Jul 12

Back online at Starbucks in Inverness on the 16th, but I have a few posts to catch up on, so I'm going back to July 12. I'm just going to post the text for now and add the pictures later if I get a chance.

The Scouts were pretty tired yesterday, so they managed to get to bed and straignt to sleep at about 9:30. A few woke up early but most managed to sleep in until about 7 am. A few ambitious Scouts went out for a run at 6:30 am. After breakfast we tidied up the hall a bit for the cub meeting which we knew was going to be in the evening.

Next we went to York Minster, which is an incredible building, especially considering the construction of it started in the 13^th century and it took about 250 years to complete.The first activity of the day was a bus tour of York. The whole group went to the top of the double decker bus with most of the Scouts braving the open rear half of the bus in the rain. It was just a drizzle, but quite chilly. It was an really good tour and there were a lot of photos taken of the city, the city wall, and many of the historical attractions.

We went for a walk over to the Barley Hall to learn more about the history of York. This is one of the buildings that has been restored by the York Archaeological Trust. It is celebratiing it's 650^th birthday this month.

After the Barley Hall we all split up into small groups and walked around town to look at the shops and buy souvenirs and eat our lunch. It was still raining and there were very few covered areas to sit down and eat our packed lunches. The Scouts bought a variety of items such as pens and pencils, leg warmers, huge blue sunglasses, medieval toys, books, Iron Brew and candy.

We all met up again at 2:45 down at the Yorvik Viking Centre http://www.jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk/. It was very interesting and very educational. It had a “ride” where 6 people in each car are toured through a re-creation of an early Viking village. There were lots of bones and other artifacts to view that were all dug up in York, some on the actual site of the center.

After Yorvik we walked down to the Black Swan pub for dinner. The pub is supposed to be haunted but I don't think the Scouts seemed at all concerned. The meals were all huge portions. Especially the fish and chips, which was far more than any of them could eat.

We were a little late getting out of the pub so we walked a little hurriedly back to the hall along the city wall. We did stop briefly to get a group shot taken by a local.

When we got back to the hall the cubs were already there waiting for us. We dropped our day packs and went with the cubs down to the field by the river to play some games. The York cubs and our Scouts had a great time playing “Cops and Robbers” and “Rounders”. We got back to the hall about 8:00 pm and said goodbye to the cubs as their parents came to pick them all up.

Most of the York cub leaders and most of our leaders went out to the pub to get to know each other a little better. They were a great bunch of guys. Back at the hall the Scouts were relaxing, doing each others hair, playing games on their iPods. The last of the leaders made it back to the hall by 11:30 and the Scouts were all either asleep or at least quiet and trying to get to sleep.