This is just something I wrote for the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. We had to write up what happened while we were out there and so I decided to share it with all you guys.

My Diary

Duke of Edinburgh

Bronze Expedition

In all my life I have never been through such hardship times as I did in June 2008. It was in that month when some fellow classmates and I set out for our Bronze Duke of Edinburgh expedition. We first set off on the 26th of June when school had finished.

26th June

Like I mentioned earlier, this was the day we set off. Before school we had to carry our heavy rucksacks to school with us and place it in the bike shed. Our school day continued as normal.

After school, we all headed down to the sports hall to be registered. We also collected our rucksacks there too and were told to place our waterproofs at the top.

Once everything was sorted, we headed over to our transportation. Lucky for me, Katie had managed to convince her father to take us to the campsite.

Once we arrived there, the lady who owned the campsite told us the rules of the site and when we were expected to be in the tent and quiet.

So after having listened to the rules, me, Katie and Hollie began putting up our tent. Unfortunately, the second tent was too small so we had to share with Aiysha. That made four people in our tent! FOUR!

We soon had our tea, courtesy of our group cook, Katie, and spent the rest of the day exploring the campsite. Before we knew it, it was time to call it a day.

Expedition Day 1

The next day, all four of us were up bright and early. We quickly ate breakfast and packed away our things, placing anything we didn’t need in one of the vans. Once packed away, we began on putting down our tent and splitting the parts between us. I was given the biggest part. But lucky for me, I didn’t have much in my rucksack. It only reached eight on the scale! The highest you could get to was fifteen!

We then decided to do the essential things, eg: fill our water bottles, go to the toilet, ect.

So all six of us sat down, waiting for our group leader, Miss Knag, and her companions, Al and Hugo the dog. Miss Knag explained to us the route we had to take before setting us off.

Our group had the same route as another group, so we began walking together, accompanied by Miss Knag.

I remember a short while after Miss Knag had left we weren’t too sure which route to take. So it was up to our map readers to find that out.

I think it was about half an hour later when the other group left us behind, so we were left to try and figure things out for ourselves. It wasn’t too hard since we had done it before.

We were walking for a really long time before we met up with Miss for lunch. So we all sat down by the water and ate.

By then it was gone noon and we were all exhausted from walking. Our rucksacks had been digging into our shoulders for a while now, and it felt good to take them off.

I remember that we had to walk around some mountains. There was this one time when we thought we had lost the trail and when we did find it we had to walk through some marsh! Yuck! And not to mention one part of our route the mud was really deep. And unlucky me fell in!

I’m not really sure if I should mention this but when we finally found our trail we met up with Miss Knag and co. When we started walking again, we noticed a couple of cows appearing from over the small hill. Those couple of cows then turned into a LOT of cows and one bull. Because of them, we had to take a different route.

So we continued walking around the mountain until we got to flat ground and eventually, we arrived back at our campsite, cold, wet and exhausted.

We once again put the tent up and tried warming ourselves up. I really should thank Katie since she was the one who stayed outside just to cook food for us. Poor girl.

Once the rain had died down, we decided to just go around the campsite and asking others about their day.

There was this one time when one of the teachers turned up with an entire group in his van. They claimed that they began walking up one of the mountains by accident and got lost.

Soon enough, it was time for us to just lie down and go to sleep.

Expedition Day 2

Day 2 was a better day because we knew that once we had finished it, we could go home. So once again we packed our things away, put down the tent, had our route explained to us and then this time we went into one of the vans to be taken our starting point.

Luckily, the day was brighter than it had been the day before. However, since it had been raining the day before, it was very VERY muddy. Just look at the image to find out.

I’m not quite sure what happened from then until lunch. I do know that it seemed we were way ahead of Miss Knag.

After lunch we began walking again and came upon a church where a wedding was happening. I think it was the priest who came over to us and told us some history about the church and a little cheeky secret. But it’s secret so I can’t say.

I remember getting lost a little later on. The reason for that was that we were given a different route than what we had. So we had to walk down to the main road and continue on our original route. It was soon after when bumped into one of the other teachers, Ms Lucas, who was in the van and gave my group and another group a lift to our destination. It was there where our rucksacks were placed in the van and so were we and we set off back to Parkview School, singing a merry song about 100 green bottles placed on the wall.

In all my life I have never been through such hardship times as I did in June 2008. It was in that month when some fellow classmates and I set out for our Bronze Duke of Edinburgh expedition. It was that month in which I completed my goal. My goal was to go out, have a good time with my friends, take on some tough challenges, and accomplish something. From the 26th to the 28th June, I felt pleased with myself.

Well that was what I remember. I hope you guys enjoyed and incase you are wondering: YES! I did do all of this! Anyway, please review!