Seven St Edmunds Cubs took part in a ½ day hike from Teddington High Street, through Bushey Park and then to Hampton Court Maze.

During their regular Friday night meeting, the Cubs examined bus and train maps and timetables to see what the best route would take them to Teddington and back from Hampton Court as well as learning about the Countryside Code.

We took a bus from near our HQ to Teddington. After getting off at Teddington we learnt all about the types of safe road crossings - signal junctions, zebra crossings, pelican crossings and traffic islands. This was a credit to our road safety badge!

We got to Bushey Park and we learned some local history about the park and how to recognise different types of trees.

We then learnt some map reading skills, including setting a map to north and 6 digit reference numbers. But instead of just walking through the park, we made a “model” of our Solar System - our leader Peter put a 8 inch paper disc on the fence of the park to represent the sun and we then paced out where the planets were - to scale! We soon found that the sun was rapidly shrinking and getting smaller and smaller and was a tiny speck by the time we reached the outer planets! And the scale-sized planets were TINY! Peter finished by asking how long it would take to get the nearest star if we travelled a million miles an hour - an unbelievable 2,400 years! We had earned several credits for the Astronomy badge!

After a lunch break we left the park and crossed over to Hampton Court to try the maze - with a difference. The girls and boys split into two teams. In the maze, the girls went only left and the boys only right! Both groups soon started bumping into each other! Unfortunately, the girls decided the best exit was the emergency short cut and the boys didn’t find the official exit, but exited via the entrance - it was declared a draw, but with much protesting!

Unfortunately, rain had set in, so we cut short more map reading out in the field and took the 111 bus back to our HQ, also missing out a diversion to walk back via Crane Park. When back at HQ, we all had games, hot chocolate and some also completed the requirements to earn the map reading badge.

Do you grown-ups remember the Ladybird Book “Cub Scouts”, first published in 1970? Cub Scout Skills Instructor Peter does! It had a cover picture of 2 cubs examining another Ladybird book on British Trees. So in honour of this iconic series of books, here is a picture of Thomas a Katie recreating the picture for 2008!  In some ways thing’s don’t change that much in Scouting - but of course today’s picture features a girl scout!