Iceland Trip and Jamboree.
12^th to 30^th July 2012.

I am not a fan of hot weather, so for this summer I decided to try a holiday in a cooler place with something scouty to do as well. So for most of July 2012, I was based at the Reykjavik Camp Site and the Úlfljótsvatn Scout Centre, which is an hour or so inland from Reykjavik. Between the 20^th and 29^th I was at the Scout Centre as part of the IST (International and or Icelandic Service Team) for the Landsmót Skáta 2012 or in English, the Iceland Scout Jamboree 2012.

On the 12^th I flu into Keflavík and took the coach directly to the Camp Site and Youth Hostel. I spent eight nights at the camp site. In that time I walked around a good part of Reykjavik and some of the suburbs. Reykjavik and the suburbs cover about the same area as Guildford and its’ attached villages (i.e. Onslow, Stoughton, Merrow, etc) but has a population of only 100 to 120 thousand. Guildford Borough has about 155 thousand in total. If you stopped walking next to a zebra crossing or a speed hump, the cars would stop to allow you to cross, even if they were the only car in the road. In July the sun sets around 11pm and comes up around 3am, but only just disappears, so there is only dusk from one to the other, and we are talking sit out and read dusk!

The hot water in Reykjavik is from the geothermal power station and started off at over 200^oC. As well ass being on the hot side, it also has a slight sulphur smell to it, as I found out during my first shower. Food shopping was fun as a lot of the packaging does have 4 to 5 languages, but of course just Scandinavian ones! The National Museum has three sites in Reykjavik, one of which houses historic buildings. In one of these was a special centenary display of Scout and Guide uniforms and items. Including in the display were hand written badge requirements and training course information. Another building in the museum is the first hut which was built for the use of people doing leisure activities inland. It was built by a Scout Club and was used for hiking and skiing. It has been outfitted using old equipment and donated scout items.

It turns out I was sharing the camp site with another couple of Jamboree staff, and there was a Dutch Rover Crew (18 -25 year olds) there for a bit, who had just finished a weeks hiking. About ten minutes away was a school being used as a Reykjavik base for participants and staff of the Jamboree, before and after the event. So I did meet one or two of them one day at the bus stop outside the camp site.

The Jamboree site is the Icelandic National Scout Camp Site, which is about an hours drive in-land of Reykjavik. The Jamboree was for 10 to 18 year old Scouts or Guides. There were about 1600 participants and their leaders, somewhere between 50 to 60 International Service Team and about the same again for Icelandic Service Team and Jamboree Organising Team. A total of 18 countries were represented, including South Korea and Mexico. So this was the smallest International Camp I have done.

The set-up day and the main arrivals day were very wet as it rained for about 36 hours and we had up to about gale force winds. A group of Explorers from Bradford had arrived early and one of them had left his holdall open, and then somehow managed to push it half out of the tent. So next day all his clothes were draped on any possible perch in the dinning shelter, and his money was being dried in a large billy on the unused gas ring.

At the opening ceremony most of the Icelandic scouts wore fleece ponchos, even though it was raining. The Iceland President stated that the bad weather was to make all the UK scouts feel at home, as he had heard about our wet summer. He then gave a promise of better weather to come. I spent my time working on the sites climbing wall controlling the descent of people on the abseiling lines. I also did an hour and a half sorting out the harnesses on 10 to 12 year olds, most know how to put the harness on, but seemed to think there belly button is about 4 to 6 inches south of where it is. I was working with Icelanders who mainly went where the most talking was needed, and then a mix of Canadians, and Swedes. The participants did each activity zone on a daily router. On the day the 16 to 18 year olds were due to do our zone Elf and Trolls, the climbing team was divided up, into a stay on site and run one abseil and the automatic climbing system, a walking group and a climbing group. Along with a Ludwig of Sweden who I had been working alongside most days, I ended up having a 1.5km walk with a 200 metre climb in the last 500 metres to get to a 20 metre high rock face, where we then spent most of the day setting up and using 3 climbs and an abseil. I was mainly working with a mix of Canadian Rangers and UK Explorers, who had chosen the climbing option as it sounded easy. They had thought they were going to spend a couple of hours on the site's tower. Turns out they were going on an ice climbing trip the next day. We were all dressed up for sunny but windy weather, but ended up in the lee of a curve in the valley wall, so we cooked. At times on the site we had been wearing water proofs due to the wind blowing around the tower, which was on the highest point on the camp site.

On the Friday the participants had a sub-camp based program as all the staff except for the Jamboree Organisers were given the afternoon off and were taken to a 700 metre deep glacier which went up to 1900 metres. We were driven up to the top in a converted missile transport, which now caries 40 people at a time. We also visited the rift between the Atlantic and America Tectonic Plates.

Us staff also helped run evening games, and activities on the last day which was a fun day with each unit putting on activities as well. This was the Icelandic Scout Centenary Celebration Day. I spent most of my time eating Skittles along with Maria from Sweden, as we were running a base which was a bit out of the way and did not have many points. The participants had activities to earn a hundred points by the end of the afternoon. We took it in turns to go round and see the displays, including a large one from the Search and Rescue Society (SARS). From doing some reading online the Scout Network type units in Iceland seem to be involved with the SARS. On site we had a number of super Jeeps, a snow-cat, ski-dos, ex-RNLI inshore boats, and a hovercraft. Icelandic Scouts like doing camp-fire songs, so much so that there were at least 6 in the Closing Ceremony. In their version of 'If you are happy and you know it' it is knock your head with hollow head sound effects. No one else on the IST had seen this version before, so we thing it was a translation change.

On my travel day, it was wet and misty, so I did not get a good look at the countryside. Back at Heathrow it was sunny but was darker at 20:45 than I had seen in the evening for the last two weeks.

The strangest bit about the camp, was finding out that one of the dozen of so UK units was a group of Explorers from Woking, which is only 10 miles from where I live, and that I had meet one of the leaders before.