It’s Friday the 25th and we’re once again enjoying the delights of getting up the country to Scotland. This
time we’re heading for Culzean Scout Camp in beautiful Ayrshire for a couple of days of Kohte training – and to see how well they’re doing with the Jurte. After a few delays on the A1 and a cool drive across the top of the Galloway forest on a single track road built for rallying (I think the car survived!) we arrived and found the site. It’s right on the edge of the Culzean estate which is a National Trust for Scotland site and the campsite looks out across a sloping field to the Isle of Arran in the distance. Absolutely beautiful.
Due to vehicle problems the 44th weren’t turning up til Saturday so we had the entire campsite to ourselves – one little Kohte pitched with a view of the sea but unfortunately no sunset as it was a bit overcast. We sat and ate some supper at 11pm in the twilight, which is about as dark as it gets this far North and went sleep lulled by birdsong (dumb birds!)
Morning found us basking in sunshine as the 44th turned up with a van full of equipment that needed sorting out and checking. After unloading Inga supervised while a Kohte was put up by the scouts and then she made them take it down again so they could refine their technique. It wasn’t that it was badly put up, it’s just she’s a perfectionist with a firm belief everyone else should be too!
A third Kohte was put up by Laura, one of the scout leaders, and she did really well considering it was her first time and then Andrew threw up the fourth just to prove to us that he could and to give himself somewhere to sleep that night. Kohtes erected we turned our attention to the Jurte construction which wasn’t as good as it should have been – the 44th really need to concentrate on getting their guy ropes in line with their seams – but once they’d been made to redo the ropes it stood very nicely indeed. We were going to attach a high Kohte (this is basically a Kohte raised up on eight telescopic aside poles to a height of 1.65m with side panels attached) but the spikes on the telescopic poles weren’t long enough to accommodate all the material and we didn’t have any bolts with us to clamp all the bits together so instead everyone attempted to create a checkered Jurte from various panels. Now I’ll be the first to admit that it didn’t hang as well as it could do. OK, it sagged quite badly but for a first attempt it did go up and stay up. What let it down was not getting the roof tension right at the very start. 
This led to the sides not being stretched out far enough. This was actually quite a good thing as the scouts learnt quite alot about how not to erect a Jurte from this exercise and will hopefully not make the same mistake again – the lesson was learnt – get the roof right!
We were having trout dishes for supper, all cooked over an open fire, but all decided to precede that with a quick trip down to the beach to do some foraging and have a look around. We could see the sea from the campsite but it turned out to be a good 15 minutes walk away and the the tide was out! We explored the rocks and rock pools but the only things we could find were limpets (which aren’t the best tasting shellfish in the world) and the occasional dead crab, so we gave up foraging and played at skipping stones instead 
After a quick detour to the castle (and crashing a wedding reception in progress) we headed back up to the campsite and cooked dinner. A Mediterranean stew of trout,tomatoes and garlic with olives and spaghetti went down well, as did the trout and vegetable parcels cooked in foil over the embers but it has to be said that our attempt to smoke some strips of trout was a complete failure. They smoked fine but tasted disgusting! That will be one recipe we don’t try over an open fire again! We ended the night in true scout fashion by sitting around the open fire and enjoying the views across the bay as the sun set.
Sunday saw us up and about reasonably early (but not as early as the Guides in their plastic tents – we do love sleeping under black canvas!) and sorting out the panels owned by the 44th prior to packing away. The folding was a tad haphazard to start with but after being made to refold them several times they all ended up as nice compact squares which are easy to pack away and take up minimal amount of room. Inga calls it learning by doing – if necessary, you do it alot too! 
We got away Sunday lunchtime as we had quite a drive back and were heading for Germany the day after but it had been a good weekend in a fantastic part of Scotland and we’re making plans to head back with some German Scouts maybe early next year to hike around the area. Meanwhile, the 44th Glasgow are out and about quite frequently in their black German Scout tents. Feel free to drop by and say hello if you see them on a campsite. For more pictures of the stunning beach, check out Gina’s blog and her thoughts on Culzean Castle.
camp at a festival they wanted to attend, and secondly, to have a tent that would make a great family camping tent for them and their two daughters. After much contemplation of what was available they decided that they didn’t want a bell tent but would rather have a traditional ridge tent design. The 
They were also very pleasantly surprised at how small the entire tent packed down to and how little space it would take up in the car – very important when you’ve got two young children to take along too! The Rhone, which doesn’t cost alot more than a bell tent, gives a generous 7.5 square metres of floor space but due to its good side height and excellent centre height, all of this is easily usable. Ridge tents aren’t very fashionable at the moment but the Rhone clearly shows how cool a good A-frame ridge tent can be. A solid reliable tent that will last Nick, Sophie and the girls for years to come and give them some great family camping experiences.
It is, and I have to say I’d forgotten this, a very long way down to this part of Cornwall. Lizard Point is the southern most point of mainland England and if there is one word I could use to sum it up it would have to be Windy. I’d like to use beautiful or stunning but unfortunately the wind definitely on on the day I was down there. This is, despite the wind, a stunning beautiful area of coastline and heathland and the actual reserves and probably ignored by most people who just whizz down to Lizard Point and then explore nowhere else. I would recommend anyone to spend some time walking the coastal path and exploring the reserves. It’s just unfortunate that I didn’t have the time to do so myself. The offices for Lizard Point aren’t at Lizard Point but instead tucked away behind a wind farm (I rest my case regarding how windy it is!) and the first training session took place in a field behind the offices which was quite exposed. Trying to keep 50 square metres of canvas from blowing away while you get the first four side poles in was quite a challenge and it took 5 of us to secure the tent. We could have put it up against a he
dge (just like the pic above) but it was important for everyone to know what effect the wind can have when trying to put the Jurte up. Once up, however, it sat there without a problem, not caring about being battered by an Easterly breeze (apparently things from the East, like the wind, are cold and nasty – hang on, I came from the East, actually pretty much everything is in the East compared to Cornwall. Hmmmm). For the second training session – we tend to put the tent up and show everything and then make the recipients do it again to fix the process in their heads – we relocated to a bit of field between two hedges and lo and behold the wind vanished. The roof went up alot easier this time and a great deal faster despite the fact that the ground in the field, despite being lovely and green, was full of stone underneath! After an afternoon of practice with the tent it was time for me to depart and wend my weary way home. Claire – the outreach officer for Lizard Point NNR – is planning to hold another putting up session with the volunteers next week but I’m pretty confident she’ll be fine. I’m looking forwards to seeing it in action over the coming year.
