The weekend started with an hour and a half coach ride on Friday evening to somewhere near Burgess Hill. When we left the coach, we all scrambled to put on our waterproofs because the moment we arrived, rain started bucketing down on us. We then met our group leaders and put up our tents (with a lot of fuss). The challenge was to put up the tents as fast as we could without getting the interior wet. This was all made significantly more difficult as we were struggling to keep our headlights on our slippery hair. We then got out our Trangias and made supper. My group had an interesting tasting Thai vegetable curry, and cold egg fried rice, even though it had been cooking for a good 15 minutes. We marvelled at the other group’s penne pasta and tomato sauce. One group had cleverly constructed a seating area out of five tree cuttings they found in the woods, and there we all chatted and laughed. Those conversations may be my highlight of the weekend.
We then headed into the tents to quickly get to bed. While sleeping, I would periodically wake up shivering thinking I had hypothermia, and listening to the angry sound of heavy rainfall on the tent roof. When we woke up, much to our relief, the sun was shining and the weather was warm with a slight breeze. I managed to wake up first and get to the bathroom (which looked far less scary in the daylight) and washed my face. We then had hot chocolate for breakfast, accompanied with mushy porridge that stained the Trangia and took a long time to scrub clean. On our first 18km walk, we were chaperoned by a member of staff and our DofE leader. Our route consisted of many contour lines, suggesting steep hills to be encountered, much to all of our dismay. Although we felt as though we were being punished when going up the hills, the views at the top made it worth the pain. The tallest “hill” as our leaders called it, “mountain” as we saw it was a whopping 132 meters high.
We sat down to have lunch, which for my food group was a plain bagel because the ham had gone bad, and the many snacks we had. We then continued the walk, and by the end field we were all ecstatic to see a familiar farm. When we got back to camp, we set up the inside of our tent for bedtime then got started on the second dinner. For our evening activity we went to a classroom inside the activity centre we were camping in to plan the route for our Silver Assessment DofE expedition. We had to take our walking boots off before entering the interior, a task made very difficult and unfortunate by the horse poo and mud on our laces and the shoes!
Sleep that night was slightly better as it wasn’t so freezing, and the next morning, we were given the goal to finesse our Trangias so that they appeared akin to a mirror. We thoroughly scrubbed at the multiple pans with wet wipes to get rid of all the imperfections. The final walk consisted of a 12km route with no steep hills, but still, to a group of amateur walkers, this simple route proved very challenging. On the route we made many animal friends, including a very friendly and big horse.
Then, the satisfaction we felt when we arrived at out final destination point was completely unmatched to anything I had experienced before. We took one last group photo, and off we went on the coach. The experience was one-of-a-kind, and every girl who took part in it is very happy that they did.
Neyla K, Year 10
