HRH Prince Philip was an inspiration to me. I completed the Gold Award in November 2019, and have yet to collect the Award due to the pandemic. The skills and experiences I gained during DofE continues to give me opportunities, and I am so thankful. My DofE story was from the final expedition in the Black Mountains, Wales.

Two of my friends and I were woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of footsteps. A mysterious creature was brushed up against the outside of our tent, grunting, chomping and sighing - it clipped my friend's leg! We thought it was a sheep at first, so we tried to scare it off. Luckily, one of my friends grew up on a farm, so she knew that clapping would scare whatever it was away from us. Our team mates must been pretty annoyed at us by this point, it was 4am and we were scared and clapping and making a general ruckus. The creature wasn't leaving, so our friend bravely zipped open the tent... A looming black silhouette blocked out the stars of the night sky. It was a horse! The cheeky animal had been snuffling a bin bag we had foolishly tied to the outside of our tent from the previous evening. Our friend cleverly lured the horse out of the camp field with grass. We laughed about it for days afterwards and it still makes me smile.