I really enjoyed my practice silver expedition this half term! It is a lot easier to make your way to the end point when you and your team work together and we certainly did this. 

The first night of the expedition was a little more eventful than it needed to be.  As we drove to the camp site one of the school buses became stuck in the mud! It was so funny to watch the teachers pushing it out, eventually a tractor had to be called to help to get it out.  It was nice on the first night because everyone was speaking to each other and helping each other setting up their tent and equipment – the boys were playing football, and everyone was really relaxed.  

The next morning, I woke up early to birds chirping and we packed up all our things and headed off for the day! The weather was good, but the teachers had warned us that it was going to rain later on.  My team was quite good at navigating, and we didn’t get lost. We saw loads of different animals like sheep and horses all over the Long Mynd.  When my team got to camp, we had about 15 minutes to get our tents up before it started pouring with rain.  This was annoying as we still had to cook our dinner and try to keep the water out of the tent.  We managed it though and after a few trips into and out of the tent for shelter we were finally able to make our evening hot chocolate so we could settle down to make sure we had enough sleep for the next day. 

On the last day of walking the rain was really bad.  When I was walking I didn’t find it too difficult as I was not getting too hot and I had waterproofs on, so I was all dry.  Mr Cook was walking near us for the first half an hour and he  was singing songs which gave us motivation and made us laugh as we were walking up a really steep hill.  The scenery around me was so beautiful and seeing all the hills around me was so special because it is something I wouldn’t be able to see from school or the local area.  After the second day my legs were so tired from all the walking (around 7 hours a day) but I really enjoyed myself and I would recommend completing the DofE to others.  I have done bronze and now silver and both times I have had fun.    

L Lewis Y10