2020 started off in an odd way for the Group. Partway through January, just after the Christmas break, we were told that we couldn’t use the Church Hall as part of the ceiling had fallen down!

We quickly arranged for the Scouts to meet in a number of locations and with some other Troops and the Beavers and Cubs met at St. Barnabas Church Hall in Bradwell. We weren’t sure when we’d get back into our Hall, but fate had other ideas! As it was, the ceiling was finally repaired in July.

On Monday 16th March 2020, after the Prime Minister’s briefing, the Scout Association issued a message to say that all face to face Scouting activities must cease from the following day. So the messages went out and we stopped meeting! We  wouldn’t meet again in person for 404 days!

As the Group didn’t know how the lockdown would progress, we sent out ideas for activities the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts could do at home which would count towards badges. We also made some videos, clapping for the front line workers, the loo roll challenge, St. George’s Day and the 75th anniversary of VE Day. At the end of May, we tried a Cub meeting online via Teams. This was quite successful and gave the Cubs the chance to see their friends they’d not seen in for a while. The Beavers and Scouts then followed the Cubs lead and we met online regularly until April 2021. The Leaders were very innovative in the activities they did. These included cooking and baking online, making a lava lamp, seeing what happens to a bottle of cola when mints are put in, more baking (this was popular!), singing, a virtual police visit, a Halloween window decoration competition and making fires in the garden.

When restrictions were starting to be relaxed, we did prepare to start meeting outdoors in September 2020, but this was postponed due to greater restrictions returning. We finally started to meet on the field at St. Barnabas Church in Bradwell, but sadly had to relocate to the field used by Wolstanton United Football Club on the old Bradwell High School site, due to disruption from local youths. All meetings were held under quite strict restrictions to ensure no one became ill.

We were finally able to start meeting indoors in September 2021 and even had a camp at Kibblestone that month. Life was getting back to almost normal. We had to cancel or postpone some meetings or events due to people becoming infected with COVID, but generally speaking by the beginning of 2022, things were back to normal!