On the weekend of the 20th – 22nd we participated in the silver Duke of Edinburgh practice walk. The walk consisted of 45km and more over three days and a total of over 20 hours of walking with breaks, the majority of us found that the first day was the toughest due to it being the longest with a total of 17km of walking, mainly up hills; once we reached the top of one of the hills we found a view point this is where we were able to have lunch and enjoy the remarkable view of the Long Mynd, the main thing we complained about was the sweltering hot weather making us all easily annoyed with each other. When we got to the top though it made it all worthwhile.
By the time we reached camp we had all cooled down a lot and were able to put up our tents in no time with the help of a fellow team mates, for the rest of the evening we were allowed to do what we wanted, including enjoying the extraordinary weather. As darkness fell and we went to our tents to get some much deserved rest, even though the floor was cold we managed to sleep quite well. As the sun rose so did we at about 5:50am this gave us plenty of time to allow us to warm up as the weather in the mornings was incredibly cold, it also meant we had time to take down our tents and cook our breakfast. Our packing skills were quicker as we all wanted to get the walk over and done with, to do this we aimed to leave camp at 8:00am and we managed to leave at 8:04am. Due to our early leave we arrived at the second camp at 3:00pm, this meant we didn’t have to rush putting our tents up or cooking and could sit in the sun and relax so we were refreshed.
During the second day we met three wild horses that seemed friendly but we didn’t risk going near them or frightening them but we did stop to take a few pictures throughout the three days the main animal we saw were sheep both wild and in farms this meant a change of scenery was what we wished for. Throughout the 2nd day we were all really happy that we could say we were going home on the Sunday. But when we woke up the Sunday morning we were over the moon with happiness as we all knew we were going to be able to go home. The only down side to the last day was we arrived at our final destination way too early this meant we had to wait round the corner for 40 minutes to 1 hour until we could arrive at the final destination, if we had arrived ealier they would of made us walk an extra 2km so we could arrive on time.
Finally we were allowed to reach the destination and see our parents and we were exceedingly happy to be allowed to go home!
A tough weekend but we are so proud of what we achieved.
Lilian Scott
Photos by Anna Van Der Raay
