On Monday afternoon, just as party-goers & revellers at Lord De Ramsey's estate were winding down a hard week-end's partying complete with fireworks, glitter filled "fly by's"
paint-fights, & dancing to more bands than you could count on forty pairs of hands, & SO many other activities to keep the visiting "gardeners" blooming busy, members of 1st Ramsey were stepping up a gear to salvage kit that was no longer wanted by some of the 30,000 friendly visitors who dropped in to party it up in Abbots ripton.
We spent around 8 hours grabbing pop up tents. gazebo's , chairs, sleeping bags, sleeping mats & more tents packing them away & storing them back @1stRamsey HQ to be sorted, cleaned & put to use by you lot!
....& it was a heck of a lot of FUN!!!! ..we met some lovely people & had a cracking time, even though we were supposed to be there to work!
We hope that @SecretGardenHQ will have us back in 2015, when we will be more organised to grab, save & recycle even more kit which can be put to good use amongst the local scouting community!
Special thanks to "Si" one of the organisers who despite clearly not having slept for days (perhaps weeks) due to busy preparation of this amazing yearly local event (which draws in people from all over the uk) for meeting up with us & escorting us speedily onto the site where we were able to sort through some useful kit for our packs use on future camps & fund-raising events.
We haven't completely sorted through our booty just yet, but we will have saved a few car bootloads of kit from landfill, helped tidy up a bit by taking away somebody else's "perfectly useful" rubbish ...re-using & recycling.
Including,
4 man pop up tents x2
2 man pop up tents x15
Regular pitch tent x1
Sleeping bags x17
Sleeping mats x9
Gazebo's
Rucksack
Water carriers
Camping chairs
Brand new wellingtons (un-used)
Lantern.
Cold boxes
Comedy wigs (sealed in packets) ..perfect for a tombola!
If we'd had bigger vehicles, this list would have been bigger too!
There was so much more but we ran out of time as dark got the better of us, however, like my dad said, "local music events are a golden opportunity for organisations such as scouting & guiding to obtain kit with just a little bit of work, one that local scouting administration is missing out on, it helps us & it helps the festival site, & it saves good stuff from being buried in landfill, if someone from county or Gilwell is reading this help us help ourselves & the environment".
The Guides & Rangers who now share our HQ are extremely jealous (we'll share our good fortune & our kit) ..& are inspired to join us next year cherry-picking & re-purposing useable items, this only happened because we took the initiative, & made contact with the London based organisers.
We intend to make this happen again next year on a larger scale operated by ourselves with support from 1st Ramsey adults to replenish our kit (we had none) & dispersed amongst other local packs.
There are SO many festivals, lets make hay while the sun shines!
Every county needs to look at the opportunities a music festival brings to scouting!
I am definitely going to the secret garden party when I am a bit older.