Some of the major events in our calendar are camps. Scouts is all about preparing young people with skills for life, and camping equips young people of all ages with confidence, independence, and how to look after themselves. For many of our younger members, Scout camps are their first nights away from home without their parents and family.

Camping at the frequency and scale that we do requires a vast amount of high-quality equipment. Our aim is to be able to provide all of our 100-plus members with the opportunity to explore the great outdoors and spend time with their fellow Scouts. This is why we are constantly looking to maintain, update, and source suitable equipment.

We recently purchased three new five-man tents allowing us to take more young people camping. We would like to thank our supporter, Four Lanes Trust, for the grant that enabled us to purchase these tents. Our Cubs recently went on camp and got the chance to try out these new tents - they were certainly impressed!

Cooking is a key skill for life, and we aim to equip our young people with some basic skills for their future. Part of the programme we put together for our Scouts revolves around cooking - whether that's pancakes with Beavers or Chinese food with Scouts. To keep everything running smoothly and safely, we need to ensure our equipment is suitable and in working order. After all, the Cubs will not be able to eat their Welsh cakes if they are stuck to the frying pan!

We recently purchased two new nonstick frying pans, along with some new kitchen knives, meaning that our volunteers will be able to teach these skills properly and they young people can enjoy their food. It makes such a huge difference having knives that can easily cut! This also provides our hall hirers with higher-quality catering equipment to meet their needs.

Thank you to Loddon Valley Lions for the grant they provided to purchase this equipment.

One of our five Scout values is Care, caring for both others and our world. With this in mind, our next project was to change our internal lighting to LED and become more sustainable while reducing our outgoings.

We would like to thank our supporters in this project, Tadley Helping Hands with a donation, GU Solutions Basingstoke who provided all the lights at cost, and Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council for helping us to raise the remaining funds towards this project through their Councillor Community Grant Scheme. With their help, and the assistance of our local supporters, we were able to replace all the internal lights in the building with LED technology.

You can find out more about the facilities we have and how to hire our hall for your own events over on the Hall Hire page.

We would like to thank the Loddon Valley Lions for their support in purchasing a new electric cooker for the Scout group. This replaces our existing gas cooker and provides greater flexibility and options to both the young people within our group and those that hire our building for events and meetings. By installing this new electric-only unit, we will reduce our carbon footprint and the use of fossil fuels, as well as reducing our bills.

You can find out more about the facilities we have and how to hire our hall for your own events over on the Hall Hire page.

As Scouts, we recognise the importance of preserving our planet for future generations. One of our five Scout values is Care, caring for both others and our world. Our programme includes many activities to help the environment, such as litter picking and recycling.

Our building can also play a key role in helping us to save the planet, from energy to water. To help prevent water waste, we looked to change the taps in our washrooms from lever taps to push taps. This helps us to stop wasting water by ensuring that the taps are only on when they need to be. It also makes sure we are not wasting hot water which requires energy to heat (often provided by our solar system).

We would like to thank Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council for helping us to raise some funds towards this project through their Councillor Community Grant Scheme. With their help, and the support of our local councillor, we were able to replace all five of our taps.

If you would like to learn more about our supporters, head over to our Finance page.

In December 2021, we unveiled the name of our large hall at the Diamond Scout Centre. The hall is now named after Brian Spray, a volunteer with Tadley Scouts for several decades.

Brian, known to many as Len, served as the group’s Chair for many years and was instrumental in securing the Diamond Scout Centre (our home since 2012). The effort he put into supporting the group ensured that our young people always had the necessary resources to complete their Scouting journey.

At the ceremony, Brian was joined by his son and Scouting friends to celebrate the hall’s naming. Refreshments were served during the ceremony giving everyone an opportunity to catch up.

Once again, we would like to thank Brian for all his hard work and make sure his impact on the group is not forgotten.

To learn more about our building, visit the Hall Hire page.

St. George's Day is an important date in the Scouting calendar. As Scouts, we often take part in an annual celebration to commemorate the day including a parade and the renewal of our Scout Promise. This year, we were unable to meet together for this event, so we organised an online event for our members and those in our district.

Cathy Pynn, an Assistant Priest at St Luke’s in Pamber Heath, joined us to give an opening talk about the story of St. George. Cathy announced an exciting competition for our young people: drawing a picture of St. George and the dragon.

Following this, our lead volunteer Gloria invested Louis as our Deputy Group Scout Leader. This ceremony is held for all members when they join or change position within the Scouts, from Beaver Scouts to adult volunteers with years of experience. The lead volunteer for Beaver Scouts then proceeded to renew the Beaver Scout Promise with all the Beavers attending our event. This was followed by one of our lead volunteers for Cub Scouts and Scouts.

We were privileged to be joined by worldwide adventurer and inspiration speaker James Ketchell. Over the course of forty minutes, James inspired our young people with a talk about the amazing adventures he has undertaken, and the obstacles he had to overcome.

As you may have noticed, we have unveiled our brand new website providing us with a platform to share the amazing work we do within the local community. This will allow us to attract both new members and hall hirers, as well as letting our existing members see the upcoming events and recent news from the group. Read on to learn more about this exciting launch.

A first for Tadley Scouts, our communications team has worked tirelessly over the past few months preparing the infrastructure and content. Launch day has arrived just in time as we look to build up Scouting to be stronger than ever before. As we get back to normal over the coming months, we will share the awesome things our young people and volunteers are doing.

Just one part of our push to increase our online presence, we have also set up new social media accounts to help promote our work. You can find these by going to Twitter or Facebook.

Please do explore our new website and see what you can learn about The Scouts. If you find something out-of-place, we encourage you to use our feedback system by clicking the button on the right of your screen. Finally, if you want to get involved head over to our Join page to get stuck in. If you need us in the meantime, take a look at the Contact us page.

As with the rest of the world, Scouting moved online from March 2020. A key part of our programme, camping, could no longer take place face-to-face. So, following the success of their first virtual camp in July, Cub Scouts from our Spitfire pack took part in a winter camp during the weekend before Christmas. Themed around the North Pole, both the leaders and Cubs donned their Christmas jumpers to join in with several sessions over Zoom.

Starting on the Friday evening, the challenge was to build a suitable place to sleep indoors. Once constructed, the Cubs were each given the opportunity to show off where they would be camping to the rest of the pack. The young people then enjoyed making Christmas trees using paper plates and crafting reindeers from empty toilet rolls.

After a dinner break, the Cubs made themselves hot chocolate and melting snowman biscuits. These consisted of rich tea biscuits covered with icing sugar and marshmallows. Check out the photo below, you could even try making these yourself! The leaders then read bedtime stories whilst the Cubs tucked in to their biscuits and hot chocolate.

The following morning, the young people prepared breakfast at 9am, consisting of pancakes. Whilst eating, the Cubs took it in turns to make up a sentence which then created a story about how the leaders were going to enjoy extraordinary Christmas presents. By the end of the story, one leader was expecting a Ferrari for Christmas!

If you would like to learn more about the Cubs, take a look at our Cubs page.

The 2020 Tadley & Baughurst Scarecrow Trail had a new entry by our Cub Scouts. Spurred on by the amazing scarecrows our Beaver Scouts have created in previous years.

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In line with this year's theme of "We're all going on a bug hunt!", the Beavers busied themselves making frogs of all shapes and sizes ready for their lily pond. The Cubs were left to wonder what a Weevil bug actually was, and then how they could make one thousands of times bigger!

This year's trail raised a whopping £2,897.55! They donated £950 to each of the nominated schools: Bishopswood Infant & Juniors, Tadley Primary and Burnham Copse Primary.

Thank you to everyone who contributed. We had a great time creating our masterpieces so we hope you all enjoyed seeing them.

You can find out more about the annual Scarecrow Trail on their Facebook group.

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The Beavers final exhibit featured a mass of frogs, in all shapes and sizes on their very own lily pond, bull rushes included! All of the frogs were very unique with individual characters and expressions, if the faces are anything to go by, the Beavers had lots of fun making these delightful frogs.

The Cubs worked out that a Weevil bug lives in flour and is tiny, so they set about making a huge version of the bug with all its detailing of bumps and ridges on its outer body. The final result looked really good (if they do say so themselves). So they decided to make him an honorary member of our group with its very own Scout necker.

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