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A Company NewsMy Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Expedition by Cdt LCpl Bowen (Talavera Detachment)After five hours on a combination of trains, replacement buses and a CCAT minibus, I arrived at a busy Halton Camp. As well as 5 CCAT courses, there were also a group of soldiers from ITC Catterick and a group of cadets in training for the 2012 expedition to South Africa on the camp. I was allocated a bed space that I would use for the next two nights - the other three being spent out on expedition. After dinner there was the usual briefing, and a lecture on mountain weather from Captain Lang (known at CCAT as Jon), who would be assessing us later out on the hill, followed by a trip to the canteen to catch up with some of the instructors and adults I'd met the year before at the SMP or on the Dingwall expeditions week during the summer. Monday was allocated to expedition preparation. Firstly we met with the rest of the team; unfortunately three of the original seven had dropped out leaving just four of us to do the course. Alastair, our supervisor, explained that it would only take one of us to pull out and the expedition would no longer be safe and we would be pulled off the hill. After a morning sorting logbooks, planning our route and filling in route cards, we headed out to ASDA to buy our expedition food - consisting mainly of pasta, porridge, pitta bread and sweets. On our return we visited the stores to pick up any other kit we didn't have, including the infamous "Gore-Tex Mountain Hat" before choosing who was sharing a tent with whom, and dividing up the food and equipment. Once our kit was packed we headed back to the canteen for some more social time. It was an early start to reach our start point of Gayle, in the Yorkshire Dales. The first day was fairly easy going, following the Pennine Way for part of the day, and despite getting temporarily "mislocated" during the final few kilometres, we made it to the campsite in Horton in Ribblesdale much earlier than expected. This had a slight downside in that there was not much for us to do in the evening once we'd cooked our dinner, but we managed to while away the time exchanging our life stories and chatting about cadets. Wednesday saw our first "big hill", aka Ingleborough. At a height of 724m it was quite a lot smaller than some of the hills I'd climbed in the summer in Scotland, but with full expedition packs it felt somewhat higher. After meeting Alistair at the top, the cloud cleared giving us some pretty scenery to look at as we descended and found a spot that wasn’t too exposed where we could eat lunch. The final few kilometres took us across extremely boggy farmland - a tricky prospect with a 1:50,000 maps that don’t show field boundaries! Nevertheless we eventually made our way to our campsite just outside Ingleton, and put up our tent amid a field full of free range chickens. We also received a visit from our Assessor, Jon, who was happy to find out we were all still well and in good spirits. According to the route card Thursday was going to be the killer day, with the most climbing and the longest distance to cover. After a morning visit from Alistair we set off to "conquer" Whernside, 736m. The visibility was so poor on the summit we somehow managed to miss out the trig point completely - we were really glad of our mountain hats (and nobody could see us anyway!), we descended the hill and continued over a track that followed a railway tunnel. The last couple of miles were along a quiet country lane by a river, and it started to rain - surprisingly, despite the forecast, this shower was the only rain we saw aside from mountain fog on the whole expedition. In order to cover enough distance on our final day, we were up, packed and walking by torchlight at 5am. The incentive of finishing somehow made us walk faster and we beat Alistair to our pick up point. By midday we were back at Halton, and managed to sneak in a quick shower before meeting Jon for a debrief. We had all passed, so feeling pleased with ourselves, we got on with returning kit to the stores, including the mountain hats which by now had individual names, and finding out how things had gone from the other courses. After the final debrief it was time to say our goodbyes and head for the station. Overall, I am really pleased that I've now completed the expedition section of the Gold DofE and as a group we’d had lots of fun and jokes on the way. However, it is also quite strange to think that I'd never do a DofE expedition again. That said I'm looking forward to returning to CCAT in February to try Winter Mountaineering... Cdt LCpl Katie Bowen |