Duke of Edinburgh Review

Review of Duke of Edinburgh weekend 13/07/2013 to 14/07/2013

The weekend started on the Saturday morning at 9am, which I found very early on a Saturday, though it was definitely worth getting up for, and we travelled by coach to a campsite in Oxford. Once at the camp the instructors were introduced to us and we were briefed about what was going to happen over the weekend, and what we were about to do, which made me eager to do something despite my initial tiredness.

After the briefing groups 1-4 (the groups we chose before starting the DofE) we were sent off to do orienteering while groups 5-8, including my group which was group 7, consisting of me, Daniel, Johan , Josh, George and Alex, learnt about the Countryside Code – this was simple but somewhat interesting as the knowledge would be useful to us so that we could determine how we should act and the different types of path and road that we would use to make us aware of the potential  dangers that we could face while doing the DofE including; sunburn ( which made the sun shining on my back where I was sitting feel a little hotter) ; blisters; dehydration (which had the effect of making us all water conscious and making me exceptionally thirsty) ; mosquitos, midges and ticks ( which, when I woke up in the middle of the night, came back to me wondering if I had a tick sucking my blood) as well as what to do If a member of our group was hurt .

After these informative talks we were given some free time when people from groups 5-8 sat in the shade or played games and we had lunch which consisted of sandwiches and was surprisingly good.  After our rest we were given a task to find 14 numbers which were nailed to trees and we had to find the locations through the wood using a map which proved easy for some of the points and frustrating for others , such as point 2, which was off of a path down a slope where we wouldn’t have looked if we were not very close to giving up, and point 6 which we couldn’t find at the end though we knew it was in an area with sparse amounts of trees leaving us walking in circles. After the map reading exercise we had another break before a team building exercise where we had to get 12 people through a red band with each of the 6 members of our group having to go through at least once. We approached this in several ways but eventually came to the conclusion of having 2 people standing still as the band goes up and down them 4 times before another 2 people step in and the 2 people holding the band then climbed through and after 3 attempts we had won 2 out of the 3.

After the team building exercise we prepared our own dinner as a group using 2 stoves and eating all the pasta we could and cleaning up the cutlery before setting up our 3, 2 man tents. After 15 minutes of frustrating failures of setting up our tent, I, accidently tripped over a tent peg while attempting to enter and fell onto the tent. Luckily the tent sprung back up after I rolled off though bringing forward a load of frustrating remarks from Daniel, my tent/roommate as I laughed, which is one of the several highlights of the weekend, though Daniel and I found the tent a little too cosy  though at least it remained warm throughout the night.  After the tents were setup we were called to the front of the camping area to check our stoves to make sure that they had been reassembled correctly before more free time when I went straight to bed due to my exhaustion though I was amazed about how much you could hear from a tent and found myself eavesdropping on the goings on of my group whose voices sounded strangely out of context.

Sunday was my faviroute day of the weekend as it, for me, contained the most memorable highlights and started at around 6:30 when we began to empty, and pack up out tent as a few other people were beginning to do the same. Once the tent was packed away at around 7:00 am we were told by people at the front of the camping area to come if we wanted food although we had to wait for the girls to come for breakfast and so had a small amount of free time before breakfast. After several servings of cereal, porridge and hot chocolate we packed away the stove and after another much needed break were briefed on what we were doing, as groups 5-8 had swapped to what groups 1-4 were doing on Saturday and so we were orienteering which started with us being paired up and Johan and I attempting to navigate group 7 to a specified location –  the other members of the team didn’t know the destination so they had to track our movements until, after several assisted corrections to our directions, we finally arrived at the pylons that we were set to go to before the other pairs took turns at navigating as we tracked. After passing through a forest of mainly nettles and thistles we arrived at a road where we were given a location to navigate to in our pairs. Before we met up at that location where we left our bags and found a viewpoint up at least a dozen unevenly high steps as one could be 5 cm high then another 25cm though at the top was a platform with a map engraved, or printed, onto it. This is where Johan decided to shout as if he was falling and flail his arms causing the rest of the group to spin around where he was standing and staring at us laughing leaving us all momentarily confused before heading back down the stairs where we joined our bags and ate lunch before counting the amount of paces it takes each of us to walk 100m, which for me was 67 but was made 66 for convenience. We then tested our paces by walking 150m roughly by the amount of steps it should take leaving most of us about 5-10m away. After this we were given points to pass through on the way back to the camp which was 3km route and took us 50 minutes to cover though most of this time was spent walking besides, or through, fields with little shade, and so I finished my water and applied as much sun block as I could, which made our group much happier to return to the shade of the forest.

Once we were back in camp we all immediately took a seat to rest our feet and to collect food from the table. After this the word of a tuck shop reached our group, which we didn’t know the campsite had, and so 4 of us set off to find it along with another group which surprisingly took a whole 15 minutes to find and just under 10 to return from with the luxury of cool fizzy drinks. Once back at the camp we started planning our route for the September/October weekend which took roughly an hour and a half calculating bearings, distance, directions and the most efficient route though took longer than it could have as we were all tired from the several kilometre walk 45 minutes earlier and even more exhausted contemplating having to walk even further when the route we were planning had to be followed. After planning the route and coming to the conclusion not so tasty but light foods were better for the route it was time to return and so we brought our items to the minivan which shuttled the bags and people back to the main coach as the rest of us awaited collection.  George shared some of Johan’s adventurous, problematic endeavours to pass the time. On the ride back to Great Marlow School many people were sleeping though whenever I attempted it my head hit the seat in front and so forced me to stay awake until we returned.

In conclusion, the weekend was a great experience with many team building activities and hilarious memories of team members, as well as stories, and despite the blisters, and small tent, makes me look forward to the next weekend even though we will have to cover around 20km on the practice expedition over the next weekend.

By Max Atkinson