Let’s face it, the blog has been a bit neglected of late and I have to hold my hands up and say no real excuses……but as it’s the end of the UK season here at Come walk with me UK and before we head off on our Winter adventures to Kenya and Cambodia I thought I’d better have a bit of a round up of the rest of our working year….
After the fantastic Yorkshire Three Peaks with Action for Children we had a great weekend in the White Peak assessing a Bronze D of E expedition that saw the participants walking from Longnor to Ilam Hall over their two days. It’s a beautiful part of the world through Dove Dale and justifiably popular. I followed this with a week off staying at my Aunt’s caravan in the beautiful village of Newport, Pembrokeshire. Whilst I didn’t overly exert myself walking along the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path is something I will never tire off. I even managed a quick dip in the sea which was chilly but fantastic. I also saw the wonderful view of Seals and pups basking on the edge of a beach, which was fantastic. This was followed by a drive down to the Brecon Beacons where I met my youngest brother, Gareth, for a couple of days of walking and fraternal beers. Our day out on Pen-Y-Fan was horrendous weather wise but great fun, on day two we had a more gentle jaunt up Table Mountain above Crickhowell before a delicious Lamb Casserole cooked by my amazing 93 year old Granny!
The end of the D of E season came about with four days in the Surrey Hills (a new area to me) where we worked on two Bronze D of E assessments with Aim High and Teddington School. It’s a lovely part of the world, heavily wooded and full of lovely little villages set around idyllic greens. We were camped on a poultry farm and instead of an alarm clock were woken daily by a chorus of Turkeys and Geese! The kids did a great job and all successfully completed their expeditions. More D of E outside Loughborough on the way home with Applied Expeditions and that is D of E finished for 2017, but it’s been a lot of fun and taken me to lots of different parts of the country where I have met some amazing young people pushing their boundaries!
We had a very, very wet and wild Saturday on Snowdon with CGO and the amazing supporters and participants from Climbing Out, a charity working with children suffering from serious illness. We got to the top but the conditions, visibility and high wind speed made it a real challenge. We carried on in wild windy weather with CGO in the Lake District where the freshers from Leeds Beckett University were having an adventurous week long residential. We had a couple of days up on the Catbells Ridge and a magnificent day on Glaramara and it reminded me of just how magnificent the Lakes can be on their day. The final UK day of the year saw us in the Staffordshire countryside with a group of NCS students from London who discovered cows for the first time and enjoyed a walk through and around Swynnerton Woods. It’s been a fantastic year, busy and exciting and it’s a couple of overseas adventures ahead now before getting back to the UK after Christmas.
