Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Memories in a bubble

It’s been two days since we arrived home in Sweden.  For the past three weeks we’ve been living in a bubble and now we’ve all gone back to reality. The remote scout centers where we lived during the round trip contributed to the bubble and the simplicity gave a break from the everyday life. It made us spend a lot more tome together which brought us closer and resulted in a lot of new friends that  will missed a lot. You established friendship based on so many different things, whether its personality, interests, surnames or craziness doesn’t matter when you miss them when it’s over.


The moments after I posted my last post, we (me and my hiking partners Philip and Fredrik) met the most incredible person during our hike. We were just to leave the pub when the owner came to us and started to talk with us, and it all ended up with us staying in his backyard (we didn’t need to ask, he just said we could sleep there), getting the possibility to shower for the first time in many days, but most of all we got a late night with nice conversations, free pizza and coke that ended after midnight with the offer of a full English breakfast the next morning at the time we wanted. The next day we were full of new energy even though it didn’t become many hours of sleep but with the breakfast eaten and photos taken we set of. Later all three of us agreed that this was just what we needed to make it the last part to Carlisle.


On our way from Wales to England again, we stopped for a very wet activity. It was arranged for us to go gorge scrambling. And if you don’t know what that is, like I didn’t, it’s simply climbing up waterfalls, descending a river and jump from the edge down in pools. It was something really special and much more fun than I could imagine. One of the instructors took me and Linnea to his secret, which meant getting through a tiny passage under a stone which included getting your head under water.
Linnea getting into the secret passage

We then continued our journey to Oxford and we had no clue of why we were there until we saw the invitations to the belt ceremony the next day, which I’m leaving to Nils to talk about. 

Elin

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

The climb is hard, but the view is great

A 100 miles later, with hurting knees and blisters all over our feet we crossed the finish line in Carlisle last Friday. We both crushed mental barriers and climbed too many hills, but we did it. We survived Explorer Belt with just a pinch of stubbornness.


After playing cricket, watched the rest of the group play around at the local swimming pool, done some gardening at Susan's farm (and met local scouts from Carlisle), had an awesome and fun day at Blackpool Pleasure Beach we travelled to Yr Hafod (a scout center) in Wales to spend three days just to relax until we continue our trip back to England.


The surroundings here is just breathtaking and when you've climbed the rocks and hills the view's amazing. I wished we could stay here for longer, although the upcoming days attract me.


Yesterday me and Amanda took "a stroll" and ended up on the other side of a massive hill after climbing a bunch of rocks. I love the fact that the sheep just wandering around here, enjoying themself and can as us - relax.


Still I can't understand that this is a part of our Explorer Belt, that we get this opportunity to see all of United Kingdom and I can't understand that nature created all of this.
  Today me, Anna and Johanna decided to explore a waterfall nearby and we ended up climbing it. This hill climbing never seems to end, but now I love it instead of fear it.


Tomorrow we'll be leaving Wales behind, but first we all need to have dinner. Karl surprised us with flipping his pancakes in the air, just look how focused he is!

 

Take care, wherever you might be
 Jenny