Avon/Hannover Twinning Expedition

Hello Dear Reader

I will be taking a weeks break from Jabbering all day long – Ok Ok you can stop cheering now.

The reason for this is I am going the Germany with Avon County, (I did briefly mention it here) to continue a twinning link with Hannover Scouts.

It started back in 2007 when DSPG Hannover contacted the city of Bristol via the twinning link to look for home hospitality before the 21st World Scout Jamboree. We made some arrangements and managed to host the group from Hannover.

Following the Jamboree I was looking to take my jamboree unit away to have an “International” experience, or maybe an out of country experience would be a better term. So we followed up on the link between Hannover and Bristol and went to Hannover for four days.

Thus the link was developed it has continued, in 2009 a group from Hannover came over to the UK and went camping with an Explorer group from Bristol at Gillwell park and now in 2010 we are going to back to Germany.

This time we are going to join DSPG Hannover on their expedition to walk the international long distance path E1 through Germany. They have been doing this for some time now, walking part and then picking up where they left of the next time they go out. In 2007 when I went to Hannover we walked part of the route that was close to Hannover with them.
However this time we are further south, starting around Stuttgart and walking through the black Forest Region down to near Lake Constance.

It will not be very challenging walking, we have 6 groups and each group will complete about 53km over 3 days, however the total distance covered will be about 318km. The challenge for the young people from the UK will be in the way the Germany scouts do this sort of walking. As the Leader of the german group said to me “they will walk and in the evening they will find somewhere to sleep, often a church or farmers barn. Scout will need uniform as it will aid in finding a place to sleep”.

The groups are mixed 2/3 German Scouts and 2/3 British Scouts/Explorers they will walk 10 miles per day. On route they will buy food for their evening meal and find somewhere to stay. It will be a steep learning curve as they will need to work as a team to decide how far they walk e.g. if they have done 8 miles should they stop at this village or complete the 10 and then have to walk another 2 before the next village. Also we will all start from the same point so some groups will need to get a train to their start place others will walk some will be taken in a mini bus.

Following the 3 days of walking we will all meet up near lake Constance for 3 days in a static camping situation. with visits to local town and possibly a chance to swim in the lake. One of the days we as a large group will walk the last section of the E1 crossing the border from Germany to Switzerland.

All in all it should be a great 9 days of Scouting Adventure.

I will try to make the occasional tweet for those that follow me www.twitter.com/kiff76

and I will see you all in a week or so

TTFN