Duke of Edinburgh Practice Expedition!

Duke of Edinburgh Award!

For those of you who don't know, the Duke of Edinburgh Award is an achievement award for young people in the UK aged between 14 and 24. It's a very good achievement and gives you a good chance to develop skills for work and life in the future. It gives young people the chance to 'fulfil their potential and have a brighter future.' There is a chance to complete bronze, silver and gold award.

Me and my friends completed the practice expedition for the bronze award this weekend.
My group of 5 consisted of my best friends, Erin, Seana, Rachael and Caitlin. My other friend Megan was meant to come but she was ill and couldn't make it which we were all so disappointed about!

We left on Friday morning, and we got on the bus. We were all so excited but we had no idea what we had got ourselves into ;)

Erin, Seana and me on the bus. 

Before we headed off by ourselves into the wilderness (haha!) we obviously got a group photo. Note: This was before we were all knackered and ready to pass out...

From Left to Right- Erin, Seana, Me, Caitlin, Rachael.

Unfortunately early on on the walk Rachael (furthest to the right) put her heavy bag down at a funny angle whilst walking up a massive hill and injured her shoulder/collarbone. We didn't know if she could even carry on but she powered on through and we're all proud of her for carrying on despite her pain, she was slinged up and carried on as if nothing was wrong! Well done Rachael, love you loads <3 After about 2 hours of walking we were starving and decided to stop for our lunch, which we all look like we're enjoying in that picture haha! :) We were all getting really warm at this point, we were really lucky on Friday with the sunny weather during the day!

Nice mug Erin ;)

After lunch we got back to walking and a couple of the teachers had caught up with us, which probably meant we were slacking slightly... LOL. This is us walking along about half way through the walk and still smiling as you can see :P

Back to walking after lunch :)

Even though we were nearing the end of the walk we had to walk up a couple of massive hills and we were all knackered!! The views were amazing and beautiful but walking up those hills was a killer to be honest.. hahaha. Me and Seana always ended up at the back of the clump of gals, I don't know what we were doing wrong.. Oh well, I guess we had each other :P

This is when Erin obviously started getting fed up... HAHA! Jks love you :)

Massive hills for dayssss...

The night was eventful, let's put it that way. A couple things kind of ruined the night but all my friend (except Megan :( wahhh!) were there to cheer me up and make sure I had fun. All the girls- Fiona, Mel, Amy, Rachael, Erin, Seana, Caitlin (and a few of the boys) belted out a few of our favourite songs when it was getting dark and a few of us headed up to the fire just before we went to bed for a late night mingle :P Me, Rachael and Caitlin all shared a tent and it was raining during the night. The sound of the rain did keep me up most of the night but I was talking to Cait and Rachael most of the night anyway. People came in and out our tent throughout the night and we swear we saw some badgers. (It was probably just rocks or something..) Hahaha.

The next morning we all got up relatively early and made breakfast whilst packing up out bags and brushing our teeth and other morning type of things. When the teachers came up to the campsite we were informed that we had 10 minutes to quickly pack up all of the tents and leave the campsite because the scouts needed it... Packing away a tent in a hurry is not a pleasant thing (bearing in mind, they were soaked from all the rain during the night!) We all got quite frustrated and stressed but it soon wore off because we were back to the walking. We knew that on Saturday we wouldn't have to walk as far as the previous day but we were all sore and achy! We were all knackered on the way back and barely spoke through the first half an hour of the trek. We all made it back and it took us less time than we thought it would! We were all extremely happy to be back but soon realized that this was only the practice and we have to do it all over again in 3 weeks...

I'm looking forward to the real thing!

Making breakfast.

Duke of Edinburgh was a really challenging experience and I'm really looking forward to doing it for real. I definetely made a whole load of memories with my friends which I will never forget and a few inside jokes which I'm sure will never us.. :P (Erin, Caitlin, Seana, Rachael- I miss Duff duff already... ;) hahaha) 

I'd like to thank all my D of E gals- Erin, Seana, Caitlin and Rachael because well without you guys I would have been lonered and had a rubbish time! Love you guys loads <3

I hope you enjoyed this kind of blog post. It's quite different but I thought it was worth sharing with you guys ;) If you have any requests please leave them as a coment, I'd really apprieciate it :) 

Thank you byeeeeee :) x

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