Hi Tim, I am writing to thank you for last week's hospitality,
We are a Sea Scout Group established for nearly 80 years now. We have some 70 Scouts and 30 Cub Scouts and work closely alongside Solebay Sea Ranger Crew with some 70 Rangers and Cadets, and of course, an assortment of Leaders and Trainers. We our situated in Leigh on sea in Essex, on the waters edge of the Thames Estuary. We are fortunate enough to own several boats, dinghies, sail and power, so, most of our time is spent messing about in boats.
The Scout Progamme is the same across the board and a few times a year we inland. Being able to rent your field at Plantation Hill has given us just this opportunuty, your help in this has been invaluable. we were given the choice of 3 sites and apparently there is even another that could have been used. We chose the flattest with the easiest access, we had 140 plus campers with the amazing amount of equipment that this number entails! You kindly dug out the foul pits needed, saving us a back breaking task, you sited the most enromous iron spit on the corner of the site and arranged for a couple of stand- pipes to be supplied for our use. Our Scouts and Rangers cook all of their meals over open wood fires, we were given the use of woodland to find enough wood to fuel some 18 open fires for the week as well as the lamb and hog roast held on Wednesday. Your organisation and advice on the running of this roasting was vital to the success of this memorable evening. A new experience for most of us I feel.
Plantation Hill was an excellent base for our day trip to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, again, a new experience for many of our youngsters, and thoroughly enjoyed.
We had just about every sort of weather during the week, heat wave, strong winds, storms, balmy breezes and ending up on Saturday, when we were due to strike camp, with persistant penetrating driving rain, all our equipment and canvas saturated. The hired removal van arrived and got stuck on the slope into the field. In no time at all you arranged for a tractor to pull it onto the field to make loading it a bit easier. Our thanks to you and your staff for the hospitality and assistance given to us all, this all added up to enable us to achieve our aim of giving these youngsters in our care the best of camp experiences.
I am sure we will meet again.
Regards,
Carol Tissington
Group Scout Leader
3rd Chalkwell Bay Group
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