I have been in Scouting since I was eight and I have had lots of fun and made some great friends along the way. Recently, I have found out I'm going to Japan in 2015 as part of Northumberland's Jamboree Unit in the UK Contingent for the World Scout Jamboree! Yaaay!

We've got two years to prepare and raise funds for our trip. This means there's a lot of events and activities organised by the unit to build up our teamwork and organise ourselves. Last weekend, we had our first group camp at Hawkhirst, Kielder where everyone met properly for the first time.

I'm in two eight man teams, a tent team and an activity team. Everyone was really friendly and I've already made great friends with Scouts who were strangers to me before the first camp. We also did loads of activities like pioneering and shelter building which helped to break the ice and the banter in the tent groups was brilliant.

This first camp has given me a real taster of what's to come. Now I can't wait until 2015!

This July I went to Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, with my family where we met up with my aunt, who lives there. We did some pretty cool things like watching turtles lay their eggs - awesome; crocodiles jumping - snappy; camping in the outback in an Aussie bivvy called a swag bag; seeing an awesome array of wildlife - parrots, wallabies, monitors; and experiencing Aboriginal culture. However, this isn't the main topic of my post. That stuff was brilliant but there is something really special in the north of Australia - the Great Barrier Reef of course. You could see it as a once in a lifetime opportunity (unless you decide to visit again!).

I had just passed my PADI Open Water dive course, meaning that I can dive in any sea in the world all the way down to 18 metres.

The Great Barrier Reef goes almost right the way round the north eastern coast of Australia and is made up of separate reefs that are packed close together rather than in one continuous stretch. The best dive location is Cairns but you don't always have to dive to see the sea life as you can also snorkel. My sister and mum went snorkelling whereas Dad & I were dive buddies. We went out to the reef on a catamaran and were lucky to be upgraded to a better boat and trip.

We visited two dive sites - each dive was 40 minutes. Once in the water, I completely forgot about life above and took in all the sea and plant life. We saw fish in abundance especially parrotfish, clownfish and angelfish; a shark; two green sea turtles; Christmas tree worms (worms that retract back into their holes when we waved at them); giant clams; sea cucumbers (they squirt out smelly white liquid when attacked); sting rays; a conch and so much more! The plant life was amazing too, I had never seen so many corals ever before! It was fantastic and undoubtedly one of the best things I have ever done.

If anyone is interested in diving I would highly recommend you do the PADI course because the things you can do and see are unbelievable. It doesn't even take that long to complete - mine took 6 weeks.

Unfortunately, I don't have many underwater pictures as I don't have a dive camera but here are a couple. The rest are of the rest of our fantastic trip.

Ardeche Adventure

My school has an annual Yellow Week (last week of the school year), where students go off timetable and enjoy a range of fun activities such as: visiting local fairgrounds, making chocolate, surfing in the North Sea (FREEZING!) and so many more. In addition you can go on a trip to Italy or even America for about ten days. As I am new to the school, this was my first Yellow Week and I went on the Ardeche Adventure. We: kayaked, canoed two days down the Ardeche River, rock climbed, caved, mountain biked, built rafts and visited the nearby city of Avignon. Also, most of my friends were going: Charlie, Matthew, Ben, Chris, Roxanne, Katia, Jasmine, Andrew, Joey, Finley, Elliott and Dan. It sounded great but how were we going to get there?

Unfortunately, a 26 hour coach ride was the answer but it was made slightly better by the fact that all my friends were there. Once we had arrived at our PGL site we were absolutely exhausted from sitting and fell asleep instantly! The day after was our first activity, kayaking. It was brilliant! Everyone fell in and one of the instructors sneaked up on us and capsized the boats before paddling away and choosing his next victim. We did a few rapids and also swam. Canoeing was up next and was almost the same as kayaking but each boat had two people. I went in the same boat as Matthew and it was awesome. These boats were a bit more cumbersome than the kayaks but it meant that the crashes and capsizes were even better to watch. We arrived at our bivouac site without capsizing once. The bivouac was quite basic, with our sleeping bags on top of carry mats with a massive tarpaulin as a roof. I slept in a ditch! At the site we saw a wild boar and also a scorpion. The next day we set off to complete our two day river descent. After, laughing a lot at others falling in, the tables turned as Matthew & I capsized twice but it was obviously the boat's fault and not ours! We then made it to shore where we waved goodbye to the river but hello to rock climbing and caving.

I had never done caving before and the idea of crawling through tight spaces underground sounded quite daunting, but boy was I wrong! It was great and really thrilling. It was also quite slippy so a lot of people fell over. We then switched over to rock climbing which wasn't too technical but quite tough in about 30 degrees Celsius.

On the last full day, we went to Avignon. It was a lovely little city to explore. Best of all we explored on our own. It was a very old, picturesque city that loved theatre more than anything else-apart from tourists. It was great especially when we bought ice cream from a small parlour whose owner we had assumed to be French but actually, he came from Bristol. He told us quite plainly our French was rubbish! The last day had arrived and so had Elliott's birthday. We woke him up around 6 o'clock and gave him ridiculous presents such as: a recorder, a leopard print clutch bag, a bright purple belt and a Tintin book in French. We then mountain biked and built rafts but we knew it was soon time to leave. Around 5 o'clock we left for home but we brought back awesome memories and experiences.

Here are a few pictures and videos of what we did.