Today's blog post is about our DofE bronze award experience, although we did the expedition a while back we thought that we would share the experience with you. We were in a group of 7 people which included us, Stephanie, Lucy, Alice, Courtney and Millie, our team name was CALM SLJ, we chose this because it is the first letter of all our first names, very original! The expedition took place in the Lincolnshire south wolds, it is a place where there are a lot of hills... very steep hills.
We had to do two expeditions, the first expedition was a practice expedition, this showed us what it was like and what we would have to do in the actual expedition, whilst being accompanied by teachers from our school. The expeditions were over one night and two days. You have to carry heavy bags around while you walk during the day. For the night you have to sleep in a tent, which you had to have carried the day before. After the first day walking you had to then set up your tents. Us two shared a tent with Stephanie, Alice and Lucy shared a tent and Courtney and Millie shared a tent.
We think that the practice expedition was the easiest of the two, we had to get to school at 7:00 am, to then get on the school minibuses to then drive us to our starting place in the Lincolnshire South wolds, we started at Tetford at our campsite, where we would be sleeping during the night. Once we had our bags we set off walking, the first day we had to walk up a very steep hill-that hurt our legs! We walked all day getting lost twice, but we found where we were and went the right way. When we got to the campsite we all cooked our dinner, most of us had pasta as it is easy and quick to cook. We all thought we would have an early night, that didn't happen as the ground was uncofortable, we laid there talking. We could also hear what other people were saying in their tents as they were up talking too. When we managed to get to sleep we were soon woken up by the cold or the very uncomfortable ground the ground had a lot of bumps in.
The next morning we were woken up very early because of all the birds chirping, people would think that it is really nice waking up naturally by all the birds singing. Although, the birds in the Lincolnshire wolds were not good singers. There was one bird that sounded like it was laughing! We named it after a friend of ours who wasn't on the expedition, who is always laughing. This was at 4:00 am where we were already tired. We then tried to go back to sleep which we managed to, but got woken up by the teachers at 6:00 am. Once we were ready and dressed we continued on our walk which was another circle so we would get back to the campsite, so we could get back onto the minibus to go back home. We started off walking the second day was harder because we had blisters on our feet and sore shoulders from carrying our heavy bags the day before. We managed to make it back to the campsites in one peace to get on the minibus to go back home. We were all really tired when we got home, and we ached so much. We had to walk 6 hours each day overall we walked 18 miles and there was such a steep hill we though we was walking up Mount Everest. We still haven't done the actuall expedition!
2 weeks later we had to do our actual expedition that goes towards our DofE award. We had to get to school at 7:00 am again. Once we had everything sorted at school we got on the minibuses to drive to Hindleby which was are starting point. We met George our asser that would be assessing us for our award. When we started walking it was colder then it was on the practice expedition. We continued walking throughout the day until we took a wrong pathway, we then got lost for two hours. We were meant to have been out for 6 hours but instead we were out for 8 hours, that wasn't fun. Then when we got back to the same campsite as the practice expedition, we had to put up our tents, that took us a long time, then we had to cook our dinner, which was again pasta. We stayed up talking again, we had all our group in out tent to make it warmer for us in there. We then got to sleep, we had to then get up early so we could get up and get dressed and have breakfast with a warm drink.
When we woke up it was raining outside, which wasn't nice. We got changed and then made ourselves a hot chocolate each. After drinking we had to take our tents down. Once we were all done we started walking again. Bearing in mind it's still lashing rain. There was a very steep hill that we had to walk up. And all throughout the day it was raining, we all had our waterproofs on, it wasn't nice weather at all. Due to all the rain it made the fields slippy, with the wet mud, we were all slipping over the place, a few of us fell over. A moment none of us will ever forget is the fact that we got chased through a field full of cows. That was a very scary moment for all of us, we just ran through a muddy field full of cows. We also came across another field with cows in we were all scared to go through it, because it was the afternoon after we got chased, so naturally we were scared. We kept walking until we got to the minibus somewhere in Alford. We had had a long weekend with all the walking and we were thankful that we were going home. The next day was a bank holiday so we could all rest.
It was a very tiring weekend and we were all achey, with blisters from walking so far! BUT.... we passed our bronze award for the expedition part, we just have to finish the rest of it which luckily isn't anymore expeditions.
Hope you liked the blog post! We also hope we haven't put you off doing D Of E all in all it was a great experience and were very glad we chose to do it. If you are thinking about doing it all we would say is make sure you know what you are getting yourself into.
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Jade And Lydia Xx
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