Rebel Summer Camp part 1: Friday and Saturday

Let's talk about the other big exciting thing I did this summer: I went to Rebel Summer Camp 2024!

I didn't go last year; it was a lot of money and I had doubts about whether a single person can put on an event of that scale. For context, it's about the same price as Camp Wildfire which is, at this point, a fairly well-established festival. Well, after several months of hearing all about Rebel Summer Camp 2023, and several months of feeling like I'd missed out, I decided I was going to the 2024 one. Of course, booking and paying for it without overloading my credit card while also trying to book the Eras Train Tour and my trip to Croatia was fun and I did indeed end up overloading it and having to make an extremely confused phone call to pay it off three weeks early because I just couldn't quite get the timing right. But that's not what this post is about.

Some context: Rebel Summer Camp is an event held by Charly Lester, writer of the Rebel Badge Book and founder/cult leader of the Rebel Badge Club. Many people have complained over the years that they got badges for doing things when they were kids in Brownies or Scouts but now they're adults, they have to do things without getting badges. So Charly wrote the Rebel Badge Book, a book of 52 badges in six different themes, aimed specifically at adults. That was followed by a second book of 52 badges, quarterly challenge badges, monthly challenge badges, annual challenge badges, official meet-ups, the DofE-alike Maverick Awards, the Big Rebel Adventure, sub-groups, local "Rebellions", a series of large-scale games and yes, Summer Camp. It was held at Bromsgrove Adventure, a little way south of Birmingham and because of the scale of the camp and the safeguarding issue of holding a large scale event, we had exclusive use of the site.

I think there were about 180 Rebels on the 2023 camp and Charly was hoping to exceed that in 2024 but for various reasons, 2024 had only about 130. I got the distinct impression that almost everyone was a returnee so for most people, whatever meant they didn't go the first time also presumably meant they didn't give it a go the second time either. For me, it was the combination of the price and the fact that it was untested. I was happy with the testing but I admit, it was the price that I dithered over for a very long time. Next year's camp is going to be held elsewhere and is going to be a lot cheaper. My instinct is "yep, I'll go to that one!" but I have A Birthday next summer and those plans I'm trying not to look at, with regards to going on a big once-in-a-lifetime trip are starting to rear their heads. So, really, I'm hoping to be away that weekend. But back to this year.

This post is going to cover Friday and Saturday but it's also going to have to take a certain amount of background. The whole Rebel thing is inspired by Guiding and Scouting - as such, people sew their badges onto camp blankets or "uniform", we have neckerchiefs and we also have Patrols, smaller groups that the club is split up into. At Brownies or Guides, we might use our Sixes or Patrols to put the girls on separate tables to all do their activities in their small groups or to plan together or whatever. In RBC, we do the Rebel Cup in Patrols - really, you do your own thing, earn badges, do the monthly bonus points, but then these things turn into points which you put towards your Patrol's efforts in the Cup. We also use them at official meet-ups. I've been to a few of the Reading ones and we average 70-80 Rebels. Obviously, 70-80 people can't all do the same thing at the same time, so we're split into the five Patrols and we go round in a circle. The Patrols are all named after famous real-life Rebels and I happened to be put into Nelson at my first Reading meet-up, and then again at the second and the third. So in 2023, I chose Nelson for my Rebel Cup Patrol. I'm not doing the Cup in 2024, for various reasons. But when it came to camp, I ended up in Greta 2. With 130-180 people, you can't even put them in five patrols, so Patrols are mostly of around twelve people and they're numbered - Greta 1, Greta 2 etc. This year, the Patrols were split by people who'd booked watersports tickets (put them all together, obviously) and by intensity, which really means how many activities you want to do while wearing a climbing harness. I went for medium intensity because I didn't want to spend the entire weekend on high ropes activities. So with those two criteria, with "I want to be with this person" etc, the 130 of us were put into twelve Patrols. Then there are Patrol Leaders and Patrol Seconds assigned - experienced Rebels who've been to Camp before, or at least to meet-ups, and with First Aid certificates. At the first meet-up, there was a medical incident, at which point it was realised that some provision needed to be made for dealing with that sort of thing.

Is that everything you need to know? Rebel Badge Club, Patrols, camp? Oh, last thing - it's a camp, so the majority of Rebels were camping but there were also glamping pods and there were rooms inside the Manor House, the old house at the centre of the campsite, so non-camping was definitely an option. I mean, staying offsite was an option too, if you wanted to go for that.

I had a bit of a nightmare getting to Bromsgrove. The traffic was more or less at a standstill all the way from Oxford, my car started screaming on the M47, the whole journey which Google Maps pitched at a little over three hours took the best part of six, which meant I didn't have time to put the tent up and go for a swim on Friday afternoon. I opted for the quiet field and it took five or six journeys from my car with my folding trolley to bring all my stuff over. I am not a light packer at the best of times but especially not when I'm camping! I'd collected my wristband, my lanyard cards with all the important information on them, my pre-ordered badges and my green camp t-shirt, I got my tent up, I went round looking for people who needed help and was disappointed - most people were already done by that time and those who weren't didn't need help, no matter how many times I said that I feel awkward just sitting around watching other people and not doing anything.

(By the way, that t-shirt has become my clothing of choice for the rest of the summer and autumn - I've just realised I'm wearing it right now as I write this).

At 6pm we went over to the Paddock for the official welcome and for our Patrol ice breaker games. About half our Patrol was missing and Greta 2 was already a small Patrol - whereas I think all the others were twelve, we were ten with one person coming for the day only on Saturday. I don't think we ever got more than eight people together at one time and it took until Sunday for me to meet one of my Patrol. The ice breakers were a variation on Wink Murder and then a game of "who's name is stuck on my head?". Then we had half an hour free before the campfire. I love a campfire. I'd brought my songbooks, my camp blanket, my cosy mat and my fire poker - I made the last two myself. A campfire is a great way for a lot of people to get together and enjoy each other's company. We sang songs (I led one; the me of seventeen years ago would have had a heart attack!) and then we toasted marshmallows. The actual campsite campfire circle is a bit of a hike away and not very accessible for the various Rebels with mobility issues so the staff brought a huge metal firepit and a trolley of firewood out to the middle of the field for us. WHen it was over, instead of rushing off to bingo, a few of us stayed by the fire, watching it burn itself out and eventually making sure it was properly put out. I poked it with my hand-smithed poker, brought it back to life by accident several times and generally enjoyed the evening.

It rained overnight. It was raining so much in the morning that only four of my Patrol turned up for our first activity. We had five activity slots a day on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, starting at 9.30am, which is later than Guide camp generally starts. But then again, it takes Guide camp hours to get breakfast done and cleared up and actual activities probably wouldn't start until much later. We were self-catering, so we all individually did breakfast and clearing-up and then came out into the rain. Waterproofs were... well, patchy. I had the sailing waterproofs I won in a competition I didn't know I'd entered but at least a couple of my Patrol hadn't brought any waterproofs at all, most people didn't have waterproof trousers and a lot of jackets were either very leaky or just plain not waterproof at all. To be frank, those first couple of sessions were pretty miserable. We started with Team Challenge, which lovely instructor Owen tried to keep under cover as much as possible. We did the balance board out in the rain, we did the giant nails challenge and the giant tyres challenge under the trees (balance these eleven nails on this post; move these tyres in the right order from one post to another without putting a larger tyre on top of a smaller one) and then we took to the gazebos to fit some chunks of wood into a box, to carry a ball down a few lengths of tubing and to do some stepping stones. It was a nice chilled start to the weekend although it might have been even more chilled if we hadn't mostly been soaking wet.

Next was Multi Scramble, which is an activity we call Jacob's Ladder at our local campsite. It's a 15-metre climbing frame, with a series of beams, nets, tyres and rope ladders hanging from it, where the aim is to get to the top. One of our group made it and a couple of them made it to the second beam. I didn't even make it to the first beam. We also had time for the fan descender, which was next door and a drop-in activity no one was dropping into. You clip into an autobelay, climb a wooden pole using the steps driven into it and then jump off the top, where the autobelay system slows your freefall while a fan somewhere inside the system whirs away. I thought this would basically be indoor skydiving, leaping onto a fan which would slowly let you descend after a moment of floating on it. Nope. Never did figure out what the fan actually does. A couple of our Patrol did this too. I started - I climbed nearly halfway up the pole but then I realised I didn't have it in me to leap off in cold blood, not even from this height. If the autobelay had held my weight before dropping me, I might have been able to do it but the moment you stop climbing and take hold of the rope, it goes slack and I can't jump onto a slack rope.

Our last activity before lunch was orienteering, which was a self-led activity. We were given the maps and the forms to stamp and then left to do it ourselves. I used this time to go for a swim. The pool was open all Saturday and Monday as a drop-in if you weren't doing your timetabled activity (and there was no pressure to do it; just let your Patrol leader know so they're not standing around waiting for you to never show up). I wanted to skip the first session on Sunday for a swim but it wasn't open on Sunday because it was being used for activities all day, so orienteering was the one that had to be sacrificed. The pool is an odd temperature where it feels cold as you climb down the ladder, it's not as deep as it feels or looks and once you're all the way in, it's surprisingly warm. I knew I needed to be ready for our big activity at 2.15 so I could stay in, really, for as long as I wanted, depending on how long I thought it would take to get dried and dressed and whether I wanted lunch. The lifeguard had other ideas: the pool closed at lunchtime. But in that 50 or so minutes, I managed 56 lengths. Slight hiccup, that I had no idea how long the pool is. I like to know my statistics. But when I got back to my tent, one of the staff was locking up the go-karts opposite and he'd been summoned earlier on for advice, so I reckoned he was one of the big bosses. If anyone knew the length of the pool, it would be him. And he did - 21m, which meant I'd done 1.18km.

I had lunch, got dried and dressed and hastened to the paddock for the biggest activity of the entire weekend: the 3G swing. This was the beastie everyone had been talking about for a year, the most feared thing at Blackwell and there it was on my timetable. I'd done PGL's giant swing, which looked like exactly the same thing, some ten years ago. If I could manage that, I could manage this, right?

Well, once we were all harnessed up, instructor Ellie asked who wanted to go first and I jumped up. Having not done brilliantly at multi scramble or fan descender, I wanted to not be the total chicken of the group. Luckily, instructor Ellie is lovely and applied no pressure whatsoever to go all the way to the top. If we wanted to go halfway, or only a quarter of the way, or even just sit in the harness and get pushed like we were at the playground, that was all fine. So Maddi and I got strapped in (this swing even has a hammock-like seat; so much comfier than PGL!) and then Ellie winched us up to a quarter of the way up. Now, "you need to pull that blue rope so I can press the button to release you" she called up. But PL George had already talked about this ploy earlier in the morning and we both knew perfectly well that the blue rope is the release mechanism. I couldn't pull it in cold blood but Maddi could. And off we went!

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I filmed it on a GoPro mounted on the back of my hand so I know for a fact that I scream-giggled the entire way like a five-year-old. Oh, I enjoyed that! "Do you want to go again?" Ellie asked. Yep. "Do you want to go halfway?" Yep. And so we did it again but from higher. I'm told that you don't really get the g-force feeling under at least three-quarters of the way up but that was fine. We got a moment of freefall before going into the big swing, I shrieked and giggled and I came away having enjoyed the 3G swing probably the most out of all the activities. I heard horror stories about an instructor who insisted it was all the way to the top or nothing, which meant people walking away when they might have enjoyed halfway or people being terrified by going all the way and I'm so glad we had Ellie who could make it approachable and fun instead of the most terrifying thing in the world. So I'm a 3G swing fan and an Ellie fan.

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We were a little late for our last session of the day, Bollywood dance in the sports hall with a couple of the other patrols - Mercury 2 were there and according to the noticeboard, Greta 1 as well. I can't dance and I can't follow the steps but once you get out of the "you have to get every movement precisely correct" mindset, you can enjoy it. I maybe got three quarters of it by the end of the session and I began to not care if I couldn't get it. It's not my particular skillset, it really makes no difference to my life or to the world if I can't get that hand wiggling in the right direction but I'm trying, I'm moving, I'm not feeling particularly self-conscious - I think that's a win.

We had 45 minutes or so until the next activity, which was the Share Fair, where various Rebels had signed up to share their skills. I'd stuck my hand up to mend camp chairs, since I'd be mending one the day the shout went out for volunteers but I was in hour 2, so I used hour 1 to stay in the tent, having something to eat and just generally relax. There's nothing I'd take out of Rebel camp but the fact is there aren't enough hours in the day so occasionally you need to snatch an hour back to pick up a book or cook some pasta and just spend a while not up to your eyeballs in adrenaline.

[caption id="attachment_52298" align="alignnone" width="1000"] Actually, this picture is from Friday night. I cooked in the light on Saturday night![/caption]

I went down to the Share Fair just early enough to learn to make a woggle with Nicola and then moved onto my own table with all my upholstery thread ready. No one needed a camp chair mending. Not a single customer. But Morf fetched her sewing and came and sat with me, then dragged Charlotte in too and Felicity saw us and brought a spectacular boathouse flag that was a work in progress and the four of us formed a little sewing table.

After the Share Fair came the official photo - first in the traditional style, albeit with us all in something of a horseshoe rather than a straight line, and second we all gathered together and Nicole flew a drone above us for a crowd photo from above. Then awards were handed out - three Bronze Maverick Awards (Rebel version of DofE) and four Rebel Stars, I think.

After that, there was a mushroom talk but I've never managed to take any interest at all in mushrooms. I also didn't particularly want to do karaoke, which came after, or sit in the board games room. I had a 2km walk to do so I put on a nice warm fleece and went to roam the campsite as the sun began to set. It's huge. After hiking via the paddock and the manor house out to the 3G swing, I was quite surprised to discover it was really only just behind the quiet camping field, which is immediately behind the giant zipline. I found the bushcraft area, I found a horse, I found the official toilet block for the noisy field which is just hidden away enough that everyone comes up to the two on the quiet field which is actually further away, I walked through the noisy field, past the nerf pitch and the laser tag woods and right down to a field which popped out almost by the main gate. A circuit or two of the paddock and I had my mileage, which meant I could go back to my tent for the rest of the evening. It had still been dripping at lunchtime but with a dry afternoon, the tent was more or less dry again. All the same, I covered up anything non-waterproof with a groundsheet for the night.

And that's just part 1, Friday and Saturday. There's still so much more to come so next time I'll do Sunday and Monday. Rebel Summer Camp is an intensive experience and you really need a week off afterwards to recover. I was very jealous of the people who weren't straight back to work on Tuesday morning. But more on that on Monday.