Revolution 2024
Lucy Smith (Nottingham)
Wednesday 3rd of April 2024
Revolution is a national camp joint between Explorers and Network, but also SSAGO and SAGGA! It is held over the 4 days of the Easter bank Holiday weekend on the Isle of Wight annually. In 2024, many SSAGO members went from all over the country. Over the 4 days you participate in many activities that are all included in the price alongside the camp fee and evening entertainment. You are on a timetable which ensures you take part in all activities. There’s also a campfire every night!
Day 1
Day 1 involves travelling over to the IoW, most SSAGO groups do this by car of minibus as plenty of room is needed for kit for the long weekend. Once we arrived on the Friday, we set up camp, cooked up some dinner and headed down to the opening ceremony at 7pm. This involved introductions to the organising committee and other formalities. This was followed by a disco starting at 8pm and a campfire at 10pm which allowed us SSAGO members to show off our extensive campfire song knowledge. There was also an adult only bar area which was frequented by many despite how small it was!
Day 2
Saturday morning started bright and early with our first activity at 9.15am, which was head-hunters. This was a combination of laser tag and capture the flag, with two team competing against each other to obtain the opposing teams flag and return it to their own base. SSAGO members got very competitive here and it was a great game enjoyed by all, but there was a clear winner… HAIL CESAR!
Activity 2 of the day was back at site, and it was rage buggies. This involved driving around a circuit in a buggy, dodging cones and trying to get the fasted time, you had a warmup lap, a timed lap, and a cool down lap. And based on the timesheet I have at hand, congratulations William G for having the fastest time, a speedy 26.36 seconds!
Our last activity on the first day was a ballet workshop. This sounds relaxing in theory however it was quite exhausting, and also very fun to see a bunch of SSAGOers prancing around a dance studio doing pirouettes and demi plies. The evening ended with a lovely dinner with SSAGO and SAGGA members at a local pub, where food and drink was enjoyed by all. We all got back to site in time for the campfire as it got a lot more fun after watershed, with SSAGO once again showing off our campfire song skills.
Day 3
Sunday started a little less early at 10.30am with a drum workshop. I am sure you can imagine the chaos that followed a bunch of SSAGOers in a room with many drums! While it was certainly loud some good music was made, and the mascots even got a chance to play a tune!
This was followed by a very muddy mountain biking session. In case you hadn’t been aware it had been raining on and off the past few days. This led to many stuck minibuses but also very muddy mountain bike trails, but despite this, plenty of fun was had exploring the forest. Once we had cleaned off the mud as best we could we all hopped back in our minibuses and headed The Needles! Here we got a chance to look around the local tourist shops, including sweet shops, glass shops, and gift shops where some SSAGOers copped an IoW badge. After some time spent browsing, we took a trip down the chair lift to the beach and hopped on a boat and took a tour around The Needles and learnt lots about the IoW. After this we headed back to site to enjoy some dinner and the evening entertainment for that night, which consisted of a cinema showing and a live band followed by the usual campfire.
Day 4
Monday morning started at 10.15am with rifle shooting. SSAGOers got a chance to show off their excellent aim, and it’s also where we learnt not to cross a certain dinosaur hand puppet!
This was followed by some archery for some more target practice.
Our afternoon continued with some indoor crazy golf which really showed the competitive side of some SSAGOers, and proved good fun for some mascots too! The last activity of the day was hovercrafts, which involved riding hovercrafts around an annoyingly holey field, but despite this was good fun for all who participated!
After this SSAGO headed back to site to enjoy dinner and evening entertainment, which once again included a cinema showing and the closing ceremony which was followed by a UV disco and a campfire.
Day 5
Tuesday, we woke to the sad fact that Revolution 2024 was over. We packed up camp and headed on our way home. The weekend was over but the memories we made will last a lifetime. Some honourable mentions include the milk vending machine, Samir’s flags, surgery on a lambanana, among many others!
In summary Revolution is a great event to be able to experience many new activities, as well as meet plenty of new SSAGO people you may have not had the chance to in the past. It was an event enjoyed by all and we can’t wait to go again next year!
