In July 1971, the Greater London Scouts travelled on a cruise to Scandinavia...

On Saturday, 24th July,around 1400 Scouts from the Greater London area met at Liverpool street station to board coaches to take them to Tilbury docks in the east of London.

There, we boarded the S.S. Nevasa, and we left around 16:00.

The trip was to include Gothenburg, Malmo, Copenhagen and Oslo, returning to London on Monday, 2nd August.

The Malmo part was particularly interesting as we each teamed-up with different scouting families from Malmo and spent the day with them.

Each day on board ship, there was a newsletter produced and distributed at breakfast time. In those days, that must have meant a lot of typing and a lot of duplicating, presumably on one of those old cylindrical copiers!

I was a Patrol Leader of  White Patrol, 1 troop, based in Fraser Dormitory on D-Deck (forward, starboard).

Others in the troop were:

• Alan Slade
• Phil Cranfield
• Eric Green
• Denis Hylton
• Paul Mennall
• Mark Summerfield
• Douglas Turney

This is according to a letter I received from Reg Winchester 'Q' in March 1973. 'Q' was our leader during the cruise.

I'm sorry to say I don't remember Mark or Douglas although I remember everyone else.

Another scout that was part of the group although maybe not in the patrol was Mick Sheehan.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be many - if any - pictures of the trip.

More to come.. but if you were involved, I'd be very interested to hear from you..