Now a regular fixture on the Explorer programme, The Great Escape is a District run activity where teams of Explorers spend the whole weekend running around Broadstone Warren (on the edge of the Ashdown Forest) avoiding being flour-bombed by hunter teams (comprised of Network and Leaders) whilst successfully arriving at checkpoints at a set time to carry out a task. The whole weekend was themed as follows:
The year is 1982, the height of the Cold War. NATO and the Warsaw Pact are both building up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. It’s estimated that there are enough nuclear warheads to destroy the world 8 times over. Technology has never been so important, Ronald Reagan is developing ‘Star Wars’, (although it will remain secret for another year – until it’s announced publicly in 1983) a network of satellites that can destroy nuclear missiles harmlessly in space, thus creating a safety net around America and its closest allies. Understandably the allies are keen to help wherever possible, and British Aerospace Systems (BAE) have secretly been involved for the last two years in developing the crucial object tracking and flight path estimation module for the satellites.
BAE has been infiltrated by a Russian double agent by the name of Nitish Malicov, you might know him as Stuart Halls. He’s been working for us for the last 18 months, passing back false information to Russia on the progress of the target tracking module for the American ‘Star Wars’ programme. He was elevated to a high position of trust at BAE in order to facilitate this. Things took a turn for the worse last week when he turned on us and stole the prototype tracking module. He replaced it with a dummy one and bought himself 8 hours to escape. We believe he was extracted by the submarine that was detected off the coast of Norfolk at 04:30 on Thursday morning. Fortunately we have the upper hand as recent modifications to what’s commonly thought to be a polar ice-cap monitoring satellite means that the Americans were able to track the submarine to the Russian Naval base at Petrovskoje on a small island off the west coast of Russia in the Gulf of Finland. Your mission gentlemen, is to infiltrate the island, locate Malicov and the tracking device and put it beyond their use.
Tasks included transporting a missile around an obstacle course, navigating a minefield blindfolded, air rifle shooting, observation and radio messaging. The finale on Sunday afternoon was all-out ‘flour-bomb’ warfare. Survival over the weekend was key, avoiding detection, evading the hunter teams and eating army issue ration packs. This is probably one of the toughest challenges the Explorers do and is both mentally and physically tiring.
We entered three teams into the competition:- Inspector Basil and Chums (Albert, Matt, Chris, Miles and Sam), Double Double (Harvey W, Harvey C, Christian, Liam and Konrad) and Misfits (Patrick, Fearghal, Peter and Ruairi). All three teams did incredibly well. Inspector Basil came 2nd, technically only 3 points behind the winners, Misfits finished in 5th place whilst Double Double improved on their position from last year by not finishing in last place.
