A favourite day in the Girlguiding Kent Weald Calendar for Guides and Senior Section is Challenge Invicta. This seven mile challenge hike is a competition and the announcement of the winner is always a very exciting moment for girls and their leaders.
This years hike was held in the area around Langton Green, just outside of Tunbridge Wells. 34 Guide teams and 9 Senior Section teams totaling 189 girls taking part in the days activities which tested their team work, map reading skills and problems solving skills. The winning team for Guides was 2nd Coxheath who successfully retained the trophy from 2016 and Shadwell Senior Section who won for the first time.
Activities for the day were based around local charities with teams starting the day by making donations for Nourish, a community foodbank in Tunbridge Wells. Once the hike had started they completed challenges approximately every mile including first aid for Kent Air Ambulance, brain puzzles for Age UK, making juggling balls and a quiz about Demelza House, completing a scavenger hunt for Kent Search and Rescue, making poppies with only one hand for Royal British Legion, no cook cooking for Weald Lions and Lionesses and making a washing up stand for someone with disabilities for Scope.
Challenge Invicta not only offers girls the chance to be independent and have fun in the countryside but it also offers Leaders of each Division time to get to know each other (and eat bacon sandwiches!).
Sophie, one of the winning Shadwell Senior Section teams said:
“This year we had amazing fun on Challenge Invicta. We were very lucky to be in our dream team: Abbie our fabulous team leader, Sarah our entertainer with story-time, Hattie our genius map reader and Sophie our double-decker carrier. We started off at Base 3 with our first challenge and a high-paced walk that we kept up all the way to the end.
We thoroughly enjoyed every challenge and found that as a team we each had a different skill to contribute, helping us do our very best at each station. The walking was as – if not even better – fun as each challenge, as we got a great chance to catch up with each other and enjoy many laughs together. But by far one of the best parts of our day was seeing Sybil, our guide leader, with a huge smile of pride on her face as we went up to collect our first prize. We were really excited to win and it put the icing on the cake of a fabulous day of guiding!”
Winning Senior Section Team – Shadwell Senior Section
