This weekend has been spent in the Shropshire Hills with a group of four boys from the local secondary school, wanting to do their silver Duke of Edinburgh expedition on foot. There are a number of others doing silver expeditions at their school this year, but they have favoured the canoe option. As a result, I was asked if I might be able to put something on for them. I group of four always leaves me slightly nervous as it only takes one to drop out for the group to be unviable, but everyone seemed keen and committed. Hopefully, we can keep all four on board till the end!

Yesterday was spent around the Hope Bowdler area, which has a wealth of footpaths as well as access land, giving us the opportunity to navigate in a variety of ways. DofE expedition training is actually quite involved and, although it contains a lot of navigational skills which take time to practice, there are a lot of other areas to cover. Before we even started walking, we looked at the requirements for a DofE expedition, and the sort of kit which should be carried for a day in the hills as well as some basic map symbolism.

During the course of Saturday’s walk, we worked on map orientation, hand railing, tick and overshoot features, recognition of features, measuring distances from the map, timing, taking bearings from the map as well as taking about the Country Code, access land and emergency procedures. We also started to look at some basic contour interpretation which I was always planning to build on during the second day.

We spent the night a Brow Farm campsite, which is popular with DofE groups due to it’s location. It’s a spot from which you can access a number of different areas in the Shropshire Hills without need a vehicle. Having talked through the considerations of where and what orientation to pitch tents, we had a bit of practice before getting stuck into safe stove use and cooking. Dinner was the ideal time to talk about food types and what makes good expedition food and other practical considerations such as minimising awkward waste.

After a chilly night’s sleep, and some hot porridge to set us up for the day, we headed back out on foot for some more navigation practice. Today was less about footpaths and hand railing, and more about understanding the shape of the land. We did some more practice of timing, taking bearings from the real world, pacing, combining the compass and pacing skills through leap frogging (a group technique for staying on a set bearing) and looking at smaller, less obvious contour features. We also stopped off at the Visitor Centre in Carding Mill Valley for a hot chocolate while we talked through relevant first aid information.

It was a full on weekend, but one which I hope the boys will find useful. I was certainly impressed by some of the navigation that they were able to pull together by this afternoon. Now it’s time to start planning for their practice expedition at half term.