Doing my D of E Bronze Expedition Practice Run

My first ever Bronze D of E Expedition was most definitely a fun experience.

It was nice to be in the outdoors with my friends for a change, instead of being in school. I would throughly recommend it to anyone.

Our school had split us into groups and we had the day to navigate around the Shropshire hills.

Initially when your start walking, your shoulders, hip and legs will ache. You should expect this but after a while you soon get used to the inevitable load on your back.

When you're out walking it isn't actually that hard, as you can stop as often as you like.

Some people prefer to keep walking and have a long break, whilst our group preferred to have lots of little short breaks.

In the breaks its a good idea to have drink of water and a snack (preferably something with a high energy content). I found that flapjacks and digestives were best!

I really enjoyed walking on my trip as I could chat (and moan!) to my friends. Also we enjoyed taking pictures and we even visited a geocache that I could remember without coordinates.

The route we had included a variety of forests, fields, and farm tracks.

As this was only my practice, we had a teacher with us for the first part. Later on in the afternoon we arrived at the campsite and took off our heavy bags. We then put up the tent and got ready to cook our tea on the Trangia.

I choose a vegetarian tomato noodle expedition meal. It was actually quiet nice, although I would of rather had some pizza!

I then enjoyed a warm hot chocolate followed by biscuits. After that, we then planned our route for the next day, which was really fun and I learnt a few things about map reading as well. Shortly after this I went back to my tent.

On the second day we started early and packed our bags.  We were all looking forward to the partial solar eclipse that was happing that morning, and we all took some pictures.

Whilst we were walking we stopped at many view points, eventually pausing to have our lunch.

There were many herds of wild ponies and lots of young lambs.

Finally we were down to one kilometre to go but the steep descent down the hill made everyone ache.

At last we were finally back at the coach and I was looking forward to a nice warm bath!

I definitely want to carry one with the D of E as I learnt so much from my practise run. Its a great opportunity and looks good on your CV too.

Now with my practise run done, I'm now looking forward to the real thing...