Chestnut Nature Park Hike, 26thJan2019

Written by Bryan Low, Sixer & Scribe

Today, we specially reported to school at 7.00 a.m. Why? Well, today, we would be hiking in Chestnut Nature Park! Mr Cheong said that it would be a 4.5 km long hike.

After I came to school, I saw that there were already quite a lot of scouts at the bus bay. I walked to my six and sat down at the front as I was the Sixer of my six, Platypus.

Once it was about 7.10, the senior Sixer, Min Rei, asked all of us to stand up as she was going to make sure that all of us present had handed in our reply slip to attend today’s hike.

After making sure that all of us had stood up, Min Rei instructed us to say “present” or “here” and then sit down whenever we heard our name being called.

It did not go that smoothly, but after a while, we had made sure that everyone had handed in their consent form reply slips. A few other scouts had arrived while we were in the process, and we counted them in too.

Once we were done with that, we did our headcount and made sure that everyone was accounted for.

A questionnaire regarding the questions we were supposed to answer along the hike was given out to all sixers and we got ready to board the buses.

We did so, and for the next 40 minutes or so, we rode to Chestnut Nature Park.

At Chestnut Nature Park, we got off the buses and assembled in Indian file, then started on our hike.

We first hiked at the Nirmal Hiking trail (I later found out), followed by the Northern Hiking trail and then the Southern Hiking trail.

At the Southern Hiking Trail, Mr Tan found a blank on the floor and picked it up. He showed it to us and we were very amazed that blanks could be found on the floor of this place. We asked Mr Tan why the blank could be found here and he told us that there are military training exercises taking place here and sometimes, blanks are dropped or not found and picked up and so can be found. He also told us that last time, when the soldiers were not asked to pick the blanks up, the place was littered with them.

At the end of our hike, we reached the PUB Waterworks at Chestnut Avenue and sat down to talk a little about how we were feeling and how we felt the hike was until now. We all agreed that we loved the hike and were still okay other than the fact that our legs were a little sore from the hiking.

Mr Cheong then told us that since the bus could not go to where we were dropped off again, we had to walk an extra 1 km to go to the location where we were to be picked up.

So, we planned to first eat lunch.

We walked back to near our starting location, the pump track, lay our groundsheets down, and started eating together.

After lunch, we packed up, and got ready for the walk to the main road.

We walked and walked. The walk did not seem to end and it went on and on. But eventually, we reached the main road and took the bus back.

At Henry Park, we were dismissed, the memories of the hike etched in our minds.