On Sunday the 19th of August, Charleville Scouts were celebrating having won Silver at Scouting Irelands Phoenix Challenge. The Phoenix Challenge consisted of 72 teams from the Island of Ireland representing the different scout counties, under taking tasks and challenges and being tested on practically all their actions. From the early hours of Thursday morning to Sunday evening the 7 scouts were tested in a variety of skills.
After Thursday’s Olympic themed opening ceremony, scouts rushed to their allocated sub camp battling against tricky weather conditions, to set up their home for the next four days using campcraft and pioneering skills to provide themselves a sleeping area, dining area, storage area and kitchen area with all meals cooked on open fire.
On Friday the team took a bus to Dublin city centre and took part in numerous challenges scattered from the city centre down to Bray Head in Co. Wicklow through the use of Dublin’s public transport network. After their dinner, again cooked on open fire on site, the team took part in a Trade Fair, mingling with the 71 other teams who were buying and selling bits of food or challenging other teams to play their games, followed by a disco where the lads made every effort to impress the ladies.
The team spent Saturday on site, taking part in challenges in the mountain, river and forest around the campsite. They were tested in some more traditional scouting skills. Each day the team had a time slot to record their days activities using photographs they took and describing their actions in pre allocated laptop computers.
Sunday morning was more fun and games in the form of a mini Olympic Games, followed by the team packing away their site and heading off to the closing ceremony where 72 teams faced an anxious wait to see their faith. After speeches which seemed to last forever the results were called out, “site number 5 – Silver” and the Charleville scouts and their Leader team could be heard and seen celebrating for some time. A great result and well deserved after the effort and hard work by a dedicated team of Scouts. We left the hill with a few things on our minds, exhaustion, imm-ense joy and eagerness to get back to the Phoenix challenge 2013 and see what we can do second time around!