Kingsdown Duke of Edinburgh

The students loved cooling off whilst on their expeditions today, look at this snap shot!

All are now cooking their evening meal before getting an early nights sleep, all ready for Sunday.

All students back at camp and now resting out of the sun.

All of our students have been given their silver DofE t-shirts to keep them cool and recognisable in the heat today!

We’ve decided that the students will be walking with their little rucksacks today to ensure they don’t suffer too much in the heat.

And students have just been set off, walking through shaded paths where possible.

All silver students completed a very warm walk on Friday evening before putting their tents up and going to sleep. One group is going to be very tired this morning as they were still be talking at 12am!!!

All students will be off of camp by 7am, all up and cooking their breakfast. They are “delighted” to be up at this time in the morning. We are constantly watching the weather report and will update when the groups come through our check points.

Watch this space!!

On a very wet and cold Saturday morning, 22 of Kingsdown’s most committed and determined Year 9 students set off on their first of two expeditions. Luckily for the students we had to wait for a pair of waterproofs which had been forgotten and whilst we were waiting the rain had blown over.

By the time we got to our drop off point the sun was shining and all students were in good spirits. Students had previously made group names; Cool Kids :), Man-Dem, Bushtucker Girls and Lost Girls. Within the first hour Lost Girls definitely lived up their name but all groups made it through each of the check points…. even though two out of the four groups completed the walk backwards, don’t ask me how!!

We made it back to camp whilst the sun was still shining, students fought with their tents but finally they succeed. There were some very interesting food sources for tea but all seemed to have prepared well for their evening meal. Surprisingly, students were still full of energy and so it was only fair that the girls thrashed the boys in a rounders match which was watched on by Mrs Leigh-Bennett.

Finally 9pm came around and that only meant one thing… BED TIME. Yes you heard that right, although there were a couple of protests, the students settled down in no time.

Students were awake at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning, breakfasted on porridge and spaghetti hoops, packed their bags and tents and piled back on the mini-buses ready for their second day of walking. Sunday gave us more sun shine and hot weather and on a night of little sleep the students had a tough battle to fight.

All groups finally managed it through Check Point 1, Cool Kids 🙂 were once again flying through the whole of the course, Man-Dem were close on their tail, Lost Girls although slightly lost corrected themselves and were still giggling and finally Bushtucker Girls. Hardest part of the route done, students then went on to complete the rest of the course after stopping for lunch and all were still in great spirits.

The first to cross the finish line was Cool Kids 🙂 who did it in style by completing the Macarena (yes we do have videos), closely followed by Man-Dem, Lost Girls had found their way and finished third and lastly Bushticker Girls. Whilst waiting for the last group the heavens finally opened and the students had to take shelter.

All in all a brilliant weekend, with lots of laughs and lots of lessons learnt…. including that breakfast bars are NOT going to be enough to get you through a day, what you do and don’t need to pack in your bag and that you need walking BOOTS not SHOES. All Kingsdown students showed an immense amount of pride and maturity, even when sharing the camp with another Swindon School.

Thank you to all the members of staff that had given up their weekend to provide our students with this amazing experience; Miss Bryant, Mrs Ridley, Mr Radcliffe, Mr Cowe, Mr Harper and Mr Vigar. And thank you to all parents for supporting your students through this.

Miss Maller.

We have started our own blog so that both students and parents can keep up to date with with all the goings on on our expeditions.

Keep watching this space!!