Day 1 Camp | Day 2 Camp | Day 2 Hike | Route Map
Day 2, Saturday 23rd December
Early birds' the word in our camps. No one wakes later than 0700 hours so it didn't surprise me when sounds of talk came from the surrounding tents. It seemed to drone on through all of last night, hmm... Anyway, the first thing on our agenda today was breakfast. A hot, hearty meal -in England that is. The patrols were prepping breakfast, very aware that the SPLs and instructors were around. A bad breakfast would certainly ruin any prospects of getting through today's 14.5 kilometre hike, so they prepared some beautiful breakfast.
We took our time eating the food well prepared by fellow scouts before proceeding to raise the morning flag -which had been taken down by Kwok sir the day before and kicked down by some other idiot. Freshened by the morning breeze and the breakfast, we were briefed and the flag was raised.
Today's
morning inspection began promptly at 0847 hours. Things were turned topsy
turvy, no groundsheet remained untouched and tent pages lay scattered
about on the soft morning dew. Soon, personal belongings would
emerge from every campers rucksack and my inspection motto - 'no secrets in
the morning, when you're drunk or when tortured.' The poison
gas scam uncovered likely terrorists and after the inspection, we believed
we were safe from future intrusions of security.
After
the security checks, we began to move our heavyweight materials downwards.
A task simpler than yesterday's because we were moving downhill and the food
was almost all consumed. Logistics was the topic
for conversation during these few hours from 0900 to 1145 hours.
Then we had some dried food and leftovers from last night for lunch and at 1200 hours prompt, we set of from the campsite towards the main goal of the camp, the 14.5 km hike.
