The effect of a global pandemic on guides and scouts- activity centre closed.

Downe Scout activity centre located in Orpington, Greater London is being sold due to the global coronavirus pandemic. The camp which opened in 1929 and was used by countless numbers of school children, guides and scouts has finally met its end as the pandemic drained any monetary resources it had left to keep going.

I was intrigued by this story as I myself have visited the centre before. Two years ago my school offered a school trip to the centre, a sleep-away camp in which we stayed in tents overnight and participated in activities during the day. It was an incredibly enjoyable experience which my friends and I still reminisce over. Due to my connection with the centre, I was sad to hear of the closing,  but it made me think what someone who had a deeper connection with the centre would think.

A member of staff at my school (Newstead Wood School for Girls) Dr Wanostrocht who helped organise the school’s trips and also is a guide leader herself was happy to offer her thoughts on the matter. Newstead Wood school has been using the centre for more than 20 years now for DofE expeditions, survival weekends and a Year 8 summer camping trip, thousand of Newstead students have benefited from it. The convenience of the camp made it an obvious choice; it’s a short drive from the school site itself, has lots of activities and all the basic necessities for one of the trips.

Speaking to Dr Wanostrocht I realised how special it really was not just because of the land or memories made but because of the opportunity to see children develop in all different ways all thanks to this one special opportunity provided by the centre. when asked what her favourite thing about visits to the centre was, she expressed how much she valued ‘watching children grow even in the space of two or three days’. She explained how the trip ‘taught them that they can conquer their fears’ the experience gained from this could be applied to all different parts of life for the young people, not just the physical outdoors skills but also the personal ones that are gained.

She went on to explain the sense of community and team spirit that the trip created, the teachers and students were brought together creating a different kind of bond and dynamic. Students interacting with the teachers and new peers who they’d never spoken to before, developing the confidence and basic people skills which are so valuable.

I was of course curious to know what she thought of the closing, I was correct in anticipation of her answer. She iterated how truly sad she felt about it explaining that ‘the pandemic has meant that all guiding and scouting has stopped’, not only school trips and DofE expeditions run by the school. She went on to say how the generation of children could be affected by this pandemic in a negative way because of the lack of scouting and guiding opportunities provided by sites like Downe during this time, her daughter, Emma,  agreed saying that they ‘don’t have the same language skills because they don’t talk to adults’ and that the ‘social interaction with peers’ is changing for the worse.

The final question was what the school and guides groups would do now that the centre was being sold. She said that the school, if they continued to run the trip, would have to use a different campsite, one further away and less convenient, raising the cost of the trip. As for the guide groups well, at the moment they are running the sessions over zoom and will continue to do so until safe to meet in person.

Overall, the closing of the camp has taken away so many children’s opportunities to gain experience, friendships, and important skills in a convenient and enjoyable way. This is just one more way the pandemic is negatively affecting the current generation of young people.