TAKE A HIKE In April over sixty students had their first taste of a walking and camping expedition. The expeditions took place in and around Cannock Chase, with ‘Silver’ Candidates walking for three days and camping for two nights, whilst ‘Bronze’ Candidates walked for two days and camped for one night. The weather stayed fine, although it was rather cold at night! “The D of E Programme has given me a whole new experience, and this made the recent trip even more exciting for me. We gained experience of long distance walking, camping, map-reading and time management. Because of the training sessions before the expedition I thought that I had prepared myself both mentally and physically but it wasn’t quite that simple! On the first day my team and I arrived at the station with our kit and after talking through what we had packed with the leaders we all realised that we had over-packed unnecessary and ‘luxurious’ items in our rucksacks. We set off thinking that the walking would be a ‘piece of cake’ but, after two hours we began to endure the pain of holding all that weight on our backs. Pitching our tents was a relatively easy process but I had a taste of what it’s like to live that lifestyle, with all the setting-up and preparation involved. Some problematic issues stemmed from poor teamwork at times but also from not knowing basic life skills. Overall, however, it was a highly rewarding trip with some fun parts and some challenging parts. I’d totally recommend it as it is a different life experience you can have with friends. Thanks to Ms Fisher for giving us this opportunity.” Dilshan Arulkumaran “My group were the first to start our expedition and we headed off after setting our map using a compass to help us to navigate. On the first day, the walk was longer than we expected and, due to our lack of experience (and maybe fitness!) we slowed down after the third checkpoint. Eventually, though, we managed to make it to the campsite, thanks to the good map-reading skills of our group. On the second day, we knew what to expect and, even though our instructors had warned us that Saturday was going to be a much more tiring and exhausting day, we found it more pleasant and less tiring than Friday’s hike. We even managed to have a lengthy break for some stone-skimming on a lake. I found the practice expedition to be a memorable experience, even though we had to walk for at least seven hours a day! Finally, I would like to thank Ms Fisher for organising the expedition, and also Mr Jones and our instructors for supervising us at the campsite. I am hoping that we will do even better as a group in our real expedition which is taking place around the Long Mynd. We will endeavour to be more prepared!”  Gowshikan Gajadevan 19