SCOUTING isn’t just for the boys, as Dorothy Humphreys of Malpas, Newport, who has just been awarded one of he highest honours in British Scouting will tell you.

“And it hasn’t gone soft either,”

she adds. “Every week with my husband, Bill, I’m out there mending fences and doing hard maintenance work at Gwent’s own Scout camp near Chepstow.

“ It’s proper pioneering stuff in a place which is close to the heart of Scouting and all that it means.”

Dorothy Humphreys, nee Cox, was born in Nash Road, Newport in 1932.

Philip, her father, was a roller at Lysaght’s and later worked for McAlpine, and her mother May ran a hardware store in Cardiff Road.

“I was the youngest of six and after we moved to the Cardiff Road when I was three went to St Woolos Junior and then St Julian’s,” she says.

“I started Brownies when I was nine years old during the war and Scouting and Guiding has been a big part of my life ever since.”

At a ceremony at the annual general meeting of Newport Scout District last week Dorothy was awarded a bar to her Silver Acorn for outstanding service to the Movement.

“I know the Life features are about females but in the interests of fairness I’d like to point out that Bill, my husband got his Silver Acorn too!” she laughs.

“To be honest, I have very little recollection of my joining the Brownies all those years ago, except that I went along with a friend and had a very good time.”

Going up into the Guides was a natural thing.

“I was with the Alma Street Baptist Company where we had a marvellous captain, Miss Mary Williams, a teacher at Brynglas who was truly inspirational and one of those people who seems to be enthusiastic about everything.

“We didn’t go to camp until after the war and when we did most of the equipment was hired. There wasn’t a lot of money around in those days.

“When we eventually did go camping it was a question of sending an advance party out in the back of a lorry.

“I can see health and safety having something to say about that these days!

“But it was then I was first touched by the magic of Guiding and Scouting – the cooking over open fires an sleeping under canvas – that was to remain with me for the rest of my life.

“In those days Guide camps were more structured than the Scouts.

“The boys used their camps as a base from which to go away and do other things while the girls got involved in things to do with cooking and running a camp or home.

“Of course it isn’t at all like that now. The girls want to get involved in the same sorts of things as the Scouts.

“Eventually I helped run the Brownies as an assistant leader and became Brown Owl of the Commercial Road Baptist Brownies.”

It was through the well-established timber and hardware firm run by her mother that Dorothy was eventually to meet and marry Bill Humphreys, who worked in Goff Prosser’s bike sales and repair shop a few doors down.

At this point Bill takes up the story.

“I worked in the repair shop at the back of the premises and in the winter the only heating was a bashed-up old paraffin heater for which I got the fuel from Dorothy’s Mum’s shop.

“Of course when I noticed her going to get more paraffin became a popular job!

“At the time I thought she just worked there and so after I’d decided to ask her for a date I waited for her to leave work – but she didn’t come out.

“When I told a friend I was mystified by this he said ‘You know why, don’t you? Her folks own the shop. She lives above the business.’ “When I did ask her for a date she refused.

“I later found out the reason for that was that Harry Secombe was on television.”

Bill had been a keen Scout from the age of ten until he went into the RAF in which he served in the UK and what was then Ceylon.

The couple were married at Commercial Road Baptist in January 1960.

“After we bought the business for ourselves anything except running it had to take a back seat,” Dorothy recalls.

“We only had half-a-day off a week and that was spent in Cardiff buying up supplies.

“But when David, our oldest son, who is now 46, joined the Cubs I went with him and straight away met one of the girls who had been a Guide with me and that was that.

“At he same time Bill bumped into an old friend at the 25th Newport Troop and that was that.

We’ve been involved in Scouting ever since.”

When Robert Baden-Powell created the Scouting movement more than a century ago he realised that working for ‘proficiency’ badges marking attainments in a wide range of fields from camping and cooking to sports and handicrafts were a potent draw to young people.

Badges therefore, are an important part of the whole Scouting system and the badge secretary, which Dorothy has been for many years, is an important post.

“It’s one of the things that never change. Baden-Powell got it right all those years ago,” she says.

“Boys and girls can go in for a much wider range of badges now, but the essence of it is still the same.

“I have seen quite a few changes in Scouting over the years the most significant being that it opened its door to girls, although those who like a girl-only space still favour the Guides.

“Despite the attractions of computers and other gadgets young people love the traditional things that Scouts get up to.”

That fact is testified to by the fact that Newport has almost a half of the 2,200 Scouts in Gwent, a figure that is increasing at a rate of between four and five per cent a year. The Guides – who have a slightly higher membership – are experiencing similar success.

“Tuesdays when we go to Botany Bay Scout park near Chepstow counts as the best day of the week,” Dorothy says.

“It’s a fabulous place where youngsters can go wild camping, cooking over open fires and doing all the things Scouts have done since the Movement started.

“When I see the youngsters getting a kick out of exactly the same things that thrilled me all those years ago, you realise that some things don’t have to change because they are as good as it can get.