The selection weekend was held at Dilston Scout Campsite, near Hexham and was held over 2 days. I was on the first day.

Once we arrived, we were asked to sign in and were assigned name badges with different team names on each – mine was Eagles.

There were several activities planned for us throughout the day, the first being: assemble at tent. Easy enough, right? Never were we so wrong… The tents were old and made of a heavy fabric, which made them very difficult to put up, especially in the damp weather. After a whole hour of struggling, we managed to put the tent ‘up’, but there were still holes in the side where it wasn’t secured to the ground.

The next activity was plank walking (not the ship kind) where the whole team had to stand on 2 planks of wood with rope attached, and attempt to walk. This involved a lot of team work, but we managed to it.

Another activity we did was sheep and shepherd – where the sheep was blindfolded and the shepherd had only a whistle to communicate – from this, the shepherd had to guide the sheep through various obstacles. So for example, 2 long blasts on the whistle meant to go forward. A short single blast on the whistle meant to turn 90° to the left.

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