On Wednesday 9th May Winlaton Beavers went for a walk in the Woods starting at the Thornley Woodlands Centre. 
They had great fun exploring, taking texture rubbings, finding woodland creatures carved into trees and logs, finding different leaves and also collecting as many fir cones as they could in a minute. It was also an opportunity to invest one of our new Beaver Scouts.

Blaydon Scout District were again proud to support our neighbours in Northumberland Scout County at at Newcastle Gang Show, which was held from 1oth – 15th of April. Although the six shows were on at the People’s Theatre in Heaton during Easter week, there have been a considerable number of people from Blaydon Scout District involved in the show for many months.
Explorer Scouts Lucy, Jess and Stef were members of the cast and earned either their Performing Arts Activity Badge as new members of the cast or their Activity Plus Badge (Performing …

On Saturday 17th March, 1st Winlaton Scout Troop (plus two Explorer Scouts from the Phoenix Explorer Scout Unit) visited the high ropes course at Aerial Extreme just outside Bedale in North Yorkshire.
Despite a few showers, most of the fantastic high ropes course was completed without too many incidents – although one Scout Leader did have a scramble to get back on the course after a slip and the other Leader managed to get whacked on the head by an attachment device!
There were a 25 challenging sections which gradually got higher …

Tuesday 14th February was both Shrove Tuesday and also Valentine’s Day. What better way for the 1st Winlaton Scout to celebrate than to do something they really love – heading down to the woods to do some cooking!
Since it was half term and Scout numbers were limited we decided than rather than cook pancakes in the headquarters, we’d head off to the local woods. Shortly before the meeting the leaders made the pancake batter and loaded rucksacks with Trangia stoves, gas bottles, sachets of sugar, bottles of lemon juice, cooking oil, kitchen …

Scouts, Leaders and Young Leaders from 1st Winlaton Scout Troop have just returned from a great 2012 Winter Camp at West Hall Scout Camp near South Shields.
16 Scouts, 1 Young Leader and 7 Leaders left 1st Winlaton HQ at 6.30pm on Friday evening (3rd February) and we’re at the site and unloading the minibus and cars by 7.15pm. After being assigned bunk rooms the weekend’s activities then started with a ‘Family Fortunes’ competition to get everyone together.
After an evening meal the Scouts then enjoyed some free-time. On Winter Camp this …

On Saturday the 14th January, nine Scouts and two Leaders from 1st Winlaton Scout Troop made the trip south to the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield.
The Troop had our own special tour guide who was an ex coal miner from the famous Grimethorpe colliery. We were take 150m down in the lift to the bottom of the shaft, followed by a tour of the mine. This included seeing some of the equipment used down the pit and experiencing real darkness when we turned off all of our head lamps.
Although this was …