Local Face: Nathan Gray
Nathan Gray was born in Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and lived in Wendover until five years ago, when the family moved to Great Missenden.
His education began in Wendover at Jack in the Box Preschool, followed by John Hampden Infants, Wendover Junior and John Colet. He had intermittent issues with involuntary muscle spasms through years 7, 8 and 9, so missed several years of school, but thankfully the spasms subsided. Despite the significant amount of lost time in school, he bounced back and did well in his GCSEs (2nd best overall in the school) and hopes that other people with similar problems manage to overcome them. For sixth form he moved to Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School in Aylesbury to study the IB, a broad range of subjects: English, German, Maths, Chemistry, History and Physics. As the lead IT ambassador there, he’s hoping to promote awareness of programming skills, and the current skill vacuum in that area.
He has been a member of the Scout organisation for as long as he can remember, starting off in Beavers, and moving up through Cubs and Scouts to where he is now, an Explorer Scout helping as a young leader at Wendover Beavers. Helping out there is great fun, as he gets to help give young people the best possible start. He also helps, on occasion, with instructing fire-lighting, archery and walks for other groups around the area.
He feels extremely privileged to be one of the four people selected from the Wendover area to go on the 23rd World Scout Jamboree, a global Scout camp occurring once every four years with more countries attending than the Olympics. This year it’s in Japan, with the previous Jamboree hosted by Sweden, and the next one to be hosted by America.
Unsurprisingly, there are costs associated with the trip, but the Jamboree is unusual in that the money each candidate needs to raise is linked to the income of their country, meaning that people from wealthier countries pay more so that those from poorer countries can pay less. After selection in November 2013 he immediately began harvesting apples at home, to juice at Chiltern Ridge Apple Press. He mulled it to sell at the 2013 Christmas Light switch on and Wendover Free Church Live Nativity, in which he was Joseph.
His next event was the Endurance 80, a challenge to walk an 80km Chilterns route within 24 hours. He did it in 24 hours and 39 minutes – just outside the time but a good achievement to finish it. Thanks to help from family, friends, and everyone at Wendover Free Church, he raised over £600 in sponsorship for this event alone. That wasn’t the only time he was active overnight in a sponsored event. With Adam, another one of the Jamboree participants selected from Wendover, they did an overnight training session with their kung-fu class, which meets in Halton. After staying up all night, they travelled to Coombe Hill and watched the sunrise, still training, of course
Next up was Wendover Celebrates, a perfect opportunity to use his and his Dad’s archery instruction skills and kit. Even though they were hopeful, they couldn’t possibly have predicted the huge turnout for the archery. In the first half of the session not a single one of his pupils failed to hit the target with at least one arrow, irrespective of experience or age. In the end this raised almost £700, which was split three ways between Nathan and the two others from the Wendover Jamboree area, Adam Kellet and Tabi Clarke, who were helping with the mini crossbows.
Well done and good luck to Nathan and friends for reaching their target to go to the Jamboree.