20 years of Girlguiding for Kingsclere woman Eleanor Read culminates in Queen’s Guide award

A young woman from Kingsclere who has been a girl guide for over 20 years has received the highest accolade possible in Girlguiding.

Eleanor Read, a 26-year-old who works in the live events industry, has been working towards achieving her Queen’s Guide award for the last three years.

Miss Read was presented with her award at the Kingsclere and Silchester division world thinking day Girlguiding event at Tadley Community Hall on February 24, and this was notable because she had helped set up the mental wellbeing resource the event was based on.

She was surrounded by her family, friends, peers and former and current guiding mentors on the day and she thanked them all for the help, guidance and support they had given her over the years.

She said: “I still don’t think it’s really sunk in to be honest. It is something I have wanted to achieve for as long as I can remember.”

Miss Read was first inspired to complete the Queen’s Guide award when she saw the badge for it on her godmother’s daughter’s camping kit when she was a young girl.

Challenges she had to complete in order to receive the award included organising a residential trip and completing an extensive research project into the National Trust.

Miss Read has been a Brownie leader at 3rd Kingsclere Brownies for 10 years and she also regularly helps out with nearby Girlguide and Rainbow troops in the North Hampshire area.

She said: “I’ve been in guiding since I was five years old when I was a Rainbow.

“I was quite ill as a child and still am, but guiding has been my one constant. I refused to stop going to Brownies because I wanted to get the Queen’s Guide award.

“It has all paid off now which is amazing.”

Miss Read has suffered from ME, better known as chronic fatigue syndrome, since she was eight-years-old.

She added: “It is now more manageable, but it meant that I wasn’t in school for a lot of secondary school and I had to give up dancing and swimming, but I refused to stop going to Brownies.”