This year’s Year 10 Duke of Edinburgh Award candidates had their first experience of the outdoors on our annual trip to Ghyll Head on the edge of Lake Windemere.

 

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Bronze Award expedition is tough and you will have to dig deep, but students who complete the award, find it the most rewarding activity they undertake whilst at school.

Finally, after two years of hard work, the group have passed their DofE Silver Award expedition! The weather was well and truly against our young adventurers, but their enthusiasm and confidence couldn’t have been better.

After a hard few weeks of planning, the silver DofE group finally got out on their practice expedition to the Lake District.

The weather held off for the start as they set off in high spirits from Grisdale, named after the Viking words for ‘Valley of the Boars’. The Vikings and boars are long gone but this beautiful spot was a great place for the groups to start what would be a long hard 3 days of trekking.

Last weekend (Friday, 8^th – Sunday, 10^th February) we took our second group of Bronze pupils out to Ghyll Head, and although we weren’t hit by the snow, a fun and rewarding time was had by all.

I wanted to give you another up-date about the Year 11 Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Silver students.

On Saturday, 21^st April until Monday, 23^rd April, the intrepid D of E-ers undertook their Silver main expedition in Ullswater in the Lake District, walking approx 60k over 3 days which was an amazing feat of endurance!

I just wanted to give you an update about the Silver Duke of Edinburgh’s Award team.

The Year 11 students did fantastically well on the first weekend of the Easter holidays for their practice expedition, walking for 3 days and camping for 2 nights in EXTREMELY cold conditions in the Lake District.

The second training event of the calendar took place between Friday, 24^th February until Sunday, 26^th February, with the second Duke of Edinburgh group undertaking their training of map reading skills.