26 posts tagged “duke of edinburgh”
This morning I met thirty-one new Bronze Duke of Edinburgh kids in a school car-park for their first outing. There should be thirty-four, but three couldn't make it today. We now need two big yellow mini-buses and a people carrier!
They are lovely young people. We walked along a canal into a country park, where they put up tents; lit trangias and boiled water for tea, coffee and hot chocolate; learnt how many paces they do per kilometer and ran around orienteering. And then we walked them back over the aqueduct and along the canal to the big yellow mini-buses (and the people carrier) and delivered them back, windswept and happy, to their parents.
I had conversations today about:
- dogs
- pigs
- chickens
- alpacas
- brickworks and limekilns
- what people eat for breakfast
- which side of the path people should go to if there's a cyclist
- barges
- E coli
- aqueducts
- my family
- swine flu
- why you can only watch Supernatural whilst wearing fluffy slippers, preferably yellow ones
- books - specifically Twilight and had I read it? Wasn't it wonderful?
- why trangias were called trangias (I didn't know)
- trees
- family graveyards
- missing castles
- boots, sore feet and whether it was time to go home yet
I think Handsome has a tracking device in his watch or something.... they're following us. We sat in the minibus at St Mary's Loch today and watched three jets flying up the valley - they were right in front of us. The pilot's eyes were green. Five hundred feet? I don't think so! I reckon if one of the fly-fishermen on the loch had been casting at the right moment he could have got a really, really big catch.
When the sun shines, I go outside.
I've been busy... I've been walking, on part of the West Highland Way with a group of Duke of Edinburgh kids. The huge advantage of not being a mini-bus driver is that I get to do more walking. I camped too, something I'm not known for doing, and I surprised myself by actually sleeping well. Possibly because I hadn't slept at all the previous night in the Youth Hostel at Rowardennan. It's a gorgeous building, with a fantastic view - but I think I have a bit of a privacy issue, and I don't cope well with six women in bunks in one room, especially when I don't know most of them! Much better in a nice private tent, where I don't have to worry about whether I'll snore if I fall asleep and where I can read until I'm ready to stop rather than having to be considerate because other people are asleep.
Handsome and I have been climbing too, with both boys and with my brother who is up for the Easter holidays. Handsome is really getting quite good now, tackling fives and sixes - I'm still struggling with stubborn four pluses, but although I'm a slow learner, I intend to be persistent... there's a five in a rather mucky olive green that I'm going to crack any day now.
Out walking in the Pentlands today, with the Bronze and Silver groups (not ours), only Handsome and I didn't really get to do very much walking, as we were check pointing roughly in the middle. He had to rush off and divert a lost group back in the direction of the path (unfortunately it was the one with Mouse in...embarrassing for both him and Mouse), and I had a few strolls to see if I could see overdue groups approaching, but an awful lot of the day was spent in the yellow minibus with the red nose.
The kids were all dressed up - they were sponsored to 'look funny for money' for Comic Relief, which was yesterday - the other walkers in the Pentlands were most amused. We had facepaints; pink pyjamas; deelyboppers; cowboy hats; two kids with the total red look, including wigs; mankinis (over the walking clothes, I promise); superman underpants (ditto) and Mouse in a lion costume. It was quite muddy by the time he got back!
I started off wearing deelyboppers too (in red), but the winds were quite high today, and they were behaving a bit like upside-down clackers - when I went in the shower tonight I discovered that my hair was full of red glitter - I hope it wasn't too noticeable when I was talking to some of the kids parents at collection time.
Obviously I can't post photos of other people's kids, but there's nothing stopping me from posting the minibus.
Handsome and myself should have been walking today, with our lovely group of Duke of Edinburgh sixteen-year-olds, down in the Border Hills. We left yesterday lunchtime, and they had an afternoon orienteering in a bit of forest (unsuccessfully, I might add, they failed quite spectacularly to find the right numbers) before walking across to a rather more posh than usual bunkhouse for the night.
Then they played charades. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest done syllable by syllable? Hilarious!
After putting the girls back to bed two or three times (the only reason we didn't have to put the boys back to bed was because the girls had locked them in...) they did eventually go to sleep. And then we woke up this morning to thickly falling snow. It hadn't been forecast. Although I would have no qualms whatsoever about walking my own boys in that much snow on the planned route, we cannot make that decision about other people's kids, so after breakfast, we told them that we would have to take them home.
We let them play in the snow for a while first though - we're not entirely heartless! By the time we left, there was a neat row of eight snowman standing outside the bunkhouse - and they'd used up all the leftover carrots from last night's dinner.
or what Handsome described as 'Social Climbing'.
We took our Duke of Edinburgh group rock climbing on Friday, at the indoor climbing centre, which is really a great big quarry with a glassed over roof, at Ratho. The idea was to do a little bit of team-building, some stuff about relying on and trusting each other, that kind of thing. It looked good when we asked for permission to take them out.
The kids had an amazing time. They had been behaving like over-excited eight-year-olds whilst on the bus and when we were waiting for our instructors to arrive, but once we got in there they calmed down (well all but one) and listened, and then they just got on with it, slinking up walls as if they were born to climb. One of them had a bit of a problem with descending, but apart from that, you would have thought they'd been doing it forever.
However, I wasn't prepared for how much I loved it. I have climbed before - I worked it out as fifteen years ago, it was certainly before Mouse was born - at Alien Rock in Edinburgh, but I don't remember enjoying it as much as I did this time. Even 'though I didn't manage to get to the top of any of the climbs. Obviously, that just gives me the perfect excuse to go back and try again. I wasn't even aware of any aches and pains the following day either - apart from the enormous bruise across my right knee, which I have no memory of inflicting. Perhaps this is something I can do...
We went for a walk today with the Silver Duke of Edinburgh group and some colleagues. The weather forecast was absolutely diabolical, sleet with 20 mile an hour winds, which basically means sideways in-your-face sleet, so we were all a little reluctant... we can't just cancel without good reason, because basically there aren't enough weekends in the year to fit things in if we do.
However, when we got to the car park where we were meeting the kids it was not even slightly windy, nor was it sleeting. What we did have was a layer of new, soft, grippy snow on the ground, and some gorgeous white mist eddying around the hills we were about to walk up. Obviously a reward from Santa for being good walkers...
We had a lovely walk through from Traquair to the Ettrick Valley, pushing the kids ahead of us and keeping them moving in the cold. The views were stunning, almost in monochrome, with all the field edges outlined in black and occasional patches of mist. At one point we came downhill towards a circular sheep fold, and it looked amazing from above, a white circle with black shadows on a white background... Of course, neither Handsome nor myself had remembered to pick up cameras this morning.
And then we went and sat in the Glen Cafe, in the squashy settees in front of the wood burning stove, and had steak and onion baguettes and masses of coffee while we waited for the kids to do the last (impossible to go wrong on) stretch along the side of St Mary's Loch.
Much better than shopping.
Out with the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze group today and Handsome and I were with a group who were all athletes of some kind - dancers, hundred metre runners, high jumpers, swimmers, rugby players. These kids were fit. They didn't even stop to catch breath when going up very steep hills. Needless to say they walked the socks off us, although, being very polite and considerate young people, they did stop and wait for us oldies to catch up every so often! They ended up about an hour and a half in front of the following group (there were four groups altogether), so rather than stand in the car park for ages, we gave them an extension around Threipmuir Reservoir.
They were such fun 'though, there was a wonderful moment when Handsome was on top of East Kip with the three boys and I was down in the saddle with the two girls. The boys on top started to do the Macarena (to keep warm apparently), so then the girls started to do it (in time) at the bottom. So there we were, in the Pentlands on an extremely blustery day, with other walkers and runners going past, and five kids in full walking kit, dancing, singing and jumping around with no self-conciousness whatsoever. Oh, and myself, collapsed in hysterics and Handsome pretending he didn't know them!
Mouse (who was not in our group for obvious reasons) had great fun, although he didn't get to go over the top of the Kips, apparently the wind had risen between our group and his, and wheras we had a rather adventurous, but perfectly do-able crossing, by the time he got there the wind was capable of carrying off hats, gloves and the smaller members of the group, so their leader took them 'round rather than over. That delayed the following groups, so ours still had to wait in the car park, despite their extra walk... Luckily there were Mars bars later to cheer them up, and they were able to gloat that they'd walked further than anyone else.
