11 May 2021
Olivia, Year 10
On Friday 30 April a group of Year 10 students who are doing their silver Duke of Edinburgh's award participated in a training day, along with a group of Year 9s, preparing for the bronze award, though we were separated because of COVID-19.
We started by going through what we will need to carry in our walking bags, which included things like the tent, our sleeping bags, the food, spare clothes and much more. This was very helpful to me as they also taught us how to fit everything in our bags effectively - the heavy stuff at the bottom and the lighter at the top. Then we moved onto planning our meals. They taught us an aide memoire: ABCDE, each letter standing for a different component of our meals. A meaning allergies, B meaning balanced, C for calories, D for delicious, and E meaning easy to cook/carry. The group I was in decided on pasta for the majority of our meals, not that I’m complaining as this is one of my favourites.
After this we moved on to setting up tents, which surprisingly, wasn’t that hard. Our instructor first ran us through setting them up then he hosted a little competition. Though my team didn’t win we still managed to put our tent up successfully and have fun. After lunch we talked through health and safety and planned our routes. This took us quite a while but with the guidance of the instructors, and after 1.5 hours, we finally managed to complete our route.
I would like to say a big thank you to the instructors at A to Z Expeditions for driving all the way from South Wales to help us prepare for our Silver DofE expeditions. This day made me feel a lot more confident ahead of the expeditions at the end of May and start of July as I wasn’t able to participate in the bronze award.