The weekend of 19-21 March saw our first Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition of the year. Some 130 Year 10 students walked as far afield as Shipbourne and Ide Hill, before converging on the school grounds to cook an evening meal and spend the night under canvas. The following day, they undertook another walk of about 15km, before arriving back at school, tired and relieved. Their successful completion of this Bronze practice expedition means that they will be able to embark on their qualifying expedition on the South Downs in June.

Over 30 staff have been involved in the preparation and execution of the event and were thankful for the beautiful clear skies that appeared for the weekend, even if this did mean that there was ice on the tents by 10pm. Knole Park claimed victims of the groups who were less than keen to use their compass on what they thought was familiar ground, as some teams emerged from its boundaries more than 2km from where they expected to be.

However, despite these initial navigation blunders, the groups generally did an excellent job navigating the countryside and finished their expedition with a range of views on the award scheme, from ‘I'm never doing that again’ to ‘That was great, I want to do gold!’