SCOUTS are back at Chatham's Buckmore Park. Nearly two years after they left the site for what they feared would be the last time, they marked their return with an emotional flag-breaking ceremony.

Instead of tears, there was applause and shouts of joy from 200 Scouts, Cubs, Beavers and their leaders gathered in a woodland clearing.

They stood to attention as seven year old Oliver Eastwood, a Beaver with 6th Medway North Dane troop, joined Doc Ingle, 77 and one of Medway’s oldest Scouts, to unfurl the union flag for the ceremony.

On a still morning, it slowly fluttered into life to symbolise the movement’s return to the heart of Medway Scouting for more than 50 years.

It was a poignant moment in the Scout Association’s centenary year and heralded a weekend of camping on the 160-acre site.

“It felt really good,” said Oliver.

Mr Ingle, who as a nine-year-old Cub attended an event with founder Robert Baden Powell, added: “This has done me good to see this today.”

Trevor Banks, Borstal group leader, said: “I feel quite choked. We were very worried about what would happen but now the sun has come out.

“I first camped here when I was nine and the fact we’re back here where my Scouting began is truly marvellous.”

A leisure complex built for the Scouts for £20 million, much of it from the public sector, plunged the local movement into financial crisis. The centre was shut around four years ago and two management companies went bust.

A year ago, local firm Avondale Environmental Services bought the site from Rochester Bridge Wardens. But its long-term future remains unclear amid a host of legal and development issues.

Scout leaders say a solution may be in sight to a long-running saga that has kept the public and young people away from a facility earmarked as a possible Olympic training camp in 2012.

* Flag breaking is the Scouting term for a flag raising ceremony