FrightEX24

Starting on Saturday 27th October, we saw over 200 Explorers and their leaders descend on Bentley Copse for the first ever Surrey Explorer Scouts – FrightEX24! 24 hours of chilled out time with Surrey Explorers enjoying the activities and having lots fun with their mates.

FrightEX 24, so named as it had a Halloween theme, with pretty much everybody dressed up in costume, was organised by the County Explorers Team to give an opportunity for Explorers to meet up with other units from across the County as well as a chance to showcase what the Explorer Section has to offer to the wider Scouting community.

Martin David – ACC Explorers and organiser of the event explained that the whole concept behind the event was to keep it simple and give the Explorers the chance to do as much or as little as they wanted. The 14 – 18 age span that Explorers covers can be a very busy and challenging period for young people and so the concept of this event was that they could spend time with friends, with minimal adult supervision and just enjoy being teenagers without too much routine or people telling them what to do.

That all said – there was a great range of activities from the Bentley favourites of climbing, shooting and zip wire plus the very popular Bushcraft zone where amongst other skills they learnt how to skin and cook game birds. There were less structured activities including a very popular cinema, numerous chill out zones, camp fires and of course food !

The event was indeed 24 hours long – with no bed time enforced – the noise was just turned down a bit late at night and Spelthorne Explorers managed to keep going for the full 25 hours (yes 25 actually as the clocks went back) – so well done to them.

As with all these events a massive thank you has to go out the team behind it from the County Explorer Team who organised the event, the Jamboree Unit who fed us all, the volunteers from across Surrey Scouts who pitched in to help and of course a seriously big thank you to Katy, Carl and the rest of the team at Bentley Copse who provided a fantastic venue.