This year's St George's Day Parade and Service was held in the grounds of Rushen Abbey in gloriouis sunshine in the presence of His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor, Vice Admiral Sir Paul Haddacks. Unfortunately we didn't have a great turnout and no Beavers - this is the only parade we attend all year and it would be nice if the whole Group were committed enough to turnout. Nevertheless welll done to Joseph C, Charlie H, Louisa B, Sam W, Henry F, Harry H, and Daniel H.

Photos courtesey of Sarah Henthorn and Mark Atherton.

After at least three years of camping at Crossags, this year CharlieH, MickW, LouisaB, JoeC, GeorgeH and FrankieL, joined by Kaa and Skippy headed out to Glen Lough campsite. Friday night was spent on an animal hunt along the old Douglas-Peel railway track and a barbeque supper at Marown AFC. After returning to camp we witnessed the earliest ever recorded getting to sleep which occured at 11:30!! However we weren't quite so pleased the following morning when they got up at 05:00... On Saturday all the Island Cubs were split up into groups and toured 5 bases: backwood cooking and fire-lighting, camp mat making and kite making, blindfold trail, first aid incident base and tracking. Skippy succeeded in rolling 840 sheets of newspaper and Kaa covered 84 Cubs in flour so success all round... They then went to sleep a lot earlier on Saturday night after a camp fire. Sunday's weather was awful but did not put off the wet water games or the battle ships game. All in all the best Island Camp for a few years!

On Saturday 24 June 2006, 1st Laxey Scout Group took a stand at the annual Laxey Fair to raise funds for camping and play equipment. A number of activities were devised in order to generate interest and raise the profile of “scouting” in the village. A “Lucky Dip” theme was prevalent as children were drawn to our stand reassured by the fact that they would come away with something. Naturally, a number of Beavers and Cubs were circulating to assist parents with “forking out” extra pocket money. One particular Cub, CharlieH, demonstrated a disposition for sales and managed to attract some £20 of donations to the stand. Well done Charlie!!

The attractions for younger members of the local community were clear. For the damp and stoic parents there was the opportunity to win enough “booze” to sink well, even a hardened drinker! A number of parents had been kind enough to donate a substantial quantity of wine etc to fill our sturdy wheelbarrow which by the end of the fair did a passable impression of a boat! The Group would like to say a very big thank you to all those parents who contributed something to the barrow (we ended up with 2 vodkas, 1whisky, 18 wines, 1 box of wine, 14 beers and 1 brandy).

Although rain and a number of other Island activities reduced footfall a little on the day, we were delighted to have raised £298.65 which was marvellous. Our thanks go to all those who helped us including Mr Steve Rodan MHK (who drew the winning ticket for a lucky Laxey resident), Nicola Bowker and family, Nick Kinrade, Bridget Coatalan and family, Andrew Smith (organiser of Laxey Fair), and all the Cubs and Beavers who helped out on the day.

Cubs attending: DominicW, CharlieH, HarryH, MickW, JosephC, Alastair, SamW, JoeC, FrankieL. Beavers attending: MaxB.

This year's Competition was held at Castle Rushen High School (after a last minute change) on the afternoon before the World Cup Final so expectations were high. We entered 2 teams: A Team - CharlieH, TomW, SamW, FrankieL, and MickW. B Team - WilliamB, JosephC, JosephH, HarryH, HenryF, FreddieB. Our B Team missed out on qualifying from the group stages by just 1 point, finishing 3rd in the Group with 4 points, and the A Team unfortunately lost on penalties in the quater finals, having won their group with 5 points. Many thanks to Barry Williams for helping out on the day. We were very pleased with the performance of our teams and especially our goal scorers FreddieB and SamW and our penalty-saving keeper Charlie. Results and photos are below:

On Friday night having arrived on site, we set up base and pitched the 8 tents. This took a little longer than expected and so we were a little late setting of for our night hike. We planned to walk from half way up the Ballamodha Straight along the Bayr ny Skeddan long distance footpath and circle back round to the campsite. This started well until we got to a innocent looking field with a few cows and calfes. However as you have no doubt heard we were then 'charged by a boy-eating bull six-times the size of Akela’ - somehow we managed to survive and took a longer detour. It was now getting quite dark and we continued down the roads until we came to a footpath leading to the back of the campsite - this however turned out to be totally overgrown and very boggy. After Kaa ran ahead of the Pack and arrived back with legs cut to pieces and several cubs loosing boots in the bog we decided to return to camp via car. We arrived back at 23:55 and had supper before bed shortly before 1am!

After the previous night's adventure we decided to transport the Cubs from Silverdale to Ballasalla instead of making them walk. We then got the steam train to Port Erin beach. The weather was beautiful and the Cubs made damns, paddled and played whilst the leaders sun bathed. Unfortunately we did not manage to loose any among the 1000s of other children at the Port Erin Fun Day. We then returned to the site via Silverdale, for a play and an ice cream, and the Cubs attempted to damn the river, thus helping build the assault course. After meatballs for supper we introduced them to orienteering in the glen while our resident pyromaniac Chil started the campfire. We then arrived back to sit around the raging furnace before a considerably earlier trip to bed (at least for the Cubs that is).

First up on Sunday morning was Akela at 04:05, after at the most a 100 minute sleep (I thought 3:30 hours was bad enough!). By the time the Cubs were woken at 7, the assault course had been designed, made and tested so this was first on the agenda after breakfast and inspection. This was a timed course around the campsite, under tarpaulins, over walls and through the river, as well as a series of puzzles. After this the Cubs put on their last clean & dry outfit and we struck camp and had lunch. In the afternoon we headed to Silverdale before coming back to learn the results of the termly six competition and the promotions. Yellow Six won the competition by 5 points from Red Six and so it turned out that the loss of points on Saturday morning for all the boys not cleaning their teath cost Red the golden woggles! King Orry have now had 2 camps at Dhoon and 2 at Mullin-y-Carty so next year's venue will be completely different.