First Camp With Scouts

A Memory of Stanton Fitzwarren.

As an innocent 11year old in August 1957, I had my first experience of camping in a field in Stanton Fitzwarren.
I belonged to a Scout troop from Woolwich in South East London. Most of us came from a poor area of Woolwich and Charlton, surrounded by bomb sites and the destruction caused by six years of war.
We travelled to Stanton in the back of a removal van, sitting on the tents and equipment, no health and safety then.
We camped in a field near to a lake and what we thought was a a big house, which was surrounded by a large wall.
We camped for two weeks, basic facilities, toilets dug in the corner of the field, no luxury of flushing toilets then, a hole in the ground.
Cooking all done on open wood fires, introduced to Skips burnt porridge each morning. Washing in a little stream that run off from the lake.
We had a marvelous two weeks, messing about in the lake, and even visiting at some point the railway works in Swindon, being enthralled by stories of hands and arms being crushed in the big metal flattening machines.
Several things stuck in my mind, one being the village pump in the high street, the campfires and sing songs at night, even about the Village Pump. The visits by two local girls, Jane Lack and Mary Watford who used to come and see us most days ( I wonder what happened to them) but most of all the camaraderie we experienced between all of us and the leaders, they giving up two weeks of their own annual holidays, and this being the only holiday that most of us had ever had, it was a wonderful time, my first experience of camping but wasn’t the last, I went on to be a Scout Leader myself.
I’m 73 years old now but I have never forgotten my first camp at Stanton Fitzwarren.

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