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Getting Lost (multiple times) in the New Forest!!
I started my Gold DofE Journey all the way back in October 2018 through my school after completing my bronze a few years before. Throughout 2018-19 I completed my volunteering, physical and skills section by volunteering at my Brownie unit, going regularly to gym classes and learning to drive. We also completed our practice expedition in the summer of 2019 in the Yorkshire Dales. And so I only had my residential and my assessed expedition remaining to do… but then Covid arrived.
Through the pandemic, of course, most events were cancelled and so I knew my Gold DofE was going to be put on hold for a while, but during this time my school had ran out of training (which couldn’t be done due to Covid) and so weren’t able to do any more expeditions. Also myself and friends had all since moved away to universities all over and so it was hard to organise as most people had no interest in still completing the award and so I was gutted and felt as if I was never going to finish it.
I have always been quite perseverant (or you could say stubborn 🙂 ) with challenges like these and so I was set on finding a way to complete it. Luckily you always know Guiding will be there to help.
I managed to contact my Queens guide adviser who told me about a guide and rangers group from Crawley who needed more people to attend their expedition for it to go ahead. This made me a bit nervous as it was so far away and I knew that I wouldn’t know anyone and thought I’d feel left out but I decided to go for it!
We had a couple of zoom meetings together as a group of 6 where we planned our routes and organised our group equipment but our first time meeting in person was at Foxlease the night before our expedition. Although most of the group were from
Crawley or nearby, I found out that another member of the group was also from
Nottingham and so we drove down to Foxlease together which was great as I was able to get to know another member before we got there.
We spent 4 days on our expedition around the New Forest with our project around how they maintain the upkeep of the forest and its pathways. The expedition, like all D of E expeditions, was amazing! We got lost, got very muddy and wet, had little sleep and ate some questionable meals!
The highlight of my experience was our last day of which heavens truly opened and our route through the New Forest was well and truly flooded with the path no longer visible under the rain water. We had to cross lots of water using logs to crawl over (luckily we only had one incident of a team member falling in!) but it made it all the more fun.
My expedition was the best I could’ve ever hoped it could be and I never felt like I had only just met the group as we instantly became close friends and had an amazing time together. It just amazes you how quickly you all become friends and how you all work together to make it the best time ever! I was also just so pleased I had taken the plunge to complete it with a brand new group as without doing so I would never have completed my Gold and been so proud!
