Duke of Edinburgh’s Award – Bronze, Silver and Gold Training

This weekend, we had record numbers of Bronze, Silver and Gold participants completing their expedition training at Presdales for their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. On Saturday, we had just over 150 year 9s attend for their Bronze training and then around 60 Year 10s for Silver and 23 Year 11s for Gold on the Sunday. Students arrived bright and early to register in their teams and meet their instructors and then groups scattered to different classrooms to begin sessions which focused on navigation, first aid, camp craft, cooking in the outdoors and expedition equipment. We were impressed by the attitude of the students who worked brilliantly together on challenging tasks such as plotting their routes for their qualifying expeditions which will take place later this year. The BXM Instructors were fantastic as always and kept up positive vibes throughout both days. Steve, Matt, Malcolm and Pippa will be joining us later this year on the expeds and are already looking forward to seeing the participants put the skills they learnt this weekend into practice in the outdoors. A special mention must also go to Mr Bedwell and two of our DofE Young Leaders, Maisie Johnson and Molly Barnard who volunteered to support the instructors and participants throughout the weekend. Thank you guys! We couldn’t have done it without you!

Thank you to Chloe Haworth (Bronze) and Niamh Wallace (Silver) who have written about their experiences so you can get a feel of how the day went.

Well done everyone and bring on the expeditions of 2023!

Bronze Training day

I thoroughly loved my DofE training day as it was a captivating and engaging experience which gave me the opportunity to learn and prepare myself for what I needed to be informed about for this exciting event. My favourite part was planning out our route on where we are going to be heading. Its a great opportunity where we get to decide and choose our own route. All the leaders were wonderful and included everyone’s thoughts and explained everything incredibly. My leader was Karen James who was such an enthusiastic and passionate leader who helped us fully equip ourselves and be ready for anything the DofE program will throw at us. I can’t wait to set off on this journey with my group!

Thank you for this experience as I can’t wait to kick start this expedition!

Chloe Haworth

Silver DofE Training Day

Sunday 15th January 2023

On our Dofe training day, we had BXM come in to re-introduce some skills and mark a map with us for our qualifying expedition. My group was Emily, Caitans Leia and I, and our BXM instructor was called Matt. Matt was a really nice guy who helped us mark our maps well for the three days and we talked out about what food to take on our expedition and what was a good idea and what wasn’t, along with the things that are necessary to take with us and what really wasn’t needed. We were group 5 and we shared our room with group 4 who also had Matt. We made a lot of jokes to pass time and ended early. I think it was a great day, and it’s even better when it’s done with friends as it’s easy to agree on who takes what and how everything will work. By the end of the day, we had written what we were going to eat for each meal on each day and marked our maps, along with who takes what parts of the tent, stoves, first aids, gasses, who has project and emergency phones, whos sleeping with who in a tent and what extra bits we agreed to bring.

Niamh Wallace