Gold D of E and stuff

I'm back! A little later than I said but it's still Sunday so I guess that's not too bad. On Wednesday I didn't actually explain where I was going so here you go...

On Thursday I left for my Gold Duke of Edinburgh practice expedition having completed both the bronze and silver awards within the past two years. In case any of you are a little unsure about what the award is, I'll try to give a quick explanation but feel free to have a Google!

The D of E award is a collection of awards founded by Prince Philip (unsurprisingly, the Duke of Edinburgh) in 1956. It has a few sections: volunteering, physical, skills, expedition and, at gold level, residential. It is aimed to help young people develop various skills useful in all stages of life. For the expedition section there are quite a few options and for the first two awards I took part in a walking expedition. However, for my gold expedition I chose to canoe. Admittedly, at first I thought canoeing would be so much easier than walking as I wouldn't actually have to carry my bag but it wasn't long before I had changed my mind!

I woke up bright and early on Thursday morning to arrive at college for 7:30am and when I arrived I was very excited but also slightly anxious. After the 90minute journey to Windermere in the Lake District I was mainly just eager to start. We started by practicing recovering a capsized boat just in case anything did go wrong but then quickly moved on to the canoeing. We travelled a total of 18km quite successfully before arriving a  the first campsite. As campsites go, it wasn't too bad but we did have a couple of issues before being able to set up our tents and start cooking. As usual, I didn't sleep too well in the tent (blame low-flying aeroplanes) but what do you expect?

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn packing our tents away ready to start our second day of paddling. The weather was lovely (perhaps a little too hot at times) and we had a pleasant day covering 22km in total. We all arrived at the second campsite pretty exhausted and ready to eat but first we had to practice rescuing people from the lake which involved me getting extremely cold and wet! We then cooked and went to bed quite early ready for our third and final day.

On the final day we only paddled around 8km before practicing an all-in rescue which is just what it sounds like. Every canoe capsized and you have to get every member of the team back in their canoes. This seemed quite daunting at first but was actually a lot of fun! We then packed away and started to head home after a lovely but very tiring expedition. I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed it so should probably say a big thank you to the volunteers who helped organise it.

Just thought I'd give you an update on what I've been up to. If it wasn't really the sort of post you enjoy, I'm sorry and I'll be back with some more normal stuff soon.

Keep smiling!
Kathryn x