Sore Back, Bruised Hips, Blistered Feet.... D of E Rocks!!

D of E is kind of like a snobby english version of Girl Scouts, I guess. It stands for Duke of Edinborough, and basically you train to go on an expedition, for which you need high tech gear like hiking boots, a rucksack, a platapus, a trangia etc. etc. WELL, on Sunday we had a random 'Full Pack Walk' where you walk around for 3 hours (in my case, 4) with 1/4 of your body weight on your back with 6 other people. A week bofore it, my father and I scoured eBay for some rockin' equipment. And guess what I found...


Now, most people go for stuff like vomit coloured boots, vile green rucksacks, and black waterproofs. On Tuesday I got some skyblue and white hiking boots.


On Friday came my purple backpack. And on Saturday Katherine gave me her humungous, white waterproof, which, while I wore, I looked like a deflated marshmallow. I already had a decent pink jacket. Then to top it off, my Dad lent me some orange socks, I wore pink gloves and a blue hat with a bobbley bit at the top. I felt very cool.

When I got there, I found the rest of my group and joined them, then a teacher came along and help us fit our rucksack. One of my friends boasted that she had the entire series of Harry Potter in her rucksack. Another, the immense amount of food and 6 litres of water. The teacher was making fun of my fuzzy pink gloves. He asked me where I got them and I said '2 pounds from Claires' Then he said something about me wearing a Gor-tex crop top from claires but I didn't really hear him. I was actually wearing one from a proper shop so I said 'Ya I am!' Then everyone started laughing at me :-)

All of the groups had to leave at 20 minute intervals and our time was 10:20. It was that time when we realized one of our members was missing. 10:25 - we called her. She had just left the house. 10:32 - she arrived with no socks on. 10:37 everyone was ready and we set off.

Our next delay was trying to do the elephant effect up a steep hill. It was my idea, I felt like a genius until we tried it. Each person was to hold onto one of the gazillion straps of the backpack of the person in front. As you can imagine, after a lot of chocolate, and me not being the strongest of people at the front, it didn't really work. I just about fell ontop of everyone it was that bad. Then we had another chocolate break (one of many).

But that wasn't NOTHIN yet. There was another hill that was practically vertical. With slippy mud. And nothing to grab onto. My friend ended up falling over 4 TIMES! Once she fell over the 1st time, she had no chance. She tried to get up, but slipped and fell over again, up, down, up, down.

We ended up missing 2 turns in the road, but luckily, both times there was a teacher to tell us we went wrong. We seemed to be taking a long time, our problem was taking too many breaks. As we got up into the woods, where teachers wouldn't be able to guide us, I was helping one of my friends with her rucksack. The Harry Potter one. All of the weight had sagged down, and was gradually pulling her pants down with it. While I was doing this, another 2 were looking at the wooden electric fence. ????????? They claimed it had a sign on it saying 'Electric Fence' even though it was wood. Anyway, the conversation ended up on me, I can't remember how, and my Polish friend made a comment about me. She said, 'Ya, she smells a lot.' We all stared at her and said 'What?'

'She smells a lot' She demonstrated my smiling.

'Ohhhhhhhhhhh, she SMILES a lot.' Hehe, it was her polish accent.

After one of our breaks we walked for about 45 minutes and decided to take a 5 minute break. I timed it, we were very good about it. Then we got up and walked for about 5 more minutes. Then we saw a tree swing. Of course we HAD to stop and have a go, even though we just had a break. It was a rope with a stick on the end that was too high to sit on, so we just did a run up and swung on it by our hands. Right after I had my go, Mr Ridley - a teacher who I hear is usually moody or unpredictable showed up. I was sure he was gonna kill us. After all we were in a forest, unsupervised, swinging on a stick attatched to a thin rope with our backpacks on.

He told us to get a move on, but by that point Harry Potter girl's sole of her shoe was about to come off so she couldn't walk anymore. We got to the top of the hill with the teacher and tried to sort it out. His walkie-talkie said something and he went, 'Ya, I found them.' They had to send out a teacher to go looking for us! We felt special. That's how late we were. We had been walking for 3 hours and still had 30 minutes to go. Plus the shoe thing took up 15 minutes. We ended up tying a shoelace around the shoe to keep it from coming off...

3 hours and 45 minutes. 4 hours after we should have left. We were the last group to return. And just as we'd finished it started to rain. It was definitely interesting.