitch climbing, for some their first experience of real rock. Three Bursars plus Dave went for some more multi pitch – because of Steve’s talk we were able to identify the moss we were trying to climb over. Steve and Mike had an epic day’s scrambling. Alan, Besty, Chris Laws and Rich Batstone did a section of the Bob Graham Round. This left a few of the others to summit Scafell Pike. That evening we had roast dinner – it was good.
In the evening we socialised with other network members – getting to bed at an unreasonable hour.
Day Four
TheNepalteam went for another walk to the old man of Coniston. Stu demonstrated how well waterproof trousers foam if you forget to rinse them and it rains. He must be congratulated on actually wearing them as opposed to getting soaked with your trousers nice and dry in your bag.
Ian, Jeremy and Rich Brimelow went mountain biking.
The climbing group did the piece of classic rock “Little Chamonix”. If the wind blows and your gear falls out it suggests more work is needed on placements.
Joe did a talk about rope work for his ML and how important the over hand knot is, brilliant laugh practicing different types of abseils inside.
Day Five
The journey home – started unreasonably early, 6am in fact.
By Rosemary..
