Survival Weekend

Bear Grills would be proud!

And we’re back in the field! This weekend was survival weekend for the SVS, which meant the Ventures (and leaders!) could only take the bare necessities- basically some water, survival bag, penknife and first aid kit- otherwise, the world around them was their oyster!

Good ol' flint!

After a kit inspection by the VSL and AVSL (where it was found that some funny Ventures thought they could take luxuries like coffee and sugar!), we made our way to Ghar il-Kbir, which would serve as the main base for the weekend. That night we made a fire and kept it going the whole night, while running a Stag Duty system. VS Chris also decided it would be nice to make carob syrup, or “Gulepp” in Maltese (sometimes confused with Gillette by some of us). Some of us didn’t go anywhere near it, other braver folk drank it all night long!

Helping Griz with the "Gulepp"

As soon as we got up the next day we got straight to work. Two of us carried out reconnaissance within the immediate surroundings, whilst the others kept the fire going for lunch. The area around Ghar il-Kbir is quite unforgiving with regards to food collection, but nonetheless the SVS managed to make a soup out of what they found. With the help of an OXO cube, we made a fennel, Saghtar and rocket soup.

Fennel soup coming to a boil in a handy survival tin...

After lunch two of us collected Baghjtar tax-xewk to help keep us going, and then it was time for more reconnaissance. That night we made another survival soup, this time with some rather more interesting and nutritious ingredients than those we found earlier.

Teeeerrance keepin the fire nice n warm..

With the fire going all night and warm soup to keep the night watch awake, Sunday morning was a rather slow one. By around eleven o’clock we were out of the cave and went for a well deserved Fenkata along with Cremona who met us in Rabat to join in on the pig-out.

"SVS Habitat"

The next week the Unit prepared an abseiling session with the troop, more on that in the next post!

Mo$es