URSULA CUMMINGS was born in 1924 and interviewed by Kendal Oral History Group in 1998.

Kendal Oral History Group aims to compile a picture of earlier times through the recorded memories of the area’s older residents.

IN 1942 I got talking with Miss Dinsdale, about Guides and Brownies.

I’d never been a Brownie or Guide. I never was in anything like that, and she said she was short of somebody to help so I think I said: “Well I wouldn’t mind helping.” So that was how I started doing Brownies.

I had a blue uniform, which was just a tunic dress, a leather belt with a buckle, and then badges of course.

Brownies used to only loan their uniform in those days. They used to pay about half a crown for the loan of a uniform. And that was just a tunic dress and a belt oh, and a brown little sort of woolly hat.

And Guides really was the same, only bigger in those days until they got to having skirts and blouses and things like that.

If they went to camp they always had what they called camp overalls, which were just a loose uniform really. Of course, if you were at camp you always went to church on the Sunday morning. That was the done thing you went to the church wherever you were at, for church parade.

We used to got to Tarn Hows for camps quite a lot. That was a hut which belonged to Sir Samuel Scott from the Provincial and we used to have tents as well.

We’ve camped at Wray Castle, at Grasmere and Silverdale. We used to have Barnes and Fazackerly from Skelsmergh, who used to have a cattle wagon because they used to take everything, all the tents and equipment and probably quite a lot of the food for us.

We always biked everywhere. We biked up to Tarn Hows and I biked up to Ullswater, Troutbeck and down to Sandside and the Silverdale area.

We couldn’t afford the bus fares so we would just take a rucksack on our back and off we would go.

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