Scout Trip to Europe August 2002
Scoutmaster Journal
Report # 1
8/6/2002
Hi Everyone,
I got to London on Saturday, rented a Vauxhall Corsa (identical to the Opel Corsa in Germany). I drove across London to check into the Lord Amory, a British Sea Scout ship that is anchored in the docks on the Isle of Dogs. The English scouts have a fantastic marine training facility right in the heart of London. From the ship you can see the Millennium Dome and tall, modern buildings in a very upscale section of London called Canary Wharf. Our American scouts landed at Heathrow on Monday, so I had all day Sunday to do something special. I visited Gillwell Park, north of London. Gillwell is the epicenter of scouting in England, and it's arguably one of the most famous scouting locations in the world due to its link with the founder of the Scouting movement, Lord Baden Powell. The main building dates back to the days of Henry VIII, who built it as a hunting lodge for one of his sons. Baden Powell used it from around 1919 as a camp and training facility for his new scouting movement. The adult training program, called Woodbadge, started here. The great woodbadge necklaces and pictures of Dinizulu, the South African Zulu chief are on display. The little camp museum has some incredible stuff in it, and there are gifts from many nations on display all over Gillwell. A small bronze statue of an American Bison and a statue of an American Scout are gifts from the Boy Scouts of America and the Philadelphia Council respectively. There are at least half a dozen small buildings for worship including Roman Catholic, Buddhist, Anglican, and Jewish.
The place is still a scout camp, and boys from several countries were camping there. I met scout groups from Holland, Germany, England and even one from New Jersey. During WWII, Nazi bombs fell on Gillwell, but only a few actually exploded. However, the ones that did explode formed of a kidney shaped depression in the ground that today is filled with water and used for canoeing and kayaking. They call this little lake the "bomb hole." There are conference facilities, and a large building called the white house that serves as guest lodging, and offices for the British Scout Association.
Before returning to the ship, I stopped to buy food to feed our scouts for dinner on Monday. I figured they would be tired, and didn't want to drag them out to a restaurant. So I bought food to make a spaghetti, salad and garlic bread dinner for all of us, and it turned out to be a very good move. When I got back to the ship, David Myers called to say he had arrived from Paris. David is 22, and is working on his Masters' at VA Tech. He had opted to travel in Germany and France prior to joining us in London. So with David's help navigating, we got to Heathrow in plenty of time to great our scouts as they arrived from America. The flight had an hour delay on the ground in Frankfurt, and arrived in London around 11:15 a.m.. Everyone looked tired, but glad to be here. First item of business: get British Pounds. Then, carry baggage onto the subway trains. The trip via the Underground from Heathrow to the ship took another hour and a half.
We got everyone settled into their bunks on the ship, and almost everyone took a nap for a couple of hours. While the boys slept, David and I prepared dinner. After dinner, we took off to the seediest section of London to go on a nighttime "Jack the Ripper" tour. The English woman who ran the tour did a great job. In about two hours we followed the trail of five grizzly murders that took place in London in less than two months back in 1889. The people murdered were prostitutes who sold their services to earn money to buy a room to sleep in for the night. Four of the women were in their 40's and one was in her 20's, their throats were slit and most of the women were hideously mutilated. The crime spree stopped as suddenly as it started, and no one knows for sure who Jack the Ripper is. The latest theory is that he was an American named James Tumblebee.
In the morning, most of the scouts went into London to ride the "hop-on, hop-off" tour bus. I joined them in the morning and got to see many famous sights, then I left to find an internet place and send back this report mostly so the parents will know that all is OK. I'll catch up with the boys later this evening back on the ship.
On a personal note, the fellow who sat next to me on the sight seeing tour bus came from Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island. I told him that I had relatives living there, and we started to talk. As it turns out, he knows one of my cousins very well because both he an my cousin chase celebrities in New York City as a hobby. They take pictures, get autographs, and worm their way into private parties by using very clever tactics. As the tour bus pulled into Piccadilly Circus, the guide said that if a person spent enough time in Piccadilly Circus, he would eventually meet everybody he has ever known!
Philip Sternberg