September 2006
D of E Award bronze training expedition. After weeks of planning and training, groups hit the hiking trail. The weekend involved 15 miles in two days in the Farnham, Hindhead, Haslemere area with a compass orienteering activity at Frensham Great Pond to start with.
D of E Award bronze training expedition. After weeks of planning and training, groups hit the hiking trail. The weekend involved 15 miles in two days in the Farnham, Hindhead, Haslemere area with a compass orienteering activity at Frensham Great Pond to start with.
October 2006
D of E Bronze Expedition on the Isle of Wight. After catching the hovercraft from Portsmouth to Ryde and the island train, 3 teams set off on their own routes on a 2 day, 15 mile weekend. During the weekend the assessors caught up with the groups at various points to ensure they were following their route plans. The Explorers spent the night at Ventnor, after breakfast and taking down the tents the teams started their
final day’s walk.
April 2007
D of E Bronze Expedition on the Isle of Wight. After catching the hovercraft from Portsmouth to Ryde and the island train, 3 teams set off on their own routes on a 2 day, 15 mile weekend. During the weekend the assessors caught up with the groups at various points to ensure they were following their route plans. The Explorers spent the night at Ventnor, after breakfast and taking down the tents the teams started their
final day’s walk.
April 2007
12 Explorers, 4 Leaders and 4 cars set out on our annual D of E Silver Expedition to the Peak District. We left Camelsdale at 10.15 am on Bank Holiday Monday and arrived at out camp site at 4.15pm after a visit to the Derwent Reservoir (One of the sites where 617 Squadron “The Dambusters” practiced their low level bombing runs due to its similarity to the German dams)
We spent a very windy Monday night in the tents at Edale and awoke to a cloudy sky but at least the wind had stopped blowing after breakfast the first 6 Explorers went down under (not Australia, but caving with 3 members of Surrey Caving club). After 2 hours crawling through passages the Explorers returned to daylight, wet and muddy but really glad they had the opportunity to do some caving in the area, the other 6 Explorer spent the morning in Bakewell and at 1pm they swapped with the other group and went caving.
Wednesday morning, after having breakfast, the Explorers set out on their first of 3 days hiking. Starting at Edale and doing a 10 mile circuit finishing back at Edale where they spent another night this time it was a cold. Thursday morning after breakfast and taking down the tents they set of in their teams of 4 for another 10 miles of walking to the next camp site at Pindale (just above Castleton). We shared the camp site with some young people who were doing their Gold D of E and just over the wall we had a large number of ewes and their lambs. It was nice that during the night they were quite and so were the Explorers. After a cold night the Explorer were up, tents packed away and their rucksacks on their backs. They started their last day of walking (another 10 miles) over some more hills down into valleys ending up at Ladybower Reservoir, they were glad to sit down in the cars for the journey home. Mind you the leaders had to put up with the aroma of the explorers feet after they took their boots off for the trip back (nice).
March 2008
D of E Practice Expedition on the Southdowns.
The Explorers meet at 8.45am on a Saturday morning at Haslemere railway station for a trip on a train to
Rowlands Castle for the start of their two day practice expedition.
It was on with their rucksacks and off on their first day of hiking to West Dean Scout camp site.
It was a wet day of hiking on the Southdown's but their waterproof withstood the rain and hailstones , when they arrived at the West Dean it was up with their tents, out with the cooking stoves and on with their evening meals.
After some sleep and once their tents and kit were packed away they were off on their final hike to Midhurst where they were picked up by their parents.
