Year 10 take on Bronze DofE
Josie Frost

On the 18th -19th of June over forty Year 10 students completed their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award.

To start off, each group was dropped off at a meeting point where they would talk with their assessor and then start their journey to the Herts Guide Centre in Cottered; my group started at Furneux Pelham church at 10:30am. Whilst listening to our assessor Mr Corner, I was staring at my filled up rucksack, wondering how I was going to last two days with it on my back. Dramatic? Yes but 100% true. However, I was reassured that so many people do Bronze DofE, so I’m sure I could last.

Skip ahead a few hours into our trek and we had gone through countless amounts of fields and suddenly we were at the start of Buntingford Carnival. Oops! We looked at the map only to realise that we had turned left too soon and the quickest way to get out of our slip up was to go through it. The four of us were greeted with puzzled looks, shouts of “Are you a little bit lost?” and some annoyed faces as we accidently bumped people with our rucksacks and camping mats. Instead of panic, Jess and I found it highly appropriate to dance to the steel pans that were blaring out Bob Marley; whilst Jordan tried to work out the next turning we could take and Amelia was miserable due to the fact she couldn’t buy homemade Italian ice cream.

Once we finally made it out of the hectic street parades, we turn around to find Jordan having a nose bleed and so our joy Amelia hates blood; a brilliant combination. After those hectic hours, we finally made it to the campsite where we were greeted with our friends faces filled with either hungriness, relief or confusion at how they were supposed to fit all their pasta in the little trangia pot. Mr Boyle had kindly brought along some footballs and a rounders bat and ball so we made the most of them, even though many people had countless blisters. After showing off our skills (that would have made the PE department proud) another school joined us and by joined us I mean we proved we are the most competitive school out there.

Later on Alex Scott started her own little concert by the campfire along with some great harmonies; it was clear who takes Music GCSE and who doesn’t. The next morning, we stumbled out of our sleeping bags, cooked our bacon and rocked the rucksacks like Mr Biggins does his pink suit.  A little blistered, we headed on with another day of Bronze Duke of Edinburgh...