Southern Region Jamboree Weblog

Greetings from the UK. It could not have been a more beautiful day for our first day in the old country. Bright sunshine, temp in the 70s, not a drop of rain. Much different than last week when much of western England and Wales was under water. Those folks are dealing with the same type issues as our Gulf Coast folks had to after Katrina. Water water everywhere! The jamboree site is in the eastern side of England and got some rain but nothing like that in the west. Reports from the site are that preparations are proceeding at a frantic pace now but things should be ready by Friday. Somehow, it all comes together.

All of our Southern Region units arrived safely and pretty much on time this morning at Gatwick and Heathrow. By midday we were all with our assigned tour guides and out at Windsor Castle. The Queen was a little busy and could not give us an audience today but we know that she sends us her best regards.

Hard to tell sometimes but our guys and gals seemed to be favorably impressed with her little castle on the Thames that dates back to the days of William the Conqueror (1066 or so). They also got to tour the town of Eton, home of the famous prep school attended by all of the royal boys through the last few hundred years. My personal favorite on the Windsor Castle campus is the Chapel of St. George where the Order of the Garter is bestowed which is the highest order of knighthood that exists.

After a box lunch and a bit of free time in the little town of Windsor we headed out to the University of Hertfordshire where we will be staying until Friday morning when we head to the jamboree site. On my bus everyone was asleep within a few minutes of leaving the Windsor area and slept for most of the 60 minute trip.

Each youth and adult have a private room and bath (dorm room) and it is a very new facility – only about 3 years old. It was built on the site of an old World War II airfield and the college tour guide told me that prior to the college being built the site was used in the filming of “Saving Private Ryan” in the scenes where the Allies were preparing for the D-day invasion. Interesting!

Dinner was a choice of lasagna or cottage pie (shepherds pie), chips (french fries), carrots and squash, salad, dessert. I thought it was very good but then I am not a picky eater. I did not see many plates that had anything left so…..

We had a brief leaders meeting and agreed that taps each night would be at 10PM. I don’t think that will be a problem tonight since we are all a little slee……..py.

Cheers!