Assessed expedition day 1: Kirkstone Pass

 Hello!

 In my previous posts I have told the story of our practice expedition and preparation for our assessed expedition. Now I will tell you all about the big weekend itself! (Well, a weekend of sorts that ended on a Tuesday.)

 The group met on Saturday morning at my then college, as a group from there were also doing their expedition that weekend. We enjoyed a pleasant journey up to Ambleside.

 Ambleside is not my favourite Lake District town; it is too tourist-orientated for my liking, but it looked quite pretty on this summer's day. After we had sorted out kit, maps and compasses, we walked out of Ambleside and up a path on a wooded slope.

 We walked through the woods for a while, got slightly confused about which was the right path to take out of the woods; we found it in the end and it took us along a country road that provided us with some very pretty views of the hills and farmland. We also saw a lot of sheep.

 We reached the famous Kirkstone Pass, and had a big climb to get to the famous Kirkstone Pass Inn, (the "inn with altitude," as it calls itself on its website) which we sat outside for a bit.

 However, the Lake District weather again proved its unpredictability in going from a lovely sunny day to us getting soaking wet in a completely spontaneous downpour. We quickly scrambled into waterproofs and set off again.

 Despite the weather, I could really appreciate the beauty of the area. We walked on, following the Pass, and for me it was one of the nicest parts of the trip, especially when the weather dried up again.

 We could see the sun shining in the distance in the V of the Pass, and that golden glow was a nice thing to be heading for.

 We walked on along country lanes and footpaths through the hills, played I-spy for a bit, and, as seems to be the trope on this Gold D of E, saw a lot of foxgloves. In fact, foxgloves was one of my I-spy words (Ruth guessed it).

 We reached our destination, a little camp site by Lake Ullswater that seemed to be attached to a farm. It was really hot and sunny when we got there, but got cooler later in the evening.

 We met Joan's dog, Ollie, a lovely fluffy thing, and Richard came to check up on us - Richard was our assessor for this expedition.

 We cooked dinner - Ruth and I shared some vegetable chilli dip - would that be chilli sin carne? - and I made some hot chocolate.

 We then all went down to the lake as we had done that night at Coniston. There was a boat moored called Jim or something like that, which surprised us as boats usually have female names. Maybe Jim was the owner?

 There was some building or boat on the other side of the lake that was playing really loud music - we could hear it perfectly a whole lake away! - and continued to do so into the night, so we fell asleep to such classics as Livin' On A Prayer and Sweet Child of Mine.

 It was a nice evening and the time we spent by the lake and falling asleep that night to 80s music are among my favourite memories of our assessed expedition.

 Thank you for reading this blog entry; watch this space to hear about the rest of our assessed expedition!

 Liz x

Practice expedition day 1: Rydal

 Hello, my readers!

 Today I am going to tell you about our D of E Gold Practice Expedition. It was from the 6th - 8th July 2012 and took place in the South Lakes of the Lake District.

 I'd enjoyed previous D of E expeditions, but had often found myself getting very homesick, so I was quite nervous, wondering whether I would be homesick again this time.

 Also, it was a long time since I had last been on a D of E expedition, so I was hoping I was fit enough to get through all that walking in the mountains. I do a lot of exercise, but even if you are fit, a D of E expedition is very hard work and a shock to the system (in my experience).

 So, I was slightly nervous as my dad drove me up to Rydal, our starting point for the first day (which was a Friday, by the way). We listened to 1980s music in the car, including "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" by Tina Turner, which managed to get stuck in my head later in the weekend.

 We got to Rydal Hall camp site, our starting point, where we had lunch and had our rucksacks checked for weight, then we set off on a mini expedition on a round route that would get us back to Rydal Hall camp site where we would spend that first night.

 There were three of us at this point: Luke, Andrew and me. Ruth would be joining us first thing on Saturday. Our instructors Joan and Wayne walked with us that first day, assessing our map reading and navigation skills.

 First we navigated our way out of Rydal, through a foresty area, past Rydal Water and up into the hills, where we had lovely views of Grasmere Water.

 This photo is from the Internet but it is the same beautiful view that we had. 

 I wished we would be going through the village of Grasmere, as I love it, but sadly we didn't.

 We saw so many foxgloves in those hills. That was probably the biggest factual thing (alongside many emotional things) I learnt on the expedition: how many foxgloves there are in the Lake District. The answer being: a LOT.

 I mean, I have foxgloves in my garden. I had thought they were garden flowers; I hadn't thought they were hardy enough to grow all over mountains, but clearly they are. Foxgloves have gone up in my estimation.

 We then walked through another foresty area, past a tarn, and into another lot of hills. These hills are my defining memory of this first day; it felt so mysterious and lonely up there; just hills, hills and more hills. It felt like we were on the edge of the Earth.

 There was some debate about what qualified as a footbridge and what didn't, and Wayne tested us with teasers such as, "How many lakes are there in the Lake District?" You will find the answer at the bottom of this post.

 Eventually we got back to Rydal, where we each cooked our evening meal on our trangia. Mine was pasta in tomato sauce; I'd had it before on D of E expeditions and it brought back memories, most prominently of my night at the epic Gibraltar Farm campsite on my Silver expedition.

 I loved that campsite, but Rydal Hall could give it a run for its money! It's a really nice, comfortable campsite, and it had this air of quietness and tranquillity when we were there.

 I phoned home, and texted my friend Kylie. I did my teeth etcetera and then went to bed in my little tent.

 I had to get up in the night to go to the toilet, and the night sky was so beautiful; the moon was so bright, highlighting the edges of the silver clouds, and the sky a deep blue, and it was altogether gorgeous and very dramatic and I'm glad I got the chance to see that sky.

 That was the end of Day 1 of our practice expedition. It went well; I was homesick at times but I survived. Wayne and Joan were brilliant, as were Luke and Andrew, and I couldn't have had a better group of people to do this expedition with. Tomorrow Ruth would be coming, and I was really looking forward to that - she seemed lovely at the training day, and it would be nice to have our team complete.

 Hopefully the second day of our practice expedition would be as enjoyable as the first.

 Thanks for reading,

 Liz x

 PS. There is only one lake in the Lake District: Bassenthwaite Lake. All the other bodies of water are Meres, Waters or tarns.