A hectic night down Coxwood tonight. By the time we'd got everyone down in Dee lodge and sorted it was 7.30, so we had three fairly quick sessions of shooting. Everyone got two goes though. Some struggled cocking the gun, and there were quite a few unharmed targets, but it was a good start to the sport.

Thanks to Rod, Gethin and Sam who covered map reading while I was having fun shooting!

Welcome to Joshua and Dominic who've joined the Troop.

1st Rhosnesni have been really active.

I've heard that the Frost Camp in Delamere was really good. Well done to the Scouts for not breaking anything on the ski slopes!

Also a good night doing pancakes plus saw and axe skills.

Thanks to the other Leaders for running the show while I was having a bit of a break in the French Alps!

We went along to the Racecourse to watch the rugby last week. It was the Crusaders first gain at their new home of Wrexham, and they were playing last season's champions, so a tough match.

Crusaders did really well, hanging on at 6-6 for most of the match, but they eventually lost 6-34.

Thanks a massive amount to everyone who brought in sponsor money and donations on Friday. We blew away our target of 490 and will be able to give even more help to the fantastic charity ShelterBox.

We have 10 Scouts sleeping rough at the back of the hut, but it wasn't all hardship as we played on the Wii, had a campfire and watched a few DVDs before heading out into the cold.

In Scouts first we also looked at the work of ShelterBox which will go towards the ShelterBox Challenge badge.

We handed out a letter on Friday giving details of a sponsored sleep out we're doing next week - the 22nd January - to raise money for ShelterBox, one of the charities that is giving practical help to the people of Haiti.

Click here for a letter about the event

Click here for a sponsor form

We also handed out this term's newsletter.

Click here for January's newsletter

Tonight we impressed on the Scouts that the place where we meet most Friday nights is very much their hut, and as such they should share the responsibility for it's upkeep. So, we're going to spend one night each year on a hut work party.

We've just had some new noticeboards, but they were a bit grey, so we spent tonight painting them, and the new Scout cupboard door. Looks a lot better now.

What a great start to the year. While the rest of the country ground to a halt due to the snow, we Scouts showed that with good preparation and planning a bit of weather shouldn't get in the way of a fun weekend.

We joined 2,000 other Scouts and Explorer Scouts at the home of Scouting, Gilwell Park, for a freezing but fun camp with tons of activities and tons of snow!

We rounded off the year with not many Scouts, but those that came put their all into transforming the hut into the Top of the Pops studio, then performing their favourite songs. Fantastic! We'll get the video online soon.

We didn't manage to get the hospital visit sorted, so instead we went out onto the street and surveyed the whole of Dean Road and Borras Park road, creating three maps on rolls of wallpaper.

Well done to Zack and Geraint for standing up in front of several hundred people to do the readings, and to Laura for helping provide the music, at tonight's District Carol Service.

A good turnout from the whole Troop as well!

We finished off the IT badge tonight - all Scouts need to email Moz (wxmmoz@gmail.com) to complete the requirements.

We went on a bit of a walk tonight, but everywhere we went their were people dying on the path. Luckily they weren't really dying - they were Leaders faking injuries that the Scouts had to deal with.

Some great acting from the Leaders, and the Scouts did really well to deal with most of it.

The Scouts had a project to do tonight based on next year's summer camp to Chamboree.

The task was to design a logo, take some photos, make a poster to promote the camp and lots of other things that we ended up not having time for - so we'll finish it off in a couple of week's time.

The Scouts' timekeeping and teamwork skills were tested last night when we gave two teams the task of planning and implementing a recruitment campaign for Cub Leaders.

They had to make a short advert and a poster. 'Denominator' made a great poster (below), but no advert, while 'Winners' made a bad advert and a bad poster, but at least completed both parts of the task, and so their name ended up being appropriate. Naz, the PM, was hired by Sir Jimmy Sugarlump.

We had a great weekend at Blackwell Adventure - and great value for money due to their free camping offer.

Loads of activities were on offer - we started off the high ropes all aboard activity, which tested a few Scouts' nerves, then after cooking our lunch backwoods style, we did grass sledging and outdoor climbing.

Terrible weather overnight didn't stop us and after breakfast we did our last activity, pedal karts.

We were inspired tonight by the theme of candles. The Scouts played a game with candles, cooked miniature pancakes with candles and even made their own candles.

We did a couple of activities on an international theme tonight, firstly doing a session on Postcrossing where the Scouts send postcards around the world. One of the highlights from last time was when a postcard from Stephen sent to Taiwan got a reply despite the lady who wrote back being from an area that had suffered terrible floods.

Then we looked at how difficult it is in some parts of the world to get clean water. Gething kindly provided each Patrol with a bowl of muddy water and the Scouts attempted to filter it into clean water.

I wasn't in Scouts tonight as I was attending the Clwyd Area Scouts' Awards evening in St Asaph, at which Jordan and Fraser were receiving their Chief Scout's Gold Awards from the Lord Lieutenant.

Apparently though lots of the Scouts brought along something to show and talked about their hobbies, and it was a good evening. Well done everyone.

We had a good evening at Clay's Farm Golf Centre where we used their driving range. It's amazing how quickly Scouts can get through several hundred golf balls!

During the night we also got the Scouts to help write the Troop Code of Conduct. They started by writing down as many examples of bad behaviour they could think of - some found this easier than others!

If we've sparked an interest in golf amongst any of the Scouts, Clays is a great place to go - here are the prices for the driving range...

A night of smoothies and exercises tonight for our Health night.

First though, we had a bit of a change around with the Patrols, and the introduction of a third Patrol which the Scouts decided should be called 'Tigers'. The Patrols are now...

The top two are Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader respectively.