I did my gold DofE expedition during COVID which meant we couldn’t go where we needed to but made up for it by doing an extra long walks. We ended up doing a 20km walk on one of the days and after completing it we were all exhausted but with the knowledge that we could do something like that I’m now signed up for a MacMillan marathon walk later this year because doing the DofE showed me what I’m capable of.

On my silver we got unlucky with weather and so we were completely soaked for 2 days and water went through all of our clothes. Our only saviour was a dryer and spending an hour drying our shoes under hand dryers and then stumbling back to the tents to stuff them with newspaper and hope they dried by the next morning. As cold as we were, we all really enjoyed it and 3 of us went and did our gold together in similar weather! But having to endure the cold, wet weather of Britain solidified our friendships and still regularly go on long walks