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I arrived at the 22nd World Scout Jamboree in Sweden knowing nobody else there. I then spent a week making tables & benches and writing silly messages underneath with a Danish guy who’d been set to work in my team. When I was heading off home Vilhelm handed me a leaflet for some strange sounding camp in Germany saying we should meet up again there.

Several months later Vilhelm sent me a reminder about it and I decided to sign up for IMWe 2012 not really knowing what I was letting myself in for.

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Luckily there was one other person going from England, amazingly also from Oxford. Turns out Florian was actually an Austrian scout, but it was still very useful to have someone to meet up with beforehand and then on the journey someone who knew where they were going (otherwise I probably would have ended up on the wrong side of Germany, or at least got lost in Rieneck!)

And what happened at my first IMWe? I played a 1920s press photographer, I built parachutes, planes and gliders, I threw things off the roof, set things on fire, hunted geocaches under bridges, played games, sang songs, spent far too many hours in the basement, made many new friends and had to leave at the end far too early for my liking!

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What happened next? Well I came back for more in 2013 and now I’m heading back for thirds and this time I’ll be dragging another UK scout with me!

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I look forward to many more years to come.

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The photo is of Vilhelm and me at the campfire in 2012. It’s all his fault that I’m an IMWean now!