A Visit to Gilwell

Carol and I have just come back from a visit to London and one of the things we did was to visit Gilwell, the spiritual home of Scouting.

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Considering how often I visit London, I’ve never been before, so I decided to make amends this time. The site itself was quite quiet with one group of Scouts doing some water activities and another doing some climbing. There didn’t seem to be anyone camping, which seemed odd as it was half term and all the schools were off.

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Anyway, we saw the bust of BP that the Mexican Scouts gave to Gilwell, BP’s caravan, the Bronze Buffalo which the BSA presented to Gilwell to commemorate the Unknown Scout who inadvertently helped start Scouting in the USA, the Buddhist Temple presented by the Scouts of Thailand and the window to commemorate 100 years of Scouting, which has my parent’s names on it. We also saw the Gidney Cabin which the Copeland Cabin at Kibblestone is modelled on.

The slight downside was that I couldn’t buy myself a Gilwell neckerchief as the chap who had the keys to the store was off site!

Later in the week we had a trip around Westminster Abbey and among the thousands of important and famous Britons buried and commemorated there is a memorial to BP and his wife.

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Photo from Johnny Walker’s Scouting Milestones Pages

I hadn’t realised there was a memorial to them there, but the memorial on the floor and the Scout and Guide flags make it quite obvious! You are not allowed to take photos in the Abbey, which is why I’ve borrowed the above photo.

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