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Three times a year, in November, February and June, members of the Student Scout and Guide Organisation (SSAGO) come together from throughout the UK for a large themed camp known as a Rally. This November, Rally was hosted by our own university’s Student Scout and Guide Society, Cardiff SSAGS. Our theme was Carnival - it seemed topical to hold a Carnival themed Rally in November...

The camp was held at Crai Activity Centre, north of Cardiff, and had 240 participants, the furthest of whom came all the way from Falkirk in northern Scotland.

The first night of Rally was particularly memorable for a number of reasons, the first being that it snowed! While snow can be exciting, it can be a bit of a nightmare when camping. Build up of snow on one of our tents caused it to partially collapse with the weight. This was easily rectified, thankfully, by brushing the snow off and tightening the guylines. Another memorable event on that first night was the discovery of a lost dog out in the cold. The dog was brought inside where we could dry it and warm it up before trying to find its owner or somewhere that could look after it, as a campsite full of students is not the best place for an excitable puppy.

Saturday was filled with activities. After breakfast there was the opening ceremony to officially open the camp, including the raising of the SSAGO flag. Then everyone split up into their activity groups for the day. There were a wide range of activities on offer including a visit to Cardiff Castle, the Doctor Who Experience, a walk up Sugar Loaf, a trip to the international pool, a trip to Big Pit, and two different pub crawls.

In the evening, once everyone had returned to site, the themed activities began. There were two marquees set up, one containing a carnival cutout for people to take photos with, and another containing different carnival games such as a coconut shy and a tin can alley.

Every Rally has a campfire and a dance on the Saturday evening. Most Rallys go for a ceilidh- a traditional barn dance, and Cardiff was no exception; the ceilidh was the highlight of the weekend for many, and was great fun. It was run by the amazing Uisge ContraBand, a South Wales based ceilidh band. They were great fun, and seemed to enjoy playing in a freezing cold barn whilst it sleeted outside. What good sports! It was said that the campfire was warmer than the barn: an unfortunately not unlikely story.

During the ceilidh there was a fancy dress competition. There were some great costumes: Cardiff SSAGS (obviously) as hook-a-ducks, Southampton SSAGO as a moving carousel, the national exec as a ferris wheel, and a myriad of individual costumes, including a lion tamer complete with ring of fire, a parrot and a tiger.

One of our members was dressed up as a fisherman, complete with a fishing rod he used to try and catch the hooks of the ducks with. The winner of the individual fancy dress was the lion tamer, and the winner of the group fancy dress was Southampton SSAGO with their particularly impressive moving carousel.

Throughout the weekend, there were some scuffles; this was the fabled mascot competition. Each SSAGO club has a mascot, and during Rally mascots are fair game. All mascots are reunited with their clubs at the closing ceremony, but the weekend is an exercise in retaining your grip on a stuffed toy throughout what is essentially a rugby tackle. If your club loses their mascot then there is a consequence: this time it was a wheelbarrow race across the field. Due to the number of people traversing the field and the weather throughout the weekend, this led to a lot of very muddy people!

Overall it was a great weekend with our national friends in Scouting and Guiding. Everyone enjoyed themselves greatly despite the cold.

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@ScoutsCanada - you had a really good marketing campaign with ‘millions of friends without social media’, and now you’ve got this. Why can’t we think of these sorts of ideas?!

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Some food for thought.

(again, thanks SC!)

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One amazing collection of Scout ___________.

Scarves? Neckies? Neckers? Neckerchiefs? Woggles? Something else?

(What do you think folks?)

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Photographic highlights from Fresher’s Week.

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A look back at Fresher’s Week

Now that we are most of the way through the first week of term, it seems like a good time to look back over Fresher’s Week. In some ways it is one of the most important weeks of the whole year for our society, as it is when we bring in new members and get then to sign their souls away to us, in return for fun activities and toy fish! (This year we did actually give two lucky freshers their own knitted fish.)

Everything started early on Monday morning with the exec bundling into taxis to get themselves to the foreign land of the Cardiff Met Cyncoed Campus. The society has always invited members from Cardiff Met to join, but this year we went one further and actually got ourselves a stall at their Fresher’s Fayre. Despite it getting off to a rough start, with the earlier talks for freshers overrunning and causing the fayre to start late, the day went well. Many marshmallows were handed out and we managed to collect a number of email addresses from interested people.

Tuesday was the day of our more important Fresher’s Fayre, the one at our home university, Cardiff University. Due to the huge number of societies and limited space in the Union, the Fresher’s Fayres were split over two days for the societies and we were on the second day. Once again we managed to give away lots of marshmallows, (Though we also managed to knock quite a few onto the floor. Luckily we had bought excess.) got another list of emails, and even had a few people paying membership there on the day. We even got a visit from a recent grad who happened to be in town!

SSAGS lunch is held every Wednesday in the Union. The Wednesday of Fresher’s Week was our first lunch social of the year. Unfortunately we struggled to find a table in our usual place due to all the freshers everywhere and the AU fair going on in the Union, but we made do with a circle of chairs. It was lovely to see so many old faces as well as a few new.

On Thursday we had a day off to relax.

We held a Fresher’s Breakfast on Friday at Café 37. It was a very well attended event with many new faces. It was especially exciting to see some new people from Cardiff Met and the University of South Wales as, although we try to encourage them to join, we rarely get anyone actually joining (partially because of the high fees from the CUSU to join the Guild of Societies as an associate member). We even may have recruited one of the attendees, who was there with his brother, for the Reading SSAGO! There were so many people there we had to be spread between two tables. We even had an impromptu society trip to Cotswolds afterwards as the exec needed to order new dry bags to store the tents in.

Saturday was another rest day.

The final event of Fresher’s Week was held on Sunday. It was a BBQ held at the Blackweir tavern.  Once again we had a good turnout (possibly helped by the fact that the food was free for new members!), although one newbie was almost scared away by breadfish. The weather was lovely and sunny. We held the raffle for two new paid members to win the newest members of the knitted Fred family, Freda and Freddie. All in all it was a great event.

Now that term is upon us we are back down to our normal two socials per week; the weekly Wednesday lunch, and the evening social. This week’s evening social is a Treasure Hunt around Cardiff happening tomorrow evening. It is part of the Give it a Go scheme meaning anyone can come along and take part whether they are part of the society or not. It should be great fun, and will give people a chance to explore places they may not yet know.

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I went out for Sunday lunch with SSAGS at the student union pub, The Taf, and was given this glass. How could I resist!

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The start of October didn't just bring the start of lectures, but also the first SSAGS social of the year. 

So what was this social I hear you ask? (We'll just pretend you asked yeah?) Well, the first social was a picture trail. We were divided up into three teams  and given a quiz. Our task was to go around and find the location of the picture and then answer the question that went with said picture. The winners of this quiz were Daddy's little treasures -  a team made up of 2 freshers and 3 existing members. Fred unfortunately wasn't on the winning team, but his good friend Fredlet was, so well done to Fredlet.

We're all studying (read sleeping) now and look forward to the next amazing social.

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Apologies for the lack of blogging to anyone that follows our mad adventures.

Fresher's week was deemed a success by Fred, he was super happy to meet all the new Fresher's that came too either one or both of our fresher events and hopes to see them all again at future socials.

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Then comes the neckerchief or scarf which is folded into a triangle with the point at the back of the neck. Every Troop has its own scarf colour, and since the honour of your Troop is bound up in the scarf, you must be very careful to keep it clean and tidy. It is fastened at the throat by a knot, or a slide or “woggle”, which is some form of ring made of cord, metal, or bone, or anything you like. The scarf protects your neck from sunburn and serves many purposes, such as for a bandage or as an emergency rope.

Lord Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, Yarn #3 (via peregrinator1)

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Whilst SSAGS hasn't been up to no good... Um, I mean adventures... this summer, the fish have been off doing their own thing whilst relaxing to get ready for another year of fun-filled mischief!

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So it's been about a month since Nerd Rally and so it's probably time you guys heard about it. I totally meant to post something sooner and I could come up with an epic reason as to why I did not write anything soon but it really just boils down to the fact I'm lazy. There, I said it.

So, Nerd Rally was SSAGO Summer Rally 2014 and was hosted by the previous exec and blimey did they do a good job! For once the sun was shining and I don't think I've ever been in such a hot tent in all my years of camping! Most of SSAGS went off on their own for the day, a few went along to the West End LIVE festival and had a fabulous time despite getting sun burn/mild heat stroke and others just met up with friends. Sunday saw mario cart and pancakes for breakfast - who wouldn't enjoy that right?

The food was amaze and what kind of camp would it have been without the staple food that is a Jam & Tuna Mayo sandwich (This is not the sandwich choice that most went with - isn't it wrong for a goldfish to eat tuna?)

It was good to see familiar faces and everyone is looking forward to the next rally which comes by in November. Loughborough Puzzle Rally!

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SSAGS finished off another fabulous year with a Big Summer Blow Out (sort of like the one in Frozen but with less snow) which included twister and A LOT of food. In true Scouting/Guiding fashion, the first task was to light the fire on which we would cook our food and whilst it looked a little hit and miss at first, the fire was eventually lit. Food available included corn on the cob, burgers, sausages and banana wrapped in bacon. Yeah, I'm not kidding about that last one but what would SSAGS be without a little weird right?

The rain did not stop us making traditional back-wards cook delights such as smores and brownie in an orange. We're uni student in Wales, what's a little rain?

Little sleep was to be had but the bacon at breakfast definitely cheered us up and we cleared the hall up from our evening of fabulousness. (That's totally a word. Scouts/Guides honour.)

With the SSAGS summer holiday and Nerd Rally to come, you can bet that SSAGS will not have a quiet holiday so be prepared for more adventure!

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The penultimate social of the year was Engineering challenges. Our social sec thought up a few challenges for us to have a go at, the choices were: build a house out of playing cards, build a bridge that would cover a 30cm gap and hold weight, build a boat or the tallest free-standing structure. Some of us had a good go at these challenges with a little help from Fredlet and a couple of us nap a quick nap after a tiring day at the international pool.

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As one of the more chilled out socials that we did at Ssags during exam time was a nice film evening. Those who could spare a few hours away from exams joined Fred in watching Monsters University.

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So another week, another social here at Ssags (yes, even during exam time we don't stop, we just get more chilled out) and this week our social sec organised a fab craft evening. There was glass paint, colouring, card making and knitting (just to mention a few. Whilst Fred couldn't be there, Fredlet and his fishy friend WiniFred were there enjoying the activities.