Parent life / A Silver practice expedition, Cheltenham to the New Forest, March 2022
The Rucksack Was Full Before the Food Went In
Every Duke of Edinburgh expedition starts on a landing, with a rucksack and a parent taking things out. I was the parent. I was also, it emerged, the excess weight.
A Year 11 at Cheltenham Bournside, writing up her Silver practice expedition for the school’s DofE diaries in March 2022, recorded the universal problem. By the time the sleeping bag and the clothes were in, the rucksack was full. The food had not gone in yet. Her father helped her cut it down, and the flip-flops came out.
Every family has had that evening. Ours had it in May, and I was not the helpful father.
The professionals have seen worse. Rob, of the expedition provider Wildside Outdoors, has watched instructors repack overloaded rucksacks and found entire bottles of aftershave, which it was decided were probably not needed on a wild camp, “as the electric razer was not being taken either”. He has seen a change of co-ordinated outfit for every day, and hardback novels, and study manuals.
Our daughter’s Bronze practice bag, by the end of Thursday evening, contained none of those things. I had removed the flip-flops and replaced them with a first-aid kit the size of a toaster. I removed her second hoodie and added a spare torch, a whistle and forty blister plasters, loose. I removed a novel and added the laminated route card, a laminated copy of the laminated route card, and a power bank that weighs more than the phone. The bag came to fourteen kilos on the bathroom scales. She weighs forty-one.
One reply on a 2023 forum thread about expedition packing had the answer: “Part of the dofe experience is planning and packing your own food. I would leave her to it.” I read it, agreed with it and packed nine flapjacks.
The parent who started that thread had a daughter who came back from her practice weekend exhausted but loving it, with three complaints. She needed a warmer sleeping bag. She wanted to take her Crocs. And she wanted more snacks, by which, her parent explained, she meant chocolate, sweets and sugary drinks.
Ours came back on Sunday evening with the same three complaints, word for word, as if they had been issued centrally.
Then she unzipped the lid pocket and handed me, unopened, the first-aid kit, the spare torch, the laminated copy of the laminated route card and all forty blister plasters. She had carried them for two days and twenty kilometres to make a point.
The point has been received. The Crocs are going in for Silver.
Sources
- Year 11 pupil, Practice Silver expedition in the New Forest, Cheltenham Bournside School, 18 March 2022
- Rob, I don’t think you need that…, Wildside Outdoors, 2 September 2024
- Chateaulaohshit, Any DofE Parents…, Mumsnet, 17 May 2023
Notes from the School Gates is a light-hearted column: home scenes and family characters are invented; schools and public facts are real. About the column