At the beginning of the Half Term break, three teams of Gold DofE students headed for the wilds of Dartmoor for their Practice Expedition. In an environment very different to the Wiltshire countryside, students were taken through a number of different training sessions.

Each group was given different routes to walk and the level of supervision and guidance was gradually withdrawn to test the navigation skills of each team. Although we had good weather on most days, Sunday was awful with heavy rain. This made progress particularly difficult as the ground was already boggy or covered in grassy tussocks.

The wild camp on Sunday night had to be abandoned as the rain had made the river rise quickly and it was too dangerous to cross. This resulted in relocating to a delightful campsite, much to the relief of the teams!

Each team did particularly well to cope with the challenges they faced and all have a report which details how well they did and what to work on for their final assessed expedition in July. All of the students were a pleasure to work with, retaining a sense of humour, even through the tears!

I’d also like to thank Mr Corripio-Lopez and Mrs Visser for giving up their Half Term to supervise the trip with me – they were brilliant, always in the right place at the right time and also retaining a sense of humour. There were no tears from them.

Two of our students reflected on the trip as follows.

Libby wrote:

'On the first and second day of the practice expedition we were taught all the skills required, including navigation, teamwork, and also tips and tricks for climbing up the steep hills of Dartmoor without using too much energy.

On the second and third day we got to put these new skills into practice, walking on our own over the beautiful peaks and valleys of Dartmoor, navigating through the bog and thick fog and we were especially fortunate to see the last remaining parts of the temperate rainforest which used to cover the whole of Dartmoor, covered top to bottom in dense moss.

On the third night, we were very lucky to be able to camp in a very fancy campsite due to the river being too high where we were supposed to camp, and it even had a drier for all our wet clothes and a warm place to dry our boots, starting the next day with dry(ish) boots!

Overall, it was an amazing experience with such beautiful views, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone.'

Noelle, who chose not to mention her bog swimming attempt, wrote:

'After packing up our rucksacks and lacing up our hiking boots, the LVI Gold DofEers headed on a three hour journey to Dartmoor with feelings of excitement and nervousness as to what the next four days had in store.

At the campsite, we met our instructors - Chris, Dawn and Ju - who helped their respective groups with polishing their skills in navigation, scoping the land, crossing rivers (which was a crowd favourite) but, most importantly, teamwork!

Once the hiking started, it was an unreal feeling looking back into the distance and seeing how far you have walked and what was once a massive Tor become a tiny spec on the horizon.

On the bus on the way back to school, we were all feeling a sense of accomplishment from overcoming lots of mental and physical challenges, such as sitting in unforgiving wind and rain or having to continue walking long distances in boots and socks soaked with muddy water after walking through deep bog and huge puddles.

We would like to say a big thank you to Mr Rose, Mr Lopez and Mrs Visser for taking us all the way to Dartmoor and emotionally supporting all of us with their kind words of encouragement as well as chocolates and doughnuts!'

Congratulations to all!

Mr Matthew Rose, Gold DofE Supervisor