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The group was a "selected" group and to begin with hardly anyone knew anyone else : three of the girls came from one unit, both Guiders had one girl from their own unit in the party, but apart from that, we were all strangers! So besides planning the actual visit, we also had to get to know each other : we met four times before the actual visit : two "official" meetings, a night ten-pin-bowling and a weekend camp, and on only one of those occasions was everyone able to be there! On looking back, it seems a miracle that we ever made it. We had the decision as to where to go made for us : the
selection camp was to choose a party to go to Scout 2001, but beyond that
it was up to us. I filled in all the forms for the camp (Swedish and our
own GA forms - Permission To Plan Forms, Travel Abroad Forms, Parental
Consent Forms, Camp Forms, Health Forms, Insurance Forms......) registered
on the Scout 2001 website for regular email updates, and started to organise
our travel arrangements. I originally intended to travel to Sweden by sea, but when one of the girls said she didn't get back from her family holiday in Greece until the day before the camp started, that option was ruled out (we would have had to sail on the Thursday night) and we decided to make enquiries about flying instead. Our local airport, Humberside, has daily flights to Holland so I decided to begin my enquiries there : KLM were very helpful so we booked directly with them, flights to and from Copenhagen (which we had ben told by the Scout 2001 organisers was the nearest suitable airport) via Schipol, Amsterdam. The cost was much less than I'd anticipated and the camp fees very reasonable, so once I had calculated the estimated cost of travel by train and bus within Sweden (based on UK transport prices) and added on the cost of insurance (with the Guide Association's insurers) I was able to give the girls' parents a cost for the holiday. THEN we set about fundraising. We held craft fairs, supermarket bag-packs, social evenings, quizzes, car-boot sales - anything legal that would bring money in - and wrote off for grants and donations to everyone we could think of. It took a lot of hard work on everyone's part but the money did finally come in. Meanwhile, the Scout 2001 organisers had linked us with a Swedish Scout group - Matteus Scoutkår from Norrköping - and their leader, Maria, was absolutely wonderful and sorted out all our transport arrangements within Sweden! She also arranged all our camping equipment for us (until then we had been told we'd have to take it all with us...!) so that was also a great relief. Maria also advised us to try to change our return flights, as Stockholm airport was much nearer : KLM were happy to oblige, at no extra cost, so that was sorted too. The one aspect I'd been dreading, the money, wasn't as bad as I'd feared ; we managed to raise it all and the Building Society (after a few initial hiccups) sorted out the international money transfers for us, in Swedish Kroner, and everything went smoothly. For a checklist of things to do if you're thinking of planning a trip abroad, click here Back to Previous Page
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