Huge scout camp kicks off in Switzerland
Around 30,000 children, youths and adult supervisors started congregating in Switzerland at the weekend for the start of a huge scout camp.
Most of the participants, some 20,000 scouts aged between 12 and 17, arrived at the camp in the alpine Goms region in the western Swiss canton of Valais.
Around 5,000 younger scouts, aged between seven and 11, are expected to arrive on Sunday.
The federal transport system was beefed up to cope with the swell of scouts. Extra trains were laid on to increase capacity from the usual 260 people per hour to accommodate 1,200 passengers every 60 minutes.
Eighty special trains were laid on, as part of an additional 120 train and bus journeys to the normal schedule, to also transport some 1,500 bicycles and more than a thousand baggage items.
The Swiss defence ministry is contributing CHF7 million ($7.2 million), 20 tons of equipment, including tents, blankets and kitchen utensils for the participants to support the two-week event, which runs until August 6.
Groups from Britain, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Finland, the United States, Belgium and Italy are also attending, according to the organisers.External link
The event, which is organised every 14 years, is the biggest of its kind in Switzerland. It was originally scheduled for 2021 but had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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