Walking In A Winter Wonder London

It was the first Saturday in December, and appropriately cold as we assembled early in the morning for our Winter Wonderland trip up to London.  We'd wrapped up warm, brought spare socks along, and checked our bags for important essentials (money, tickets, strawberry liquorice laces).  Later on we'd realise that we'd forgotten some more important items like drinks and, in the author's case, normal glasses (as opposed to prescription sunglasses) but hey ho!

A fortuitously chosen fast train landed us in Central London and we made our way straight over the the Natural History Museum for our first adventure - ice skating.  The rink at the Museum is great - fairly big and with a Christmas Tree in the middle - the skating session lasted 50 minutes and everyone had great fun getting gradually more and more confident on the ice. 

Next stop was Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, so we jumped on the number 74 bus, complete with super fast, slightly scary bus driver, and headed up past Harrods and House of Fraser to Hyde Park Corner. 
Winter Wonderland is a big festival in Hyde Park with food stalls, a Christmas market, fairground rides, Santa's Grotto, and Ice Rink, a Circus and an Ice Sculpture walk.  We headed in to the crowds, with the first aim of finding food.  Typically we all wanted food from different stalls, so we waited while we all ate.  And then ate some more.  Crepes, burgers, steak sandwiches, chips, sweets, candy floss and pretzels.  That was between five of us, but even so! 

We wandered through the market area, which was very long and extremely busy.  It was also really cold on Saturday, and despite us being well wrapped up, we reached a point where it was too busy, we were too cold, and suddenly the idea of going somewhere warm where we could sit down was rather appealing.  So we decided to carry on with the Christmas theme at the cinema and go and see Nativity 2 at the cinema! Which of course meant popcorn and fizzy drinks....

After the cinema we completed the Christmas-sy-ness by popping our heads very quickly into Regent Street to see the lights there (and take some mandatory blurry photos) before heading back to the station to consume the remainder of the candy floss and sweets on the train!

It was a great day, and I think we're all up for a London 2013 trip!

What Does Music Mean To You?

Music can mean so many different things to people.  It can make us happy, sad, thoughtful, bring back good times, bad times, trigger particular memories or feelings. 
A few weeks ago we had a meeting where we each shared music that meant something to us.  It was a really interesting evening and a great way of getting to know each other as the group has really grown this term.  

What really struck me was how brave people were with their choices.  People shared music that had been played at the funerals of loved ones, pieces that made them think of siblings, pieces that had had got them through hard times when they were being bullied or feeling down, and pieces that reminded them of special friends.  

I really enjoyed getting a little insight into the rest of the group through this activity, and also getting to know some music I'd not heard before.

What piece of music would you pick to talk about?

New Term, new plans!

So, we're back for the new term, with three new Rangers, and lots of Guides visiting us most weeks.  We had a great first meeting this week:  getting to know you ice breakers, programme planning, a very tense game of  bingo and chocolate fondue! 

We've come up with a great programme for this term including: 

A trip to London
Bonfire Party
"Dealing with stress" evening
Helping at the food bank
"Music that means something" evening
Christmas Meal
Board Games meeting

We're certainly going from strength to strength at the moment - here's to it continuing!

New Guiding Year

It's nearly the start of the new Guiding year, and there are exciting times ahead for Princes Risborough Rangers.  We've got two new Rangers starting this term, and hopefully more as the year goes on.  We're looking forward to putting together a really interesting and exciting programme, so watch this space for more details!

Gig In A Field 2012

On Saturday July 14th, a group of seven of us went to Anglia's Gig In A Field 2012 for the day.

We got the proper "festival" atmosphere (rain, more rain, mud, more mud!) but that didn't dampen our spirits and we had a great day.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Having lots of giggles playing with the Water Wars water balloons and catapults (we got more wet from our own balloons than from our opposition's!)
• Practising being monkeys on the Coconut Tree Climb. 
• Racing to the top of the climbing wall
• Challenging our fears of heights on Rope-A-Phobia
• Going on the GoKarts
• Chilling in the cinema tent with our pix and mix sweets
• Watching the bands in the mud

And most exciting of all, the meets and greets with the bands after they'd performed. Between us, we met the Special Ks, Depth, and Paperplane, and got Tshirts, posters, CDs and bags signed!

It was a brilliant day, and maybe next year we'll be able to go for the whole weekend. 

Thanks to Girl Guiding Anglia and the Gig In A Field crew for putting on an amazing event!

Barbeque Night

We had a great time at Rangers this week – we decided to have a BBQ and invite all the older Guides along to get a feel for who we are and what we do.  We had a great turn out, with twelve 13+ Guides coming along.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t so kind, and it was far too wet for any of us to brave cooking outside, so a quick reshuffle saw us inside manning the frying pans. 

Once we’d tucked into the sausages and cake (there is pretty much always cake.  If there’s not cake, there’s chocolate.  Or sometimes ice cream!) and a chat about who we are, and what Rangers do, we got down to the competitive business of newspaper games.  Split into three teams, the first game was to make the tallest tower possible in 10 minutes.  They all had four sheets of newspaper, sellotape and scissors.  The towers had to be freestanding and unsupported.  It was so much fun to see all the different ideas people were coming up with, and how much cheating was going on – talk about competitive spirit!  My cry of “put the sellotape down, time’s up!” had to be uttered at least three times.  In the end, the smallest tower ended up winning as it was the only one that could stand unsupported.

After this, we challenged the girls to get from one end of the room to the other, on two sheets of paper, without anyone stepping of the paper, and with as much of the paper being in tact as possible at the other end.  Lots of fun. 

And lastly, we played the flap fish game – flapping a fish to the other end of the room with newspaper rolls. 

I don’t think any team was an overall winner – so they all shared the chocolates and sweets between them!

I had a great time running the games, and I really hope all the visiting Guides did as well.  We’ve got some great ideas lined up for the rest of the year, including a second photography evening , a Vintage Glamour Evening, another can drive for our favourite charity, One Can Trust, and a trip into London.  It will be great to have a bigger unit to share them with!

Creativity

We're quite a creative bunch - well, the Rangers are, not the leaders so much!  As it's one of the things the current group really likes, we often find ourselves doing arty activities.  Here's some photos from a few of the things we've done over the past year, including nail painting, Easter Egg decorating and T Shirt painting.  We're planning on doing cup cake and biscuit decorating next, with a Jubilee theme, so I'm sure there'll be some scrumptious photos from that!