We’ve had a great summer of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expeditions, culminating in several groups participating in the Gold Award Expeditions in the Lake District in late August. The Gold Award is the flagship award for the DofE, and everyone aspires to this internationally recognised and unique award. This year we’ve had a lot of participants for Gold, from ‘Open’ trips where anyone can join in to groups from Moira House, St George’s Weybridge, Brighton and Hove City Council and others. Bruce Lee and his team of DofE trainers and assessors have been busy overseeing the participants, tracking their moves using our trackers and camping nearby on wild camping nights.

There have been a couple of incidents – notably one participant burned his foot when he knocked over a pan at a remote site in the Lake District. Our supervisor (himself a member of a Mountain Rescue team) called out the local rescue who were able to access the site using Land Rovers, and they took him to hospital. The next day he was back and although unable to put a boot on his foot he was encouraging his team. However overall we have seen force 8 gales, snow, rain, broken rucksacks, boots disintegrating and even over curious cows without a murmur of complaint – DofE must indeed be ‘character building’!

The DofE team at TrekCo has consisted of Bruce (ML and Military Mountain Instructor), Steve (MIA, IML), Ian (ML, Woodhead Mountain Rescue Team), Des (MIC), Abhi (Himalayan Institute Cert of Advanced Mountaineering) – a strong team! They were supported by Vicky and other members of the team working towards various qualifications. TrekCo are known for their highly experienced and friendly instructors and we all had a great summer. 2015 promises to be even busier!

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