At the end of December 2015, for one of their largest camps as a growing Network, Southampton City Network welcomed in Christmas with a relaxed camp at Wilverley, from board games by torchlight following a full Christmas Dinner, to geocaching and hiking around the New Forest, to contributing back to Wilverley and looking after our lovely district campsite. We even had a visit from Father Christmas himself!
On Friday night, after loading up the minibus, we set off on the long and quite bumpy journey to Wilverley. We arrived very late and in the dark, which meant it was a lot of fun trying to find the keys! After unloading and unpacking we had a quick hike around the Wilverley enclosure and came back to a large dinner of Bolognese. Almost immediately after this was lights out, but we of course decided to stay up playing board games until nearly 4am! Not all of us, the sensible ones went to bed far earlier.
We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning to a fry up which was greatly needed for our morning of site services. We painted the toilets, chopped wood, raked leaves, creosoted some posts (91 of them!), set up new carbon monoxide detectors and most importantly, started on the Christmas dinner prep. In the afternoon we once again had a range of activities to choose from; geocaching around Wilverley; pioneering and creating an obstacle course; playing a wide variety of board games; playing table tennis; sewing on our badges; and even more Christmas dinner preparation.
In the early evening, when we were all back in the cottage we had a surprise visit, from none other than Father Christmas himself! He came bearing presents for all of us and lots of Christmas cheer. Father Christmas even stayed to help us eat our huge Christmas dinner! As we began to slowly digest our huge meal we sat down to watch some festive movies. After lights out we began to play board games again, although this time we only stayed up until the rather more sensible time of 2am.
On Sunday morning, we woke once again to a fry up, although a little later than the previous day. We welcomed our new Network members with an investiture outside Wilverley Cottage. Following this, we all went for a walk, half of us went off to Burley and visited a nice little pub, the other half (all Beaver leaders) took a slightly shorter walk around the Wilverley enclosure so that they could run off in time for the Christingle. After our walk we came back to a lunch of whatever leftovers we could manage.
Our afternoon was spent playing a few board games and returning Wilverley to its original pre-Network state. We packed up and left in the early evening. (Our minibus driver looked quite familiar)
Network Christmas camp was great fun and everybody thoroughly enjoyed themselves, we all left feeling far more Christmassy.