GUIDER Joyce Fitzgerald was certainly prepared when we asked for your old scouting photos to mark the movement's centenary.

She lent Looking Back a family scrapbook, with stories and pictures of her little brother David Green, when he was a cub and scout in the sixties.

Here he is, bottom left, taking part in an annual adventure test in 1968, when 80 scouts from 12 Blackburn troops covered a course, starting at Hoghton Bottoms and ending at Witton Park.

During the day they had to take part in tests, including first aid, decoding messages, pitching tents, and wood carving.

In this photograph Mr E Johnson, St John's Scout leader, watched lads carry out knot-tying. From the left they are Timothy Taylor, David, Peter Clarke, Peter Briggs and Russell Boyd.

Here's David again, on the left, with Paul Dorricott, both of Audley Range Congregational Church Scouts, before the St George's Day parade by 2,000 young people in 1969.

Later that year the pack went on a 16-day summer camp to Kirkdale Port, Gatehouse of Fleet, setting out at 6am to travel to Scotland, where strong winds and heavy rain greeted their arrival.

But by 7.30am the following morning they had all been for a swim in the sea, and their days were spent hiking, doing camp duties and games, climbing mountains, and exploring the beach for smugglers' caves. They also held an experimental cookery competition, cooking in a biscuit tin oven and producing such dishes as meat pie and spaghetti bolognese, mixed grill and steamed jam sponge.

Two years later, the pack went off on a mystery holiday, with none of the scouts and venture scouts, or their parents - they could open details of the destination once the lads had set off - having no idea where they were headed. It turned out to be Guernsey, and leaders R Dorricott, Ian Beardsworth and Norman Maudsley had organised a packed programme - and had even packed the group's band equipment.

l Thanks, too, to Mr Frank Gouldsbrough who sent in this 1938 photograph of one of the gang shows regularly produced by St Thomas' Scout Group, Blackburn.