Hello!
My name is Bee - I am a Guide and Rainbow Leader originally from County Durham, UK. I started this blog out of an interest in learning HTML and CSS, and a desire to document my life in Guiding (and soon in Scouting too!). I am currently working towards my Queen's Guide Award - hopefully I'll be done by December 2026!
My first experience of Guiding was as a Brownie. I remember making my promise in from of the Life Science Centre in Newcastle - I was adamant I'd memorised it and didn't need Brown Owl to help... but then forgot to promise to help other people! Whoops! I came home that day very serious; I was a "proper Brownie" now. We spent a lot of the day in and around the planetarium, earning us all our Stargazer badge. I was hooked. I immediately started working towards as many interest badges as I could muster, though didn't quite manage to earn the full set.
While our district had both "Monday Brownies" and "Tuesday Brownies", there was only one Guide unit. Many of my school friends joined the dark side (Scouts), so I ended up as the only one from my high school in the unit. This was difficult at first, but I quickly joined a group of friends who all knew each other from another local school. I don't remember much of the Go for Its programme in Guides, but I do remember making smoothies in my patrol... and the mess that followed when we forgot to put the lid on the blender. My Guide promise also didn't pass without incident. While camping at Waddow Hall, we decided that I should make my promise while we canoeing. On the day, while in the middle of the river, my leader reminded me that such a promise should be made stood up. I managed to keep my balance and receive my badge, however on the return journey, while trying to leave the boat, we capsized, dunking me, my leader, and my new shiny blue promise badge. While we survived, my poor badge is still floating somewhere in the River Ribble...
After Guides, I had to move district since ours didn't have their own Ranger unit. It was a very small group and, after a year, was only made up of my friends from Guides. Due to when birthdays fell, I moved up a term before the rest of the group and decided to hold off on making my Ranger promise until they joined me. We made our promise on a very cold evening in February while snow tubing at Silksworth Ski Slope in Sunderland. While we did slightly have to scream it to hear each other over the rushing wind, there were no missed words or lost badges, so I'd count it as a success!
My Rangers experience was impacted by COVID-19 and the UK lockdown, so we spent quite a few months meeting over zoom. I was encouraged to start work on my Queen's Guide Award at that time, but struggled to come up with enough ideas that I could complete alongside my A-Levels and that I could afford to do. I ended up moving to university without starting the award. At the start of my studies, I had no interest in volunteering. But during 2nd year, I felt I really missed Guiding and decided to start volunteering. Though I was nervous about running a Rainbow unit (as I'd never been in one myself), I really enjoyed working with my group and honestly can't imagine Brownies or Guides being as fun to run. By December 2025, the Queen's Guide Award syllabus had changed from when I was Ranger and I now had more time and money to spend on completing the award. At time of writing (July 2026) I've made most of my way through it, and expect to be done by Christmas!