Don District Scouts -

Beckford Peg

It's Saturday morning at 07-10 and I'm off and ready and heading to Rivelin to start the Beckford Peg. This is the District's premier competition for scouts and this year we had reverted back to an incident hike, starting from Rails Road Car Park on Rivelin Valley Road. 16 teams were due to take up the challenge with all but 3 troops represented, the 32nd were on camp and we know the problems at the 76th but 205th where were you yet again? The first team left at 08-00 hours and had a time limit of 7 hours to complete the hike and the 10 checkpoints on route and to answer my devious questions that I had set. The checkpoints in keeping with Jubilee year had a rough royal theme, these being Grouse Shooting (actually using marshmallow guns at targets!), fishing, flag break without a flag pole, lawn darts, dress the queen (a version of pin the tail on the donkey), making afternoon tea (cup of tea and cucumber sandwich), a quiz, croquet, royal family tree quiz and then afternoon tea again but this time blindfolded and having to cut, put jam and cream on to a scone! With a finishing time set of 17-30 7 hours after the last team left, I then spent the day plotting the scouts' whereabouts and thinking we are never going to all have finished by 18-00 when parents will be picking them up. There seemed to be a recurring theme in the afternoon and txt messages kept beeping saying the 231st are lost. It at times felt we were rounding up the ponies on Dartmoor rather than keeping check of teams on an incident hike. We eventually tracked them down and had to pull them at Check point 8 and walk them back to the finish. Unfortunately the 33rd only managed to get to checkpoint 9 in the time allotted. All other teams made it back but some were outside the 7 hours and unfortunately suffered the loss of points for being late. The results were collated and verified and announced to the scouts with the top 3 teams being the 93rd A, 93rd B, and the 82nd, with only a point between the top two teams. And at one minute to 6 I was able to release them back to their parents meaning we finished bang on collection time. Don't ask me how!! Thanks to all the Leaders and Young Leaders, for manning the check pints and then for finding the 231st!! Finally well done to all that took part and the results are attached. See you all next time.