Page 58 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

THE ACTUAL JAMBOREE
Cooking fires had been banned by the Lincolnshire Agricultural Society, quite sensible
really as the sight of several thousand scouts and hundreds of individual cooking fires
spread over their fine site could lead to complications and not the least spoil a lot of their
permanent grassland.
I had seen just this at Gilwell Park, the International Scout Centre in Chingford, East
London in 1960 ,when attending the very first National Scout Cooking Competition with my
Senior Scout Patrol from the Boston Sea Scouts. It was a ‘nightmare’ to organise without
previous regional knock-out rounds and ‘the powers that be’ never repeated it.

Black’s famous ridge pole patrol tents.......we had two new ones thanks to the parents.
th
Back at the 6 Boston unit, our Parents committee also purchased new cooking gear
among which were two brand new cooking stoves, one for each of the Patrols due to
attend.
I had spent a long time looking at the options for camp cooking stoves and found a brand
new stove produced by the world leading ‘Optimus’ company. It was totally revolutionary
being run on petrol instead of the more normal paraffin. Its heat output was more than
double the older paraffin stoves and supremely efficient.

(The Optimus Stoves that were super efficient. The boys spent hours learning how to use
these unique and very powerful stoves.)

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