experiencethewilderness-blog

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Hello Everyone!! Completed our final expedition at Corfe, the whole journey was eventful. Before we even made it to our campsite our minibus broke down, people got chased by cows, people hurting themselves. The whole thing was just a massive adventure and it totally worth it! This is probably my last blog post, so bye for now and good luck with your Duke of Edinburgh! 

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Hello everyone! Apologies for not being able to post for so long, I haven’t had any time been busy with exams!!! But I’ll catch you up on my second practice expedition. So we went to Braid Wood and let me just say at 32 degrees its hard to walk for 6 hours! Don’t get me started on how bad my hay fever got! All in all it was a good learning experience and I learnt some valuable skills

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Sorry.for.not.posting.sooner!!But.I’m.here.now.and.our.expedition.to.BoxHill.was.the.best.we.had.lots.of.fun.and.there.was.a.lot.of.getting.lost.and.eating.marshmellows.and.definately.taking.alot.of.breaks!!!(sorry.but.my.spacebar.is.not.working.on.tumblr?)

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Fun day practising making food and drinks using the trangia! We even got to drink the delicious hot chocolate we made!! Safety tip: Make sure that if you need to add more fuel turn off the flame by placing the lid on top of the place where the flame comes out and then after making sure the flame is completely out then add the fuel, otherwise a nasty accident will occur and  no one wants that! (Anecdote time: Our First Aid trainer told us a story where one time there was a boy playing with a wrapper on a stick, he was burning it etc. and then he was laughing with his friend and he flung the stick up with the burning hot wrapper and it landed on this girls hand and now she has a permanent tattoo of the alpine mountain and alpine logo!!!)

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

AHHH!!! Expedition is soon, busy prepping our kit list, making sure we don’t miss a thing!! 

Important tips: 

- Make sure you walk around with your walking boots and walking socks on at least a week before your expedition to get used to them, preventing any blisters on your expedition

- If you have a brick phone take that to your expedition, it’s small and convenient and you don’t have to worry about it getting lost or broken and the battery is sure to last you the whole weekend (unless you have to take pictures for a blog like me I’d advice leaving your smartphone at home) 

- Bring lots of food!!! You’re going to be walking for roughly around 6 hours each day, you need to keep your body fuelled. Remember happy body means happy well-being. Do not under any circumstances bring tinned food, it’s inconvenient, heavy and takes way too much space in your bag 

- Ensure that you split the things out equally, you don’t want to give someone too much, remember you’re in this together. So if someone is carrying a big part of the tent don’t give them the trangia, fuel bottle, first aid kit and most of the food!

- If you get lost, don’t split up trying to find the place where you started, go together and if you are really lost use your phone to contact the emergency number your DofE supervisor gave to you. 

- Respect the country code. Imagine walking in to your house only to find that it’s been vandalised, trash everywhere, graffiti all over the walls. Graffiti is a beautiful form of art but there are some places where it shouldn’t be like on fences on private property. Leaving litter around is harmful for the animal residents in the place you’re going and do not aggravate the animals and even if they are cute do not run after them to stroke them, they will get scared and may harm you as an act of self defence! 

- Finally remember to have fun!! Don’t consider Duke of Edinburgh as a chore to just get an extra thing to put on your CV, consider it as a learning opportunity to expand your horizons. 

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Learning the country code and making a fun game for the local scouts so they can learn the country code in a fun and exciting way!! 

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Learning what kind of foods are essential and what we should cut out, fun activity in which we were able to determine for ourselves based on how much energy they provide and how easily packable it is!! 

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Third week of Silver DofE!!! Excited to learn about bearings and ensure that we don’t get lost on our expedition :D Here’s a link that describes in detail on how to do a bearing: http://pontypoolmuseum.org.uk/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads/pontypool-park/exercise2/How%20to%20take%20a%20bearing.pdf 

Have fun guys!! 

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Hahahaha Fantastic!! 

Photography by Jorge Saenz

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Summarised it well!

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Really want to go visit! Beautiful landscape 

So much color in Mono County, California—photo by Simon Williams. #nevada #northamerica #fallcolor #fallfever #autumn #fall #beautiful #adventure #naturephotos #nature #livenature (at Condado de Mono)

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Beautiful Campfire, simple yet captures everything needed 

Untitled

by: Bryan Daugherty

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

Another great week on learning skills applicable to our Duke Of Edinburgh expedition! This time around we learnt about contour lines and how to use them in order to estimate timings, it was great to learn about how contour lines work and how they provide a lot of information for us walkers! :) 

[experiencethewilderness-blog]

First week of our Silver Dofe Session! Excited to get down and make sure we make the most of this experience :) This week we began with learning about coordinates and how to find points given the coordinates of the location. We started using bearings however we have a long way to go before we become experts!! Can’t wait for next week to learn more key skills applicable to our expeditions