The members who were staying over started to arrive on Friday evening. Rooms were sorted out and a fire started to warm the lodge up, and then some pizza was made for supper. Some interesting team games, challenges, pub quiz and stories (as well as a takeaway around the fire) followed until the early hours of Saturday morning.

Getting the can as far as you can - without your feet crossing the line

There was a cooked breakfast at about 9am, followed by a variety of different activities on offer. Some of the members went to assist with the scenery build of Blyth Valley Gangshow, which takes place in February. Other members left after breakfast to go and take part coasteering, the equipment for which was hired from “H20 activities” at Durham Scout County.

Having arrived at the beach in South Shields the ‘coasterers’ changing into their wetsuits, there was a quick safety talk explaining what would happen, and what all the equipment was used for. After a warm up and running into the sea to get used to the water, it was time to start. To begin with there were a few small rocks to either climb over or walk around in the water.

Running into the sea - coasteering

After that it started getting more difficult, with rocks that had to be climbed over and caves that had to be swum through. At one point there was an opportunity to swim out into the sea to another large rock. After one more cave to swim through – that rapidly filled up with water with each wave – it was another climb round the cliff and a scramble back up to finish. For a few of the people that went it was a completely new, but massively enjoyable experience.

Going fishing

After a nice lunch of corned beef hash or minced beef pie, the members who had not been coasteering left to go and try fishing for the first time. For everyone who had stayed behind, there was some site services work that the warden wanted doing. A number of the Network members set to moving wooden pallets from the lower car park to the wood pile next to the campfire circle and digging out some foundations for part of a building.

There was then a quick trip to Morrisons to get some ingredients for that evening’s dinner, after which there was a film on the new projector screen in the lodge, watched sitting around the fire. During this, the members who had gone out to the Blyth Valley scenery build arrived back. After the film had ended, there was a bit of social time before the gorgeous lasagne.

After the evening meal, there was a variety of different things going on, including more chats around the fire, a very competitive game of snap, and a poker tournament for actual money (50 p per player). Everyone was tired by this point so most were in bed by 2am.

There was a “less early” start on Sunday morning. After breakfast, there was still some site service to be done, including moving the rest of the pallets from the bottom car park to the woodpile, and digging a trench at the top of the camping field to improve drainage in the event of poor weather. After lunch people started to say their goodbyes and leave. Overall, a fab weekend!!

Special thanks have to go to a few people: to Dennis Dutton (Site Warden) for allowing us to stay at the site; to Mrs Sue and James Hughes for the catering; to James Heron for leading coasteering; and finally to Mr Cousins for leading the fishing.

If this sounds good to you, and you are interested in joining Durham County Network, then either check out the Facebook group to learn more about what we get up to or get in touch with me (Vice Chair) by commenting on this article.