Unless you are very familiar with your copy of the the Jack Watford book, 'Yesterday & Today', you may have missed this particular landmark but we are celebrating our 100th year of camps and holidays. In the summer of 1908, a group of boys went to a site in Bognor Regis and without realising it, triggered a century of camps, house-parties and residentials!

In Jack Watford's book about the history of Crusaders, he wrote the following description of the birth of 'Holidays':
"One of the many benefits enjoyed by young folk resulting from membership of a movement greater in numbers than could comprise a Church Sunday School, is the ability to provide activities of a kind and on a scale not normally possible in the local situation. So it was not long before consideration was being given by the founders to what was to become one of the most popular items in Crusaders' annual programme.
In the Minutes of the second Conference of Leaders in March 1907, we find the following:
'Summer Camp. The question of a camp for Crusaders during summer holidays was raised and on the suggestion of Mr Lenfestey, the matter was referred to the Committee.'
A few Classes had already organised camps for their own members but here was a proposal which would bring together members from many places. So it was that eighteen months later, the first Union camp took place at Elmer, near Bognor Regis on the Sussex coast. It was a modest beginning comprising 13 officers and 31 boys and noone at the time could have foreseen what was to happen in the years ahead for, since then, thousands upon thousands of Crusaders have enjoyed wonderful holidays under the Crusaders' flag." ('Yesterday and Today' by Jack Watford, 1995)

Here's to the next hundred years of residentials and holidays...!