Catacombes and Pretzels, Cathedrals and Schnitzels, these are a few of our favourite things....

My turn to tell you about today! Personally it wasn’t a great start to the day, despite having the best night’s sleep and the best shower so far! I used the computers in the hostel lobby to find a map of Budapest, then the printer died. Meanwhile in the second floor kitchen Jennifer discovered that our milk had been stolen from the fridge, which was incredibly frustrating. Jennifer, Amy and Katie went to the supermarket to replace it (and to buy lunch), where they were told that they couldn’t pay by card! All in all this meant that we arrived at Westbahnoff train station with minutes to spare before our train to Salzburg.

While on the train to Salzburg everyone contributed to writing our nomination poems for Best Actress and best supporting actress. We had a total of 50 words per nomination:

“Award Entry for 2.5 Best Actress in a lead role – ICELAND MUDDLES"

Ode to Gemma
There’s a person we love who’s super cool,
But she’s one of us, it’s not like school.
She's pretty, clever and also witty,
And she's guided us round some lovely cities.
An organiser right from the start,
Taking our views she captured our hearts.

G regarious
E nergetic
M alleable
M uddle-loving
A dventurous


Award entry 2.6 Best Supporting Actress – ICELAND MUDDLES

Lizz Willott

There was a girl called Lizz,
She was an itinerary whizz
She planned and she planned,
And got us free trams,
And saved us from many a tizz.

Lizz is our supporting actress as she was super organised in planning, wrote to companies and gained weight for our segway tour.”

On arrival in Salzburg we had a good look around the old town, across the river. First stop was the catacombs in the hillside. The view from the top of the steps was amazing and we had several group photos with Peggy and the world flag. We also visited the cathedral which had 5 separate organs (which I think is quite unusual!)! Several of us bought a marzipan and chocolate pretzel which was very yummy!

While everyone was in the tourist information we ran into another stampede group! For me, the highlight was eating at ‘The Faithful Monkey’ in the evening, where our waiter was called Alex. This was highly disappointing to us as we had planned to name our tacky five Euro souvenir after our German waiter. We still called him Alex!

Lydia :-)

"Are we in Germany now?"

We are off to Vienna! At a very early start of approximately 3am we left the hostel in Copenhagen and entered the windy rainy streets to reach the station in which we would get to Copenhagen airport. Our journey on the train encountered many strange people, including those coming home from a night out, a couple of guys belted to one another and also a scary grumbler and after about 30 minutes we reached the airport. Checking in was fairly rapid – getting to print the luggage tags ourselves! We were all under the weight limit for the hold but Harriet did the team proud with a hefty 20.1kg bag, leaving us thinking of inventive ways to cut it back before the Ryanair flight in Hungary. We also contributed to meeting international scouts challenge by meeting some Danish scouts (with a Baden Powell hat!) off to a Jamboree in France who were then subjected to a photograph with us all, not a good thing for any of us at 5am! Due to the quick check in we had time to find some food, shop, have a mooch etc-meaning for Rachel getting a few hundred over priced pastries ;)

We soon boarded the plane, with a suspiciously looking young pilot and soon was in the air Vienna bound. The flight was only an hour and a bit so just in time for everyone to take a nap or read, we then landed in a rainy Vienna at approximately 8.30 , although it seemed like late afternoon by now! Lizz made the arrival a little more interesting with the quote by Lizz ‘Are we in Germany now?’ as everything seemed to be in German rather than Austrian! We collected our bags, almost picking up a cute dog left in the ‘bulking luggage’ en route and made our way to the S-Bahn which we got to Westbanoffe (Westbahnhof) station. It was here where the problems began, I may have wit and good looks ;) but I sure can’t read a map  We hadn’t walked too far before realising my sense of direction was poor and got some help from some fellow English tourists – we had gone the opposite direction! Luckily enough the hostel was not far from the station and we soon arrived to a variety of décor and merchandise with many a strawberry on, we had found our destination, the strawberry hostel. It was rucksacks away and off for the day as it was less than 24hours before we would leave again for Salzburg.

I began the walking tour of some of Vienna’s main attractions by walking to the Austrian Parliament, on the way we took in a lot of the Austrian culture, many of us indulging in chicken Schnitzel aka McDonald’s, cultural! After picking up some postcards, nomming our Mcdonalds treat, finding an amazing Hello Kitty shop (which was closed ), passing the Natural History museum and embracing some other lovely Viennese architecture we reached the parliament. The rain had picked up by now and so rainjackets and ponchos were out as we reached the building, outside displaying a fountain depicting Athena and also representing the 4 four rivers of the old Austro-Hungarian empire. After taking lots of photos and of course having the standard statue pose next to the fountain, we went inside the visitor centre where tours can be taken around the various rooms etc. We opted against this due to time but had a browse in the shop, bought some stamps and used the toilet facilities before leaving to visit Rathaus. Rathaus (City Hall) was an amazing Neo-gothic style building in which Viennese and part of Austrian Politics take place within. Currently there is a film festival out of the front staging hundreds of chairs and a massive screen in which films are played daily. Wearing our neckers we attract some attention from the public and Vienna was no different, a man helped us to understand Scouting in Austria a little bit (his memory being slightly warped from his childhood we think) and wished us well on the rest of our trip.

Many of us were feeling peckish for lunch as it had been about 9-10 hours since we had woken up and so we began to make our way into the main area. St Stephens platz was our destination but looking for food places under budget on the way we found some lovely shops selling decorated cakes, beautiful dresses and crafts etc proving that Vienna is quite a sophisticated city in most parts. We searched and searched for lunch and so in the end to stick under budget trip 2 to Mcdonald’s commenced, with Gem and Jennifer being slightly more health conscious and going to the nearby supermarket. Once refuelling at lunch (and using the Mcdonald’s straw for comic value) we had a quick browse in the square and picked up some breakfast for the next day –finding Austria’s value range ‘CLEVER’ I can assure you all now that our intelligence has improved after just one meal! We had plans for a guided tour at the Vienna State Opera at 4pm and so had a quick browse in the beautiful Cathedral – famously connected to the parish Mozart belonged to before making our to the Opera. Our travelling was interrupted by some filming on the streets for an Austrian movie, looks like we are much more than just local celebrities now! (One of the challenges!) The tour at the Vienna State Opera was really good, enabled by the period of time during the summer, which shuts shows performing on stage. The building was really beautiful and had lots of intricate details, it was nice to see both behind the scenes and the atmosphere of the opera from a spectators point of view. The tour and visit lasted just over an hour and we had planned to look around the Opera Museum as it was included in the ticket but once again we became a little bit of a celebrity. We saw in the distance a big crowd of scouts, they were from Taiwan being tour guided by two Austrian Scouts and seemed very excited about seeing us! We posed for lots of photos, answered a few questions and asked some similar ones about their trip and also each got given individual business style cards from every single Scout as well as being invited to a Jamboree next year in Taiwan celebrating 100 years of Scouting in China (yes we are already planning ;)!)

We made a quick dash as we had to make sure we had plenty of time to get to our next destination – the Viennese Scouts we were planning to meet. After a quick rest in Stadtpark – rapidly trying to repair feet ache and injury we hopped on a tram into the outskirts of the city centre to meet Christina and some other Scouts that we have been in correspondence with prior to Stampede. We sneakily got on the tram without paying or shall I say using our Guiding charm and soon enough we were at the stop for us. It was a little nerve racking, as we didn’t have exact address or any clue who or what it would be like! Turns out the Austrian Scouts were absolutely lovely and we had a very cultural evening, with nothing to worry about! There were 5 Austrian Scouts in total and they run Viscout 88, a group which caters for international scouts in Vienna ranging in age. They had prepared a feast for us, when we arrived they were in the process of making Apple Strudel which would be our desert, but first for the main! We were firstly shown how to make Wiener Schnitzel, the process involves dipping pieces of pork firstly in flour, then egg and finally in breadcrumbs, which then would be fried, they then let us loose to have a go, it becoming almost a race to see who could get their Schnitzel on the end plate first!
The schnitzel was served with a red berry sauce which complimented the pork well, salad and potatoes. It was so yummy and we definitely all were up for seconds! The next course was an unusual pasta style dish made from dough and a special cheese, that also was very yummy, we were told that Austrian beer is often drunk with it and so we were obliged to have a sip, slightly against our charter :-p!

Throughout dinner we discussed both Guiding and also Scouting in Austrian and after the main course we sang some campfire style songs, teaching them some and also disastrously attempting some German ones of theirs. ‘Once an Austrian went yodelling, on a mountain so highhh …’. All the signing and also very bad dancing helped us to build up our appetite for the amazing Strudel! We happily ate a few portions of the apple and fruit filled pastry before having some photos and giving them our gifts from England (some tea and shortbread) and then saying goodnight in the traditional ways, Brownie bells, taps and their equivalent.

Overall we had a lovely day in Vienna, definitely worth a longer visit, the weather was slightly disappointing with the rain and we were sure happy to get into the hostel and sleep at night.

Onwards and upwards to SALZBURG tomorrow, Auf Wiedersehn!

Amy xxx
(Wow longting blogting)

Masses of transport methods in Copenhagen

Ahhhh... a nice relaxing lie in! 8:30am... you can see how this trip is going to continue already! After waking up most of us remembered our rather abrupt awakening at about 2am by a murderous scream.... it turns out that lack of sleep causes nightmares! We had a leisurely few hours of getting our things together and making some breakfast. We made our way out at about 10:30 going past our favourite Danish bakery, picking up some bread for our picnic tea on route. We then caught the bus into town, and from there got onto the City Cirkel bus that took us all around Copenhagen. We saw the sights and Jennifer pointed out all the important landmarks. There were so many people on bikes, which I thought was really great, and being on an electric bus while seeing this made me realise how eco-friendly Copenhgen was compared to our capital city. We hopped off the bus at Rosenburg Castle, and walked through the park at the front. The Castle looked like something out of a fairytale, turrets included! We had a look around the inside - similarly preserved to many of the British National Trust properties - it was beautifully decorated, fit for the Kings and Queens that resided there. We were about to go down to the treasury to look at the Crown Jewels when one of the guards insisted that everyone moved away from the castle and sat on the grass. The alarm in the treasury had been set off! We all speculated over potential thefts and got excited about witnessing such an event... but in the end the alarms had been set off due to too much noise! We finally were allowed into the treasury and the crown jewels were spectacular! It was every girls dream… enough jewellery for something different every day of the year…. And that was excluding evening wear! We eventually left and wondered down into the main city centre and found a nice looking restaurant for lunch, Le Président. After a huge amount of food we made our way up the round tower, a viewpoint across Copenhagen, 36 metres high. On the inside was a never-ending ramp, continuing for over 200 metres if you walked up the outside, however just over 80 if you walked on the inside. The Danes on the train had told us it was because the King refused to walk up and always rode his horse to the top, the guide book however said it was to transport telescopes to the top when it was an observatory. The views were spectacular, we could see all the places we’d already visited plus every castle, palace, cathedral and church in sight stretching out for miles and miles. We walked to the Hans Christian Anderson museum where we leant about his life and got to read many of his tales, unfortunately most of which had sad endings. It was something fun that brought us all back to our childhoods. We then made the decision to explore Copenhagen in as many ways as possible in the short time we had there, so we caught the City Cirkel bus down to the harbour where we waited in the pouring rain for the harbour bus. We were thankful when it finally arrived, especially when we realised it was under cover! We got to see the few remaining landmarks we hadn’t yet explored including Christianhavn, the Library, and Opera, and once we’d made a circle of the harbour on the bus we jumped off and made our way to the much anticipated Tivoli. Here we were to ride the oldest roller coaster in the world! We got in, rushed to it and…. it was shut! The only ride that wasn’t operating due to the rain was the one we wanted to go on, typically! But in true guiding spirit we didn’t let it get us down and found another slightly more modern and slightly scarier roller coaster. We also went to find the little mermaid stature and said hello to her in our own special way!

We were all knackered by this point but still made time for our picnic tea in the park. Eventually, now very full, we wandered to the bus stop and made our way back to the hostel, knowing that in a few hours we would be leaving this beautiful city and be waiting for the metro to the airport for Vienna. Overall a really lovely jam-packed day, in a beautiful city. So much to take in, so little time!

That’s all for now!

Rachel xoxo

Scouts ahoy!!!

After a quick trip by Jennifer and myself to double check where the metro was in comparison to the hostel (we didn't want to do that at 4am before the plane!!) we stumbled across a gold mine! Ok, not really a gold mine, but an unexpected challenge filler, which is always a bonus! On our way into the hostel we had noticed there was a scout hut nextdoor, and knowing it's the summer holidays thought we'd have no chance of bumping into any of them. We posed the below photo "please share my Danish pastry with me"


Well little did we know they could share our Danish pastry! As I said, we were walking past on our way to find the metro, I noticed the gate was open, looked up at the door and it was open with a warm glowing light flowing. We looked a little closer and there was the silhouette of a man in a necker in the distance. Jumping with glee and making girly excited noises we walked through the gate and into the hut. The man greeted us as we explained who we were. He said they were rovers packing for their camp to Sweden. He was a bit busy so handed us over to Ana who is "good at English and talking to new people". We had a chat about scouting in Denmark, guiding in England and our stampede. They got us a leaflet about all the activity options (in Danish - we might not understand it but proof we met them!) and we said we'd just nip back to the hostel to get some badges. Everyone else was reading or relaxing in the room and a bit surprised by our bursting in so soon after we left. We grabbed our badges and ran back down to the hut. Amy had time to put a hoody and necker on over her pyjamas... only just! We then engulfed the scout hut and apologised for quadrupelling in numbers. There was then lots of excited jibber-jabbering between English and Danish and we were shown their twinning link with Barking and Dagenham and their various swaps, including an English rugby shirt.


This whole unplanned meeting reminded me just what guiding and scouting is, a 'brotherhood' (sorry for sounding corny). Its very rare that you can walk into a hut of strangers and just because you are wearing a necker you are accepted as a long lost cousin. People joke about dodgey dib dib dob handshakes - but at the end of the day wearing a necker shows you are part of a large large family and you automatically have something in common and a new friend, before you've even spoken. Just a bunch of welcoming like minded people, identified by a symbol.

Gem xx

Having a whale of a time!

Hi guys!
Well what an eventful night! I am so glad that I have been able to have the experience of travelling on an overnight train but I would safely say that I would quite happily not repeat it again!

After a hectic change in Cologne (which even Gem admits stressed her out!) we got on our sleeper train and we got seated in our harry potter style compartments – Gem and Jen in one and the rest of us in the other. Gem and Jen managed to get the first 4 signatures on Laurence (…more about Lawrence later) from some Copenhagiens, whilst some of us stood in front of the windows, wind in our hair, watching the city lights go by (Katie was very nervous that we were going to get limbs chopped off by passing trains/bridges – sorry Katie!). The ‘youngster’ carriage (Gem and Jen just made tutting/afronted sounds at me) got a bit carried away with all the excitement but it was so amusing trying to get changed and ready for bed with 6 of us in a space the size of a large cupboard. However we quickly became very unamused by the uncomfy nature of the seats we were meant to be sleeping in! I do not know how many times I woke up last night, it was definitely too many for me to count! I can remember waking up at 2am with Harriet and Katie and thinking that we had broken down because we kept stopping and starting at Hanover station ( I think) but it turns out that we were changing direction apparently?! At another point, maybe at about 5 or 6am, a man walked into our carriage which resulted in lots of jumping and screaming particularly from Harriet, to which he responded ‘don’t worry, don’t worry, it’s all under control’ which just resulted in lots of confusion, had something not been in control before?. Turns out he was a policy man checking that we weren’t hiding any extras. I don’t think he was expecting the screams that greeted him.

Anyway, on to today. Today we have had a relaxing day so we could rejuvenate ourselves from last night! Jen has been our tour guide so we popped into the tourist information to get our free maps of Copenhagen before heading off to the hostel on the bus. The people are really nice here, demonstrated by the lovely bus driver who told us which bus stop to get off at and also the women who lent out her window to give us directions this afternoon when we couldn’t find the hostel. Also a man at the supermarket stopped to talk to us. I like the fact that lots of people stop to talk to us when we are wearing our guide uniform.

When we got to the Hostel we spotted some guides wearing centenary tops, turns out there are 19 guides and senior section members from Kent area staying here for two weeks and there is also a scout hut right next door to the hostel! We are hoping that we can catch some Denmarkish scouts going in or out at some point.

This afternoon after the supermarket we decided to go swimming, just round the corner from here as we were all really hot! It was amazing! It had slides and floats and flippers and it was just generally cool! I’m pretty sure we all felt like kids again!

Amy, Rachel and Jen just cooked pasta salad for dinner. I had seconds (big deal for me! I have to think about those segways!) so it must have been good! I think we are just having a relax from now on and gonna have an early night. Amy is eating the epic danish pastry that her, Harriet and Rachel bought earlier ( I had one too! A Danish pastry in Denmark- Amazing!), Gem and Jen are sorting finance stuff and Lydia and Katie are postcarding and diarying. Harriet is already in PJ’s (its 8.30pm).

I hope that was too muddled, I’m sure it isn’t as fluent as Jens!
Ta ra for now,
Lizz xxx

P.S I hear that is a year today since we said goodbye to all our Roverway friends at the closing ceremony! Can’t believe it has been so long!

Pareeeeeee!

After an early start for all of us, varying from 1am to 4am, we all met in our wonderful Muddles multicolour uniform at St Pancras International for the first leg of our journey. After Lydia’s mum had taken a couple of photos for us we checked in.


Now having been excited about going on the Eurostar for the first time I must say I actually slept through most of the journey. Apparently though Rachel and Gemma talked to another stampede group, Amy did her makeup, Lizz slept (clearly that runs in the family), Harriet played the idiot game(?!) and Lydia ate breakfast while Katie read. We got to Pareeeeee at 10:17 English time, 11:17 French time. As we needed to be at the embassy at 11:45 it was then a mad dash to the metro.

Now I should point out that this was not only a need to get the embassy fast but a bit of a competition. You see the other group which we met on the train were getting to the embassy by taxi and we were determined that public transport would be both cheaper and faster – we don’t have money to burn on taxis!

So we arrived at Pareeeee gare du nord and headed straight for left luggage. Crammed 8 bags into 2 lockers (we were very pleased with this) and then ran for the metro. Then DISASTER there were MEGA MEGA QUEUES for the ticket machines! So being the genii that we are we split into 2 groups with one Frenchish speaker in each to try buying some tickets. Then super geniuses Lydia and Katie spotted that the little shop sold carnets of tickets which is what we wanted, thus skipping the whole queuing and having to then try using a ticket machine thing!

So 2 metro rides later (scary doors open before the train stops) we arrived at Madeleine metro station and headed for the embassy, We found a road with lots of embassies and walked along until one embassy made us cross the road because they wouldn’t let us use their pavement. Turns out it was ours. We got chaperoned back across the road by Rolph from the sound of music and we showed our invitations and passports and were allowed in. We felt a little out of place looking rather hot and slightly grubby in what is essentially a MASSIVE stately home (be warned everyone now has aspirations of becoming a British ambassador).

We were the 3rd to last group to arrive, but weren’t too long after 12 noon. Another group turned up slightly after us, but to our surprise the group who had taken the taxis didn’t surface till a long time later, clearly public transport is the way to go!

After a speech by the British ambassador (when everyone went quiet Lizz managed a little faux pas –clearly lack of sleep was getting the better of her) and another by the chief commissioner for the Midlands region we sat down to have our picnic lunches. While doing this each group also had their photo taken. We were BY FAR the best looking group in our rainbow uniform. We looked AMAZING in our multicoloured hoodies (and I don’t mean to brag…). We had various photos in lots of different places in the house and gardens.

After spending a while at the embassy we headed off, with the wonderful Rachel as tour guide, to get a taste of Pareeeee. We went through Place de la Concorde – where we had various photos with statues, then Jardins de Tuieries and then Paris Plage- a series of funny beach type things along the river Seine, with very few actually having sand! Here we completed the country challenge for France – a boat ride on the Seine, although it was actually a little toy boat….

From here we went to Place de Vosges – the oldest square in Paris and had a little rest – which was much appreciated by all, it has been such a humid day and everyone was rather worn out by this point. The intention was to go to Musee Carnavalet next, however by the time we got there it was going to be a waste of time putting our bags in the cloakroom only to have to leave 10 minutes later so we decided to give it a miss.

We decided to make up for this loss of culture with some French food on the way back to the station so we stopped and practised our best French to get some crepes, slushi drinks and glace (ice cream). Back at the station we had a bit of a wander, got some more water, stamps for postcards, butter (!!!) and retrieved our bags from the super hot locker room ready to board the 18:01 train to Colonge.

We are now sat on the train (although won’t be when we post this…) in the middle of Belgium, having just passed through Brussels. We tried to leave Harriet and Lydia behind in their quest to stand on Belgium soil, but failed :P We are enjoying the slightly more comfortable and spacious seats of these longer distance trains and I think we have now each eaten most of our packed dinners.

The rest of this journey will be spent by most of us trying NOT to sleep (Rachel, Amy, Harriet, Lydia and Lizz are Sudukoing) so that we can sleep as well as possible on our next train to Copenhagen…fingers crossed we’ll get a reasonably good nights sleep.

I think that’s it for now. Keep following us – we’ll update as often as we can…

Jennifer x

Less than 24 hours!

Well it's less than 24 hours now - this time tomorrow we'll be under the sea heading for Paris!

In Paris we'll be having lunch at the British Embassy with all the other stampede teams (a chance to show off our wonderful rainbow hoodies and polos too!) and hopefully we'll also be able to see some of the other sites of Paris before heading off on our longest leg of the journey - Paris to Copenhagen via train...

Several months of planning finally come into fruition tomorrow. Everyone has put so much work into choosing hostels, thinking about meals and transport and making country plans, fingers crossed it will all go to plan...

We hope to update this blog where and when we can so keep checking back.

Bon Vogage! (or are you meant to say that to us?)