Welcome to the Venture section of the 175th Dublin Scout Group, Castleknock!
Welcome to the 175th Castleknock Venture Crew. Ventures is all about drinking tea, travelling, meeting new people and having a laugh. From time to time we even go camping, climbing and other adventurous stuff like that.
This page has been put together by the local Ventures to give you the gist of what Venture Scouting is all about.
Meetings & Outings
Meeting are normally held on Wednesday nights in the kitchen at Diswellstown Community & Recreation Centre (St Patricks National School) from 8 to 10pm. We tend to sit around with a cup of tea, plan for events & overnights and have a bit of a chat. Adult leaders will call by from time to time, but in general we run our own meeting nights. As well as this, we're an independent group that mainly look after ourselves when camping and on activities, after prior approval by our adult scouters.
Venture Dress
Our meetings are relaxed, just plain clothes, but we may need to suit up (uniforms) for EXTREMELY special occasions. For example, a few of us wore it when travelling to Sweden on camp in summer 2011. We do have to wear neckos most of the time, but you can wear any one you want – you pick them up really fast.
Participation
We're an easy going group, but you get out of Scouting what you put into it. A big part of it is "learning by doing", so we encourage you to come on any and all camps, hikes and different events that are run by ourselves or Ventures we know from around the country – or world, we are a small bunch, but we are quite loud and outgoing. However, we weren't all like this at the start, so don't be worried if you're a bit shy, Scouting really helps people come out of their shells.
Annual Camp
We tend to run and participate in medium length camps throughout the year, but a lot of our work is building up to our "Annual Camp", the main part of our programme. This tends to be a week or so long camp that is sometimes abroad. We've been all over Ireland and to Wales, Sweden and Switzerland among other places.
Personal Gear
In general, the Scout Group provide us with gear such as tents, cookers and so forth, but each Venture may need to pick up some specific personal gear to allow them take an active role in the section, such as:
- Rucksack
- Sleeping Bag & Mat
- Hiking boots and raingear
- Cutlery and plastic crockery
- A good torch and maybe a penknife
Simple Rules
We, as Ventures, are given a lot of freedom, so we make and enforce our own set of rules. To respect the freedom given to us, we take these rules seriously and ask that you do too.
- Absolutely no drinking or drug use is accepted on ANY of our activities
- Personal and group gear has to be respected – you break it and we all suffer
- Scouts are supposed to be nice people, we're respectful of others – scouts and non-scouts
- Don't take life too seriously, you'll never make it out alive
That money thing
There annual fees to be paid at the beginning of the year. After that we pay for our own camps & activities but we do our best to do it for as low a cost as possible.
Still interested?
You could drop by any Wednesday night to get a better idea of who we are and what we get up to, there may even be an event you could join in with.