Two members of Crawley Network, Courtney Palmer-Jones and Allen Heath, attended Intercamp 2024 as IST (International Service Team) in Swieradow-Zdroj, Poland, from May 16th to 22nd. Intercamp is held each year in a different European country. Intercamp provides participants (10-16 year olds) with the opportunity to take part in a variety of activities including hikes, public service, and games. In the evenings, attendees are encouraged to meet and make friends with people from across the world, including the classic tradition of swaps and trades of commodities such as badges and scarves. This year there were around 3000 people attending.
Courtney was part of the hikes team, spending each day helping set up and run the hike stations out in the mountains. This came with lots of walking on some very steep inclines, on top of dodging some inclement weather with only trees as cover! She says it was a good chance to explore and with a passion for walking, the hikes team was perfect.
Allen was based on site, assisting young persons in activities such as building bug homes and flower planters, typical scout activities, team related challenges and even some wood burning for creating souvenirs!
On Saturday evening all of the participants created a food market by offering samples of their countries national dishes.
There were a small number of other UK Scout adults attending as IST and this was a great opportunity to make new friends from here in the UK as well as from abroad. Before we flew back we spent 24 hours in Wroclow having a look around the town and seeing the towns famous Gnomes in various places.
If you want to find out more or take part in future Intercamps, please visit their Facebook page. Scouts and Explorers groups can also attend as participants. Next years location is in Germany, not too far away from the Luxembourg and French border.
