Hatch Warren Igloo

15th December 2017

About the Igloo

It’s Christmas sleep-over time for the Hatch Warren Scouts. Inspired by a visit from HSX, and keen to supersize their challenge to “Build an Igloo for you and a friend”, we borrowed Tadley Scout’s HQ and got to work. Since September we had been collecting and washing out over a thousand 4 pint milk cartons which ensured we had enough “blocks” (and that our bones were nice and strong)!

The result of 6 hours building time, with the troop working in shifts, was a magnificent 2.8 metre diameter structure. It included a chair, table and decorated entrance arch. We used 400 glue sticks applied with 4 glue guns to hold it all together.

Once complete, the chilly hideout was made homely with fairy lights that glowed through the cartons and really showed off the multi-coloured bottle top interior. The addition of our troop sign personalised our creation.

Sharing our progress on Twitter and Facebook got us some unexpected encouragement and praise, even after our completion at 2am.

While the igloo build was the centre piece of our Christmas sleep-over we still managed to find time, and space, to have three craft stations, a games room and a movie on the ceiling!

Pizza for dinner, hot chocolate and bacon butties for breakfast kept the tiredness at bay as we collapsed our plastic paradise and started the clean-up and recycling process.

The whole 14 hour igloo process can be seen in time lapse below…

We have been amazed, and delighted, with the social media response. We even have had re-tweets or replies from HSX themselves and Scout Ambassadors, Julia Bradbury, Dwayne Fields, Steve Backshall and Alistair Bruce. Even the top man, Chief Scout Bear Grylls used us as an example of the great things that happen in Scouting.

Our Scout Leader, Chris Bamber, says that the most impressive thing was the way we applied ourselves in taking up the challenge but mainly in the enthusiasm shown all night when constructing the igloo!

He added that he is very pleased to no longer have his kitchen and garage full of milk cartons in various states of cleanliness!