The Team Sherpa Blog

The weather has not been very kind to us in England so far although the sun has finally come out this week! This has not deterred me from hitting a few hills over the past few weeks so here is one of the highlights.

I spent Easter on the Ridgeway in Wiltshire (southern England) with a bunch of 15 year olds undertaking a practice expedition for their Duke of Edinburgh Silver award. The Duke of Edinburgh scheme (known as DofE) is designed to give young people a challenge and aid their personal   development. There are various parts in the scheme including community service, physical recreation, skills and an expedition. I have mainly been involved as a leader/trainer in the expedition section (although I undertook the scheme myself and achieved the gold award many years ago.) This particular trip was a practice expedition so the 3 groups (a total of 13 people in all) were putting into practice some of the navigating skills they had previously been taught in their youth group. 

There were quite a few differences in abilities between the 3 groups which made life interesting! We had a group of 4 leaders so I was assigned to the group of 5 - which although very motivated, didn’t necessarily have the greatest amount of navigational skills. Their friend had planned their route but had been unable to undertake the trek at the last minute. As a result, none of the group really knew the route. Having said that, there were no major catastrophies and they seem to really get the hang of it after 2 days. It was great to be back outside trekking after all the long winter evenings and everyone seemed to enjoy the long weekend. It has to be said though that the weather was not exactly kind to us. On the second morning, we woke up to find snow around the tents. Being English, we don’t actually see a lot of snow so it was quite a novelty! The weather only worsened however with snow, hail and sleet hitting us horizontally throughout the day. 

Being on the Ridgeway (as the name implies) we were high up and exposed to the wind which was bittingly cold. We had odd moments of reprieve though when the sun came out and the temperature rose considerably. It was another cold night of camping though (thank heavens for my lovely snug sleeping bag!)

The Ridgeway is a national trail in the south of England which is 87 miles long (we only did a bit of it.) There is some stunning scenery along the way along with a lot of really interesting archaeological sites of interest. We passed one of the hilltop forts and the famous "white horse" which dominates the landscape. The horse is cut out of the turf to reveal the chalk underneath - the result is a 374 foot long figure. Navigation is not a challenge as the majority of the route is either bridleway or almost small road which sometimes makes you feel like you are on a walking/cycling motorway! It is very well signposted too.