6:00pm Dinner Fellship PJ+RN Speaker Intro. WS

Eyemouth Scouts visit Norway

The Rotary Club of Duns was delighted to welcome Douglas Allan and Michael Wilson, leaders of the Eyemouth Scout Troop, and two of the Scouts, Archie Bogle and Rhys White, to its meeting last Thursday. They had come to thank Rotary for the part they had played in funding the Eyemouth Scouts attendance at the International Scout Jamboree in Stavanger, Norway, last summer. Rotarians were able to see from the slide and music show of the Jamboree that all the 21 Eyemouth Scouts and their four adult leaders had had a tremendous time in Stavanger, ample reward for the two and a half years of planning and fund-raising that had gone into the trip. They had travelled by all sorts of transport, had seen lots of sights, met Scouts from 25 different countries and learnt the joys of cooking for a large group of people. The Jamboree camp had been organised into four sub-camps with about 3,000 Scouts in each, overall a total of 9,000 Norwegian Scouts and 3,000 from around the world.

Among the highlights were a climb to the top of Pulpit Rock, a sheer drop of over 2,000 feet to the fjord below, and visits to Bergen and Oslo. There was high praise for Norway, but alarm at the very high cost of living there.

In the discussion after Douglas's presentation, Rotarians learnt that the main problem facing the Scout movement today is a shortage of adult leaders. The Eyemouth Troop has a waiting list of 40 boys and girls wanting to join, but can't find enough people willing to take on the role of leader. So here's a golden opportunity for people who want to get involved in a long-established movement that does a lot of good around the world as well as having a lot of good, clean fun. It's a pity that most of Douglas's Rotarian audience are just a wee bit too old for that sort of thing.