After months of shall we or shall we not go to camp on Saturday 19th August 1st Sittingbourne BB & GB finally left Sittingbourne for the Isle of Wight at 08.30am. Our first target was to get to Portsmouth for the 12.30 ferry, M25, Hindhead on the A3 and all. We left in sunshine & arrived at Portsmouth in the rain, 90 minutes early. 14 young people on the minibus, a van with all the luggage, car with all the small bits and another car with Callum and his family in with nowhere to go as you cannot go onto the ferry car park until there is 1 hour to sailing. Thank goodness for Jade’s mum’s biscuits. Once we got onto IOW the rain had stopped and it was just 30 minutes to the campsite and we had arrived. We unloaded the van, settled into the tents, changed out of our camp tee shirts, then relaxed looking down the hill, over the Solent back towards the mainland. It was great. Fish and chips soon followed. After tea we walked down to the beach. The tempo of the camp was set. Sunday we went to the Methodist church in Bembridge and were made very welcome followed by a great Sunday lunch. Then off to the beach for a game of rounders with the whole of the beach watching us have great fun.

Monday we visited Osbourne House, holiday home of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Tuesday the swimming pool, at least you know the boys had had one wash then. Wednesday we had to do the BB trip to Black gang Chine, it’s a bit of a tradition and Thursday we visited Carisbrooke castle. The rest of the time was spent on site. It is great to see the young people getting on with each other so well. No home sickness, no bickering, ok they got a bit noisy at times, but so were the adults. We had so many games for the young people to do I cannot even start to list them. They all joined in. One of the things that stands out for me was inspection in the morning. They thought it was having the things in the right place but the idea of inspection to me was that it was the time of the day when they found everything, the tent got aired and the floor was clear of clothes.

Devotions were in the evening and our theme was heroes from the Bible and that Jesus is our greatest hero. You were in our prayers whilst we were on the IOW and we thank you for praying for us while we were there. We certainly has good weather, I am told we had a thunder storm Wednesday night, but I think that was a GB thing, I slept through it anyway.

On the last night we had our camp concert. Everybody joined in. Even Callum chirped in with grunts here and there. It was the best night of the camp, Amerillo round the flagpole and all.

Saturday was packing up day, loads to do, no time to do it in and all still tired from 7 nights of little sleep. But finally did, drove down to Ryde for chips on the beach, followed by a game of pitch and putt, before we ended up on the ferry back to Portsmouth and then the 2 hour drive back to Sittingbourne. Camp was finally over. I have to say that it was one of the best camps that I have been on as an officer. This was down to the young people getting on so well together, the staff all working for each other and I as the C.O. say thank you to everybody for that. I also believe that God was at the centre of the camp and without him, none of the above would have happened.

Pete Fallows