Through guiding I completed all three of my D of E Awards. We began our Bronze award final expedition at Weston Park and so asked Lord Bradford if he would present us with our awards which he was only to pleased to do, except that the first date had to be postponed due to personal reasons of Lord Bradford and he rang my Mom to tell her whilst she was cooking breakfast as you can imagine having a phone call out of the blue from Lord Bradford whilst cooking breakfast was something of a shock and resulted in burnt bacon!

Our Silver D of E expedition left us not quite leaving the campsite as we found it as we had managed to pitch our tent using storm pegs and one of these had pierced a water pipe so when we took the tent down so a little bubbling patch of water emerged! The pipe was replaced after we had gone and as I had put the pegs in I got the piece of water pipe which I had damaged to put in my log of the expedition. We also all completed our Silver D of E expedition in state of the art Shell suits the fashion statement of the time and ideal as they dried very quickly, purchased from Wolverhampton market as every market stall in the country at the time was selling them!
I did make it all the way to Gold finishing with an exploration in mid Wales studying the coast and persuading my three friends who I had known since I was five, when we started school together, that they needed to completed the exploration as well as we had done all the other awards together, only I in the end made it to St James Palace. Meeting the Duke of Edinburgh. It was a memorable day and we were told to keep him talking or he would move on to the next group the conversation arrived at New Zealand and I was able to talk to him about a family holiday we had recently spent there due to having family there as my Grandfather came from New Zealand, he took a great interest in all that the young people said and made it a very special day for us all. A truly inspirational man.