It’s hard to believe that the Jamboree is nearly at an end. For ten days, we’ve been lucky enough to host 40,000 young people and their leaders at Hylands Park – and they really have had the most brilliant time. I’ve had a pretty amazing time too – This has been my fourth World Jamboree;…
Another update from a sun baked field in Essex! Here in Jamboree HQ it’s absolutely boiling hot. We’re making sure that everyone here slips, slaps and slops – as our Australian Scout friends say – slip on a tee shirt, slap on a hat and slop on the suncream. I’m adding ‘slurps’ as well. We’re…
I have been extraordinarily busy making sure that everyone here is having a good time. You’ll be pleased to hear that they are! The atmosphere here is extraordinary.Over the course of Wednesday, throughout the different time zones, Scouts from around the world have been renewing their Scout Promise at exactly 8am to mark the centenary…
We had our opening ceremony on Saturday and you will have seen the pictures of HRH Prince William in the press. My job, first thing that morning, was to find and organise 500 young people from all over the world to take part in activities we’d arranged for the Prince to see. As our international…
This morning Sarah Kennedy mentioned the Jamboree on Radio 2. I reminded her that not only is she listened to in far flung places like Australia and Singapore, we’re also listening in a field in Essex! She has agreed to read out this blog on her morning programme whenever I can update it, so what…
Well, it certainly rained yesterday. The site changed from being a pleasant country park to near Glastonbury-like muddy slush. It got colder and colder and we began to worry about whether we’d be able to get things ready in time. Late at night, 77 Saudi Arabians arrived without tents or sleeping bags. The wind was…
I arrived this morning and, despite the rain in other parts of the country, am now a delightful shade of lobster red. The Jamboree site is truly enormous. It takes about an hour to walk from one side to the other. The staff restaurant, designed to feed 8,000, is the largest structure of its kind…
So, I’ve set the ‘out of office’ email, found the tent, mown the lawn and bought a new sleeping bag. No, not to prepare myself for the Harry Potter queue, but because from Sunday I’ll be helping to run the 21st World Scout Jamboree. But on the Harry Potter question. I’m working on the premise…
An early morning start today to catch the first Easyjet flight out of Stansted to Belfast. Then a quick run in a hire car up over the mountains to Derry, where Ruth and I met the Principal of the North West Institute of Further and Higher Education. He wants to start a Career Academy, which…
It was the first day of Wimbledon today, so we should have expected it. The rain lashed down. Parts of Birmingham and Gloucestershire were under water. In London, the forecasted showers were more like a monsoon, with the added excitement of wind to move the rain from vertical to horizontal. And today was the day…