19°C, sunny with a strong Westerly.
Canal
Took an 11.7km walk on local paths & a canal. With a light bag on level ground the average was about 4.5km/HR.
11.7km local walk
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Category Archives: Lowland
DofE 7: Buxton.
21°C, slow moving showers, high pollen.
A two day Bronze qualifying expedition based on the edge of Buxton.
Day 1, staff briefing was at 9am for a school due to arrive at 11.00am. I asked which school is this? Wow, the place I worked for 15 years! Anyway, this day is for final training. That’s not usual for bronze but the school has bronze, silver and Gold running concurrently. I took my group out on the local moors to get a nice view and a sense of place. My group did grumble though. They had a minimal pack though.
Day 2: their first day of qualifiying expedition. It didn’t take long before my two groups opened a huge gap that grew throughout the rest of the day. By the finish, one group was the first to finish, and the other was amongst the last.
After handing over my group, I went home. I can’t stay to the end because I have work on school the next day. In the campsite, the projector was set up to show a football game and most of the the kids watched too. Driving back was strange because the roads were as empty as a lockdown. And, the lights were all on my side so I got home easily.+
DofE 6: Silver – White Peak
Day 0: A nice warm evening to set up camp at Hulme End for the first couple of days. My group would walk here from their start point. The sun is shining and I can relax while I wait for the boss to bring kit (tents, stoves and paperwork). Next to me were staff from Lichfield Cathederal School with their team the other side of the field.
Here is an especially interesting job. I have a single group from a school to Supervise and Assess for Silver Expedition. TN brought trackers to issue to the group. I’ve not used this one before, it seems especially neat and runs off an app on my phone.
Day 1: Meet the minibus at the start. They were late because one of the boys wasn’t ready. There are two boys and the rest were girls. Getting ready seemed straightforward, they seemed to know what they were doing. With all issued, they got away at 10.15am.
Problems arose before the first checkpoint which was about 3km from the start. They were to follow a bridlepath westward near the bottom of the map. They phoned me after 2 hours saying they were stuck. And they were – they were off the bottom of the OS map and needed interception, I could see on the tracker.. The tracker located them south west of their route so I send them SE to catch the bridlepath. In fact, they’d strayed off the bottom of their map.
Day 2: The planned route was far too long at 27km. After yesterday’s progress it’s obvious they need less, considerably less; so I met the team in the morning and set them off planning changes. A new route can be more or less as the crow flies North East. Even so, they faced a 20km walk, though with a much earlier start. Even though the new route followed bridle path, they were back in the routine of crossing field after field. Each time they had to set direction, check where the cattle were and go. After maybe ten fields, there’d be a road or a turn. Then another ten.
Finally, a change of terrain on entering a lesser gorge Lathkill Dale. Later, they talked of their enthusiasm about this section. Many photos were taken. I waited at camp because this was the last leg, but then the phone rang. They were stuck. Apparently, their path was closed and one of the girls was in no fit state to go back. I set out to meet them.
The photo shows a footpath gates with the sign indicating the end of Open Access land. The group had read this as no access. They were tired, not surprising after over ten hours of travel.
Day 3: to finish. Another radically redesigned route. They’ve come to the White Peak area, famed for upland farmland, white limestaone and cut with numerous gorges of geological interest. Their route was more fiddly field hopping with no recognisable purpose beyond running up the miles. Another day like Friday and I can’t see how they could pass. It could go either way.
Today’s new route took them down Biggin Dale onto the Manifold trail. Here is a dramatic change of scenery and a relief from endless rural field navigation. There was a chance that they could finish early but after two very long days, they all deserve it.
Going home: on the more eventful trips, I come away turning over thoughts in my mind. This time, I really felt for this group. I had spent all of my time thinking of ways to get them through to a Pass. I never wanted them to Defer, and I beleive I handled them well. They do have a pass but it hung in the balance for a few days.
DofE 1
Cold nights and warm sunny days, bone dry.
In some ways, spring is similar to last year. Bright, cloudless skies and cold nights. Both nights saw frost on the tent which would have been a problem for all groups. We can’t really expect kids to take winter bags. It’s a shame that he kids can’t camp (due to Covid rules). For many, it’s the best part of DofE. Some will not have camped before and this would be a good way to start.
I’ve made fun of the campsite here, but really, it’s an excellent site. More so when the shower block is finished. There is a railway line next along the camp which often has heavy freighters passing in the night. I noticed these in the first night but not over Saturday night. According to other staff, there were just as many. Few people sleep as well on the first night out.
Recovery Walk
+4°C, muddy and damp. Clear sky though.
I’m occasionally venturing out with a knock to my physical confidence. One ride left me empty and exhausted for 2 days – that’s the Covid after effects. This walk was good and left me all warm and refreshed.
long walk 2020
2°C, sunny with a layer of hailstones.
This is one of my Covid-19 recovery walks. The roads are too icy for cycling this week but I’m itching to get the bike out and can’t – it’s not safe yet.
DofE 7 & 8: Princethorpe Qualifying expedition.
23°C, light breeze and bright sun.
Camped at the same site as in July; the campsite the expedition is using is rather tatty. The showers still have an Out Of Order sign, even 2 years after the first time I visited.
Group A, 5 lads. A group I’ve met before who got on well and had no difficulty at all. It was warm and sunny both days. The plan is to walk with them for part of day 1 and check their competance. I ended up leaving them later than ideal because there was a risky road section further on that I wanted to escort them down. As it turned out, the road was held in check by HS2 works a few miles down.
A long checkpoint on by a grassy verge. I was there about an hour, enough time to brew a coffee and get the tent dry. I guy walked past and asked if I was ‘doing a spot of wild camping?’. I answered him politely, he seemed to have little knowledge of what that entails.
Group B, a week later… 6 girls this time. More fine September weather and a very able group. They only made mistakes near lunchtime when they got hungry. I could see their confidence inproving over the hours I walked with them. As last week, I left them slightly earlier to get my car for a few final checkpoints. They travelled safely enough but had rather more rest-stops than is ideal.
Group 14 arrived at camp last and were determined to prove their ability to erect tents AND cook in the short hour remaining before pickup.
Unfortunately for both trips, they couldn’t camp the night because of Covid-19 restrictions. Many kids see camp as the highlight of the expedition- it’s a time to relax, look back on the day and for many – stay in a tent for the first time. It’s a shame they miss out on their first camp.
DofE 18; South Chilterns
22°C, sun, very dry with N breeze.
18.0: easy drive to the edge of the M25. Paccar Scout camp is huge, but my little bit is about an acre. We seem to have 4 clearings booked.
18.1; The cohort arrived by parent drop off and were indeed, only a few groups, five in all. I got two groups of girls. As is often the case, one group went wrong out of the start. I always try to make them go with a clear start because this kind of error is very likely. It’s an easy one to to mess up; being dropped off somewhere they don’t know is quite disorientating.
18.2: rain to start but clearing later. My groups’ routes diverge, meet then diverge again. The other instructors’ routes are pretty identical to one another.
One group got off to an energetic start and finished quite early. The other got stuck in woodland but responded well to question prompts over the phone. As an assessor, I really enjoyed overhearing their debates on location and clues they can see. This group were offered a lift to the debrief checkpoint but I declined because they might finish under time.
Group 4 reached the end in just over 6.5 hours but the other group had gone. They’d been collected before I could debrief them properly. Oh well…
We got some feedback from the school:
“We just had an email from waingels to say how great the exped was, well done guys! Also, apparently 2 groups are now officially part of the ‘we love mike club’ 🤣🤣”
DofE 16. New Forest.
Bright and sunny, tops will be 25°C
Long drive after a full day’s teaching. The satnav chose a good route and there were no holdups. Still, I didn’t arrive untill 23.30.
16.1: we some instructors would have two groups today, the others- one each. There are different ways we could decide, double up the smaller groups, match the routes. In the end, it was a complicated (and not very interesting) combination that we chose.
I got my info packs and flicked through- two groups of girls. Their routes looked okay and their bags not too heavy this time. Yet again, they didn’t bring enough water. One of them, O* had a leaking platypus which she knew was leaking on practice 2 weeks ago!
Quite a stretch of the route was in woodland along cycle routes. That suits me too because I can do plenty of walking to checkpoints rather than waiting with the car. Their route finding was fine and timing, reasonable.
The last section really troubled me. The public footpath was closed with barbed wire. The only alternative a was a narrow road without verges but with blind bends. I walked each group, one at a time along here. That path was visible behind the hedge and would have been trouble free, why is it closed?
horrible!
16.2: A problem has appeared. One of our assessors is absent. His groups did not see him at all yesterday after the start. That would take some working out by sharing out the workload. If something went wrong, the consequences would be serious for him and the rest of us.
Note, sleepy horses standing in the road can make you late.
Both of my groups seemed to be in a darker mood today. The smaller group was especially tense. You know that feeling when you walk into a room after an argument, the one where you can sense something indeterminate? It’s that feeling on each checkpoint.
Gareth pointed out that they were well out of their ‘comfort zone’. These girls were all tall, leggy, elegant and beautiful; like models they were. But the surly exasperated tone in their voices caught my attention.
16.3: the kids are much more upbeat today. The fine weather continues and one group is quite cheerful, probably because they know it’s the last day. The other group remain prickly. Oh dear.
DofE 14: White Peak (2)
Pollen VH, 18°C, brisk SE, dry, full sun.
14.1 drive the minibus to Hulme End to meet coach B. The boss had split the year group and I met the northern half to issue kit. Soon, classic bronze route planning appeared. One group had plotted a route along walls and fences to I changed the route to paths that match other group.
14.2 camp to Ilam: a tricky day because my groups’ routes diverged by 2 km, one down the Manifold, the other, Tissington.
Last minute rushing about looking for lost and late groups. Luckily, the coach was very late. Once more, just when I thought I could relax, a call came in from another lost group…
Inevitably, a late finish. The coach was booked for 5pm and arrived about 6.30pm. As I left, the coach was stuck behind the bridge in Ilam. Maybe we should use the coach company in Ilam village next time. By the time the bus was dropped off at the hire place and I was returned to my car, it was 8.45pm. half an hour to get home and then supper. That’s a long day from a 6am start.
Micycle 