Sweden was the proud host of this year’s event and an Army training site in the village of Rinkaby was picked, as was Hylands Park, Chelmsford 4 years before.
I, along with 6 others, had the honour of representing Hornchurch District, as part of the 40 strong GLNE Unit consisting of 4 leaders and 36 participants which was made up of a mixture of Explorers from across county.
Our three-week adventure began with a pre-event in Copenhagen, Denmark a chance for the 4,000 strong UK contingents to meet. After the short flight we quite literally hit the ground running only stopping briefly to drop off our bags at the hostel, which would be our home for the next few days, before we headed to the world famous Tivoli Gardens, which gave the inspiration for Walt Disney’s own theme park. The next day started with a walk across town to see the little mermaid and what we were told to be a unique tour of the river which turned out to be three extremely fast speed boats which did indeed give a unique, if not stomach churning, tour of the harbour.

After a short stop for lunch we headed to a sports centre to participate in some of numerous activities organised for us by UK Scouting such as climbing, hockey, bowling, marshal arts, basketball and zumba to name but a few (see if you can spot me on U-Tube)
The evening activity, hosted by Max & O B from Holly Oaks, was held in a warehouse and we saw performances by tribute bands and Alphabet who I am assured are a well-known band.
We travelled by coach from Denmark to Sweden for the main event.
The site for the Jamboree was huge and you could only fully appreciate the size when walking with a rucksack the 2km to your own camp site pitch, and most of day one on arrival was spent clearing the site of weeds and putting up our exclusive UK contingent tents and starting work on our gateway.
Nothing can really describe the opening ceremony unless you are lucky enough to have been to one. It was not necessarily the performances, music or Flag procession that made it, but more the atmosphere and anticipation of what was to follow in the next few days.
Over the next week the Unit took part in the organised modular activities, Global Development, People, Quest, Earth, Camp in Camp and Dream.
It would take too long to describe all these in detail but the highlight for me was a giant Maze they had constructed for Quest built in the forest around the site. Dreams -a lantern lit night walk through the forest recreating our senses from old age to birth. A first for a jamboree was camp in camp, a two day mini camp away from the main site and camping in the traditional Scandinavian way which for my patrol meant camping by the side of a lake and having fika the