My Duke of Edinburgh experience
My personal DofE expedition experience was an emotional rollercoaster with quite literally ups and downs. We began our day bright and early meeting our assigned team leaders at our starting point. They gave us our maps, compass, emergency phone and our mission to create a playlist to represent our expedition.
As we began our long trek, we were all in high spirits and were even singing Mamma Mia songs. I could feel the weight of the bag on my back already, because mine was the heaviest, but we got to our first stop before our required time and even began to walk quicker when we saw our leader was at the end waiting for us. It began to get a little tougher, we used our maps to keep on track and were soon at lunch. Luckily for us we could have a little bit longer for lunch as we were already ahead. We restored our high spirits and endorphins with the sun to help us keep up our serotonin. Thankfully my batman helped to keep us going.
We were relieved to reach camp
After our enjoyable break we set off once again. However darker clouds began to hover over us, and we began to find it more difficult to keep up our high moods. We found some of our teachers close to the end and saw the team that we had passed by earlier. We picked up our speeds to try race to the end, but the other team ran to beat us. When we reached the camp there was relief and tears with so many different emotions running through our body and had to put up our tents quickly in the rain. But our campfire experience being all together was the best part of the experience as it brought us together, kept happy moods and brought a warmth to us.
We ate our breakfast and began to pack up so we could leave earlier. We had a nice walk to each of our stops and the early morning fog began to rise as the sun came in. The final stretch felt like it was the longest of them all and the rain began to pour again. We kept talking about what we were going to do and what we were going to eat once we were back home. Soon we had reached the end and had a high sense of relief and couldn’t wait to fall asleep.
Reflecting on my DofE experience, it was an amazing adventure and I wish I could relive it.
Paige Plant
Thanks from the Royal British Legion
