Whissendine Cubs go to London

The London Cub Camp is now in its 5th year and goes from strength to strength with 22 children coming this time.
We set off early Sat morning in 2 minibuses & high spirits to head for the big smoke but our adventure didn’t really start until we hit the first deep escalator of the London tube system. Transport around London is in itself an exciting activity for a cub. There’s all the speed sports of beating the escalator or lifts using the stairs (175 of them on one occasion!), there’s agility & balance tasks hanging from the monkey bars on the tube & freestanding balancing as the train jerks to a start and a stop. There’s advanced level navigation tasks interpreting the maps & finding the right platforms and a social geography course to be studied within the multitudinous & multicultural passengers we encountered. We emerged briefly for a picnic in Finsbury Park & then descended again until we got to our accommodation at the London School of Economics.
For the adults, student study bedrooms were like stepping back in time to earlier student days, for the cubs it was a glimpse of the future. We left our meagre baggage in our vast rooms & headed back underground & under the Thames to Borough Market. Our local Northfield Farm had kindly offered to feed us with sausage baps from their very busy stand so we joined the hordes of shoppers, scoffed our baps and explored the various cheese, chocolate, meat, fish, flower, fruit & veg stands. Jersey Royal potatoes at £10.20 per kilo was an interesting find but the black truffles at £98 per kilo was the winner!
Next was the London Dungeon, 2 hours of disease, murder, fire & execution. There were real rats, a very huge miscarriage of justice at the trial and they hung us all at the end – hey ho. Now dark & raining we scampered along the south bank armed with our newly acquired axes, hand cuffs & squeaky rats, taking in the river views & heading for a slap up chicken dinner at Nandos. Despite a massive effort we couldn’t quite finish the 10 whole chickens, mountains of chips & coleslaw & buckets of fizzy drinks. Duly stuffed we went to the Tate Modern for a gentle cultural walk among the exhibits. One exhibit, a massive crevice the length of the main gallery was, in fact, quite a walk. Still armed, and now fairly puzzled about “What is art?” we walked or skidded across the millennium bridge to St Pauls. London at night is very beautiful & we looked at all the riverside landmarks as we went. More tubes & back to the LSE for hot chocolate and bed. Well, I say bed, actually there was a disco in one room, a remake of the London Dungeon in another and lots of chattering & much game-boying but some sleep was achieved nonetheless.
On Sunday it rained all day but fortified by a truly magnificent breakfast we set off again for the London Eye. We were fast-tracked to our own capsule to have London laid out below us. The “flight” stopped for 15mins while we were at the top which we counted as a bonus. We then walked to all the places we had seen on TV. Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street, Horseguards, St James Park, Buckingham Palace. We managed to convince the police to let us onto the steps of 10, Downing Street where we took dozen’s of pictures, in fact a kindly armed policemen took them for us with great patience. We also saw the changing of the guard at Horseguards, what beautiful animals! We finished with a look at the St Patrick’s Day Parade along Pall Mall, a quick MacDonalds (well, actually 25 meals takes a little while to organise!), collected our bags and back to our minibuses on one last tube ride. All the cubs had been up for everything even though some courage & endurance was needed on occasion. They had a wealth of new experiences, had earned Hiking and Night’s Away badges and had acquitted themselves very well. Well done cubs, and thank you to Dom Lyons, our volunteer parent helper.See pictures at www.whissendinecubs.co.uk