A Bugs Life Rally - Autumn 2001

After having a bad day at school, things didn`t get much better on the way
 down to Bath, via Leeds where I picked up a few of the L.U.U.S.A.G.
 contingent. Traffic and the temporary loss of my bearings caused us to
 finally arrive at the school where we were based at 11:45pm. The campfire
 was the first stop after registering and it quickly became clear that quite
 a lot of people were worried about my state of mind. This is due to the fact
 that I was standing around in my T-shirt while everyone around me was
 wearing their fleeces, blankets, gloves and hats!

 Saturday morning started off with a treasure hunt around Bath where the aim
 was to find 12 places and use a different pose for a photo. I joined a
 rather large group of 12 with members from Leeds, Leicester and Southampton.
 It was quite memorable as you can probably see from some of the photos!
 After lunch, I decided to take it easy and ended up in the pub playing
 skittles, watching England beat Australia and helping out on the quiz
 machine. All in all a very good and enjoyable afternoon. Back off to the
 school we travelled for tea and the SSAGO reps meeting which thankfully only
 lasted 50 minutes! The barn dance was held in the school`s sports hall which
 thankfully for most people present was heated. It was very enjoyable and
 even though my modern attempt on dressing up as Doc wasn`t a great success,
 it was worthwhile. The campfire followed a similar pattern to the previous
 night, lots of talking and a few classic campfire songs. There was also the
 added bonus of being able to watch A Bugs Life in a nice comfy chair in the
 "video room" before going to sleep again around 3:00am.

 Sunday morning was mainly taken up by the silly games, which although wasn`t
 classic, did prove to be entertaining. At the closing ceremony we were able
 to look at the pictures we took the previous day on the treasure hunt along
 with the best of the rest. We had lunch, packed away and then got ready for
 the long journey back via Birmingham for tea, Sheffield and Leeds.

Written by Nicholas Murphy (the only S.H.A.G.S. member present!)

This time around S.H.A.G.S. were able to send two current members and one ex-member to the Gangster Rally held at Blackwell Court near Birmingham. As usual I went over to pick up a couple of the L.U.U.S.A.G. members who were short of transport but still managed to get to Birmingham earlier than most other clubs. After putting my tent up I went to join those already around the campfire and started chatting to friends old and new. Around 1am I got a call from the organisers asking whether Abi (the other current member at the rally) was turning up. I replied that she was already present and then got the response that would she mind signing in and paying up! After finding her chatting away nicely to a few old friends she decided that she couldn`t be bothered signing in (the real reason was that she didn`t want to leave the warm confines of the campfire to trudge to the lodge and back again in sub-zero conditions!) and left it to the morning. The rest of the night was, as usual, chatting and drinking away to the early hours of the morning before the rush to get to bed (since it was 7 degrees below freezing outside!).

After awakening and getting the usual duties of the morning out of the way, it was on to the team games (I decided to join "The Usual Suspects" team based on the quality of it compared with some of the other choices available. Abi ended up in the "Bugsy" team). With those out of the way and lunch taken 170 or so people descended onto the Barnt Green station platform to catch the train into Birmingham. After dropping those who wanted to go to Cadbury`s World and on the pub crawl off en route, the rest of us ended up in the heart of Birmingham to go our separate ways. The group I was with went off to a science museum which had some interesting exhibits from bygone eras. Then it was back to the train station to see how many passengers you could fit onto a 3-carriaged train in rush hour (the train company didn`t put on the extra 3 carriages asked for!)! The SSAGO reps meeting finished very quickly and so tea passed without a hitch. Then came the main attraction - the fancy dress barn dance! It was a laugh although there were a couple of injuries sustained and I didn`t managed to come close in the fancy dress competition. To round off what was another enjoyable day at a rally we all huddled around the campfire as the temperature dropped below freezing again!

Sunday morning went by as per usual with the Scout and Guides Own followed by the SSAGO AGM (which must be the quickest on record) where we needed our first ever interpreter for a candidate since the new publicity officer had lost his voice during the night! The outgoing and incoming committees were congratulated for their good work and hopefully good work respectively, we had a team talking about the new Scout programme and how the changes will affect SSAGO and then it was onto the silly games. The closing ceremony was held over lunch and then it was up to us to pack away and get back to Hull via Leeds again (unless your name was Abi who left before lunch to hightail it directly back to Hull with Paul the ex-member speed freak!). For those who might ask did Abi sign in and pay up, the answer is YES although it was 34 hours later than everyone else who paid!

Written by Nicholas Murphy (the S.H.A.G.S. rep who thankfully wasn`t the only member present this time!)
 

The Campsite!