To London city?
We decided as a Senior Section that we’d go up to London this year as a way of celebrating World Thinking Day at the London WAGGGS World Centre of Pax Lodge. The leaders planned out the few key points in the weekend and the young women then choose which activities they’d like to do and which shows we’d like to see.
Saturday
Today started at an ungodly hour all round, getting the early train to London Paddington, much to the confusion of the rest of the tourists and visitors. We headed into Victoria (much to the amusement of Vicky) before putting ourselves into the hands of each senior section member in turn as they navigated us around London – this made up Independent Living Phase 1 for everyone over the weekend.
We spent the morning tourist-ing, firstly visiting Girlguiding UK head quarters (and inevitably the shop), then Buckingham Palace where two of our unit took their promises as members of Senior Section – we tried out best to see the changing of the guard, but the unit members said they’d rather walk down The Mall and to Trafalgar Square and explore that instead.
Upon arriving in Trafalgar Square the lions seemed to need climbing – with a little help toget up onto the platform we pretty much couldn’t make it up onto the lions, but had a great time climbing around the area too. After lunch and investigating the Olympic Countdown clock in Trafalgar Square we set off for Pax Lodge, via Platform 9 and 3/4′s of course!
We were staying tonight at Pax Lodge, but had booked to join in with their Thinking Day Celebrations too – due to arriving slightly late as a result of some expert navigation – we took part in a selection of these activities including food tasting, learning some American Square dancing, visiting the badge display, making some Maori poi, learning a Argentinian song and trying a variety of new foods too. After a quick bit of down time (and allowing everyone’s feet to recover) we headed out to Giraffe for tea before going to see The Wizard of Oz in the west end – we were lucky enough to acquire much better seats in the auditorium thanks to Mary’s negotiations.
After the show we headed round to the stage door and met the stars of the show, including Russell Grant (who’d performed a little dance number during the show), before stopping off at Marine Ices for late night ice cream before going back to Pax Lodge to bed.
Sunday
After a lovely breakfast at Pax Lodge we went off towards the London Eye – due to a rather clever deal we got in on a two for the price of one deal and further more we got a pod to ourselves and a stunningly clear day to enjoy the view over London. Three more of our unit made their Promises as members of senior section whilst we were above London, and both Mary and Louise re-took their promises as adult leaders in the senior section too. We then hit the shops on Oxford Street – some looking for ball gowns and other accessories, whilst some of the older members went to the British Museum instead or indeed settled down in a local cafe! We had dinner at Paddington Station before heading home to Stroud, tired, sore footed but having had a great time! Our next trip away in going to be to The Big Gig 2012 at the end of March!
covers the Millennium Development Goals (set by the UN in 2000) and encourages us to raise awareness, advocate, fund-raise or volunteer to make a difference in one of the 8 areas. Hopefully this is going to be lots of fun as well as informative and ties in nicely with our London trip too.
