I completed all three stages, Bronze, Silver and Gold, which took me 11 years to complete. This was because I had several challenges being hearing and visually impaired. However, I felt it built up my confidence, taught me new skills and enabled me to motivate others along with doing fundraising charity work. After completing the scheme, I then wanted to bring my experience to the DofE committee where I served for 4 years in the West Sussex area. It gave me great satisfaction to increase disability awareness, which back in the 80s was only just starting to be recognised.

I was lucky to meet the Duke on several occasions and found he had empathy and compassion for people with disabilities. The scheme allows one to not let one's disability get in the way of achieving objectives in life. I do recall one incident during the night time exercise for my expedition, since I have night time vision problems, where I was really scared about this. Nevertheless, I went through it, after having been falling into ditches, bogs and all in the Welsh hills. One aspect in the expedition I found was my appreciation of how beautiful our countryside is and the importance of preserving the environment and the wildlife.

On another occasion, for the Bronze medallion in life saving and me being medium height, tugging this 6 foot tall, very heavy guy from a swimming pool on your own was let me just say - difficult!

In 1990 due to my interest in swimming I was able to take part and win some medals in the nationals for the blind, this at the age of 30 for me was quite an achievement, thanks for the scheme. This also inspired me to gain other skills later in life, and that I think was the main objective for me.