I carried out three expeditions one for my bronze, one for my silver, and one for my gold. All of which took place in the Lake District.

These trips were truly exciting as it was the first time that I had gone anywhere without family and learnt new skills such as an orienteering, learning to look after myself, sleeping under canvas, climbing and walking mountains and cooking under the stars.
I remember one expedition where we were at the top of a mountain and our feet were dangling one of the tarns as it was so hot, and one of our group had a radio and I remember listening to Bjorn Borg playing tennis at Wimbledon.
I learnt a variety of other skills all of which enabled me to develop confidence and independence.
The expeditions certainly gave me a zest for life and I’m now a fellow of the Royal geographical Society and absolutely love travelling and exploring new places.
I met Prince Phillip once in the mid 70s when he visited schools across the area and pupils who are taking part in the D of E. We all had different tasks to complete according to the activity we were doing at the time as part of our DV and I was doing childcare. My task was to bath a doll in a bowl of water. I was not particularly thrilled with this and was pretty fed up, anyway Prince Phillip came over to my table and asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was learning to bath a baby but of course this was only a doll. He looked at me and laughed and said probably just as well as the baby’s skin would’ve been wrinkled by now. We both laughed and then he said “look at it this way at least there’s no noise and you won’t have to change its nappy!”