I will always remember my Gold D of E experience. We were offered the opportunity by our school D of E lead to canoe down the River Wye for our final expedition. We couldn’t have been luckier with the weather and had 5 days of sunshine in June to canoe from campsite to campsite along the river but perseverance in the heat was key and long miles each day meant using mental strength that I now find so useful in my adult life.

We completed our training hikes in our group of 6 (2 girls and 4 boys) and us girls wanted to make sure we were fit and strong enough to canoe at the same pace as the boys so we did some strength training too which mostly involved a lot of push ups in the weeks and months prior to the final expedition. I learnt perseverance, resilience, built my confidence and made good friends at the same time.

You don’t know what will be sprung on you and for me, it was actually sadly a lesson in how to overcome disloyal friends as well but I had built up the resilience to overcome this. Thankfully having a sporty background, parents to support me and an outgoing nature all helped but the experience was amazing! I volunteered and helped younger students with their Maths work.

All of these skills have fed into my adult life and helped me become the person I am today. I am now a secondary school teacher and I live by all the skills I learnt above. Resilience is so important in life and it’s something I now try to teach the children I work with every day.