To ask if you were a brownie or a guide?

I was a Brownie and it was good fun. Loved pack holiday.

Moved to Guides and it was rubbish. Started every session setting up our patrol tables which involved artfully arranging a box of old tat including a photo of Olive Baden Powell and some pine cones.

My mother, for reasons best known to herself, refused to buy me a uniform. This meant that I wasn't allowed to take part in any badge-related activity and I spent week after week in the new girls group "learning" the promise again and again.

Then we had a weekend camp which was utterly feral. One girl didn't get any food all weekend. (She was at school with me and told me on the Monday).

My kids went to Woodcraft Folk and I'm still involved with that

I did. But I was only interested in getting badges in cooking and acting. After that I quit.

Brownies are not scouts.

Unfortunately not. We lived rurally and there was no way to get there.

I was a Brownie! My DD did Rainbows and is in Brownies now - I think it's such a good group that lets her experience and do lots of different things!

Yes I know that, but it did exist.

Rainbows might have existed, but that doesn't mean everyone had a local rainbow unit. I didn't.

I was a Rainbow and a Guide. A lot of people younger than me say there wasn't Rainbows, but there definitely was since 1987- I was there in 1994.

I was a Brownie helper for a while and now I volunteer at Rainbows.

My stepdaughter is a Ranger and my daughter is a Rainbow.

I think it's the best club/activity you can send your daughter to in the UK. The confidence that they gain and range of activities is superb, especially against the price point.

You've just unlocked a memory for me-I wasn't ever a brownie or guide, I didn't like other kids or want anything to do with them-was happy staying at home reading, but my Mum worked and would send me to an after school club (I don't know where my Dad was, maybe at work too) and we played ladders. I HATED all the organised games and ladders especially. I didn't have the coordination for it and was always stamping on people as they ran. It's odd, because as an adult my coordination is absolutely fine and I am as sure-footed as a mountain goat having been a fell-runner for a long time. I think I was just so so nervous in a room full of kids I didn't know, in a place I was totally out of my comfort zone. We did the 'shady bluebells' game too and some other games that may have been inspired by brownies come to think of it.

I was so pleased when I no longer had to go to that club! Older kids used to take my money off me as soon as I got there and I just felt so awkward the whole time.

Me too.

I was a Brownie for a while, but left because I hated the knitting bit and was rubbish at it. (I’m a knitting addict now!)

Dd1 was a Brownie for a while when we were living in the Middle East, but left in disgust because the Brownies were expected to knit etc. while the Cubs went ‘sausage sizzling’ on the beach.

Decades ago now, though.

Gdd1 loved Brownies and is now a Guide.

I was a very happy Brownie! A Seconder and then Sixer of the pixies!

I did go on to Guides but didn't really get along with it. Our leaders were very dull, and we'd spend the sessions doing nothing and having to entertain ourselves. Needless to say, pre-teen girls will find their own ways to get into mischief. Probably did it for about 2 years before quitting.

I did spend about a year helping out with a local Brownie unit prior to starting my teacher training. I was asked if I wanted to do the official training, but no. I only did it because it looked good on my uni application form! I haven't been back to it since.

There was an obsession with midnight hikes. I remember doing one up Cefn Bryn in the Gower. We were camping in Penmaen or somewhere. It’s all a blur thankfully.

God I have just remembered when in guides they took us on a midnight or very early morning hike up the local hill ( part of the penines) I think it was early spring but it was absolutely freezing, one girl got hypothermia!
We had all slept in the church hall the night before so none of us had slept well
I dont know what posssed them to think it was a good idea..

I was a Gnome in Brownies - back in the days of the brown bobble hat! I hated guides though - I remember the week of camp we did being one of the worst weeks of my childhood!

Yes, I do Brownies, Guides and Young Leaders. I defected to scouting in adulthood after having two boys!

However, it has just dawned on me that I did get something out of the guides. I can wire a plug extremely efficiently, a task we practised with astonishing regularity. We had a special box of plugs that had been lopped off broken appliances which was brought out on plug-wiring night every few months.

I was a Rainbow, Brownie and Guide. I don’t think I ever expressed any desire to join any of them, but my mum felt it was one of those things all children must do 😆 I was a reluctant Rainbow and Brownie but absolutely loathed Guides, and begged to leave until my mum finally relented when I was about 15. The camping was particularly awful, partly because I had heavy periods which were just nightmarish to manage in a tent.

But I think I was also unlucky with who was in my group- the girls in charge of the sixes (I think that’s what they were called) were on an absolute power trip and were unbearably bossy. They were my classmates at school and it created a really weird situation having same-age peers in a position of authority over me. One was so awful on one particular camp, lots of calling us ‘girls’ like they were an adult and giving us all the shit jobs and shouting at us when they weren’t done to her standards, that her mum made her ring and apologise when we got home 😆

Our leaders also weren’t brilliant. One was very focused on trying to watch us get changed and making inappropriate comments(🤢), and there was a massive emphasis on housekeeping, tasks like constructing elaborate washing up bowl stands and mug trees out of bamboo on camp and so on, that I was very aware my friends in the scouts were not being made to do. I can still remember how to build a washing up stand with integrated draining board out of sticks. Strange, nonsensical restrictions on how often we were allowed to wash during camp (which also made dealing with periods harder).

I think I just drew the short straw with the ones I went to tbh. I have loads of friends who absolutely loved Guides (different groups to mine) and I was always jealous, guide camp especially in our group seemed to be deliberately planned to be as unpleasant as possible!

I was a Brownie and although we did lots of fun activities, our Brown Owl was terrifyingly fierce and unpredictable and always blamed me for my older sister’s bad behaviour.

Guides was great though (sister didn’t go) and I had a lovely time.

I did rainbows, brownies and guides. Loved Brownies. Hated Guides, mostly because the head leader was a miserable cow and I found it all a bit boring. I just wanted to read Mizz and prank call boys.

No I was neither. We moved quite frequently - maybe that was why? Dunno.

I was a Brownie, Guide & Ranger. Went to America as part of the exchange programme, fabulous experience & I’m in still in touch with the girl who hosted me back in 1986!

I was a Brownie and a Guide. I loved Brownies but only continued to Guides because I felt I had to - I went with my mum's friend's daughter.

We did not do anything particularly interesting, and Brownies was very much craft orientated.

I was a Brownie, a Guide and a Queen's Guide - an achievement I'm still very proud of.

Absolutely loved my time as a Guide - we had a fantastic Captain and I learned a ridiculous amount of life / survival skills which will see me set come the zombie apocalypse.

Weren't allowed to be a Cub back in the 80s when I was at Brownies, none of this girls can join Cubs thing going on then!
Not at mine anyway