Tag Archives: Silver

DofE 8: North Downs.

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20°C, sunny

Silver Assessment: 3 days near London in the North Downs. On the face of it, this looks like typical bronze territory in rolling chalklands. The forecast is for ideal weather but the possibility of some behaviour to keep an eye on.

8.1: My group had to be rescued from near Go-ape as darkness fell. They’d done 9h 30m anyway. Let’s hope they proceed faster tomorrow. Debrief revealed that they has gone in loops in Wendover Woods. I worry about the flow of observed information within the group. They have a couple of good prime navigators. The problem could be the other 5 passively following. That’s too much responsibility for 2 out of the 7.

8.2: a flatlands route along canals and round their top-up reservoirs.

All went well until they missed the last checkpoint. I still don’t know why they didn’t phone. That meant I could not reroute them away from a hazardous road.

8:3 last day. A return route with a short section of open access scrub and then onto canals again. Again, they were just a little too late to complete without pickup by the minibus. We staff had a debriefing and elected to defer this group. Their teacher, an experienced ML agreed and elected to take them out for a day’s navigation and that should give them the Pass they were expecting.

Overall, a satisfactory result, but I still hate giving them the bad news. They will, however, pass if their nav day goes well next month.

Gold and Silver qualifying expeditions.

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One cool and windy week in the black mountains, South Wales.​

On the road to Cafl-y-Ffin

Chris took the Gold group and I did the Silver with Carl.
Silver do 3 nights and Gold 4. Carl took the Silvers home and then I stayed with Chris to cover the Gold’s last day. Most of the Silver girls were carrying heavy bags, up to 16Kg which is a bit much for the smaller ones. It turned out that the excess was clothing. Many brought a change of clothes for each day. The Golds didn’t make that mistake, but conversely, they were cold at night. Mind you, the Gold group complained of cold too. Especially the sole male in the group. He was the only one sleeping alone, (as far as we know).
The picture above shows a defaced sign in one of the narrow lanes. Many were so narrow that both sides of the minibus were scratched at the same time by overhanging vegetation.
The staff base, a youth hostel, was up to am hour away from the kids’ camps. In response, Carl and I drove over after supper and pitched in near the gold and silver groups’ site. They were all quiet and inside tents, probably asleep by then, 10pm. It turns out that most nights, they were asleep by 7.30pm. That means nice, long sleeps which can only help their daytime progress.

In the end, they all passed easily. On the return journey, they seemed less tired and generally satisfied. So were we.

Packing for DofE, last expedition of the year.

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12°C, rain.
Gold and Silver groups go on qualifying this coming week. I think they’ll be fine, but the conditions are very different to their summer Practice trip. A new terrain, The Black Mountains, earlier sunset and cold nights.​
Staff are staying in a Youth Hostel, but a few of us are taking light camping gear for a planned wild camp. The kids will break camp before dawn and we would like to be on the ridges before the get there. So Carl says, why not camp up there. He wants to bivvy, I will take both a bivvy and the small tent. We both want some mountain days.
It would be nice to appear at the and of a long climb to encourage the kids. Or, help with any problems.
I hope they did some preparation over the summer to keep fitness. Their practice was very good.