Duke of Edinburgh Expedition 2021
This weekend a selection of Year 9 and 10 students successfully completed their bronze Duke of Edinburgh qualifying expedition, walking over 30 km whilst carrying heavy rucksacks between the two days. Starting in Kettlewell they made excellent progress towards Grassington where a much-needed ice cream awaited their arrival. Some very sunburnt characters but in high spirits nonetheless. The students worked really well together, especially the Year 10s. Once fully rested, they made their way along the river to Burnsall where they cooled their feet in the river.
Then the very tired and aching students had the delights of experiencing a brand new campsite in Skipton … TSA’s very own field. Students put up their tents and got ready for the evening and then played some games before settling down for the night. The campsite got a four-star review from Lotte (Yr9) so they must have enjoyed it!
Day two dawned and students were very tired after a night under the stars. We quickly got them sorted and helped them pack their bags before the start of day two which took students to their start point at the beautiful Malham Tarn. Students made their way down the limestone pavement and Mr Adams got in his daily exercise with the opportunity for a run whilst Mr Fryer and Mr Carr sped up Malham Cove … unlike the students making their way down the cove.
Students finally made their way into Malham where the Year 10 group learnt the hard way that using a bridge is better than trying to cross a small (shallow) river on a poorly made set of stepping stones. It's safe to say that K (Yr10) had very wet feet for the later part of his walk. They all carried on to a layby between Airton and Gargrave where we picked students up as they had completed their second day of 6 hours of activity. All very tired and sunburnt students were delivered back to parents at 4pm as planned.
They all really enjoyed the two days and the opportunity to build some new friendships and see environments that some students hadn’t been exposed to in the past. The students were extremely well behaved and members of the public spoke to us at various checkpoints to commend how well the students were behaving and demonstrating leadership skills, especially Stanley who helped out K when he was struggling on the last leg of the walk. K demonstrated excellent resilience throughout the expedition and has really impressed all staff over the weekend for his questionable choices of food but also for preserving through the pain and struggles he was having during the first day. Excellent map reading skills were shown throughout by Charlotte, Lucy and Sophie.
