Failing Silver Duke of Edinburgh Expedition

I am really, really worried about my silver duke of edinburgh expedition- is it possible to fail the expedition? What would you have to do to pass it? Any tips to avoid failing it? Thank you!

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Reply 1

talon1579

painkillers. take em every 4 hours. and sugary foods.

Reply 2

oreo1234

forgive me for being incredibly stupid but why take painkillers so regularly?

Reply 3

Yamahooha

I wouldn't, you'd keel over :wink:

I'm doing my silver expedition next year, doing all the service, sport, skill stuff now.
What bit are you worried about failing? The walking for three days? The camping? The navigating? The food?

Yeah...lots of questions :P But I feel I learnt a lot on my Bronze :smile:

Reply 4

Jezza249

Fail??? How can you fail an expedition?? Physically??
You can fail it if you ... take a taxi or something and get found out or take a shortcut and the people supervising you realise you've missed checkpoints =S Obviously if you don't complete the thing it wouldn't count anyway. Otherwise i don't see how you could fail
You doing it under a group like college or something???
Have you done your Bronze expedition??

Reply 5

Kytiane

Is this your practise or your qualifying expedition? I'm sure you'll be fine, you'll only fail it if you get ridiculously lost, (get caught) using your mobile phone, open your emergency rations or injure yourself enough to be needed to be picked up :3 Even if you do get lost, you won't necessarily fail - on my silver practise, our group got lost and did 5 miles more than we needed to getting back to campsite, but because we walked in doing the conga and singing our hearts out, we didn't get failed purely because the assessor liked our morale xD So don't worry about it :smile:

Reply 6

Lorypop

You can fail expeditions (I help out with my local award centre). I've only seen one bronze group fail. No silvers and no golds (for reasons other than one member failing due to injury). The bronze group failed because they arrived having left one group member in the woods with no map and compass and had to be picked up 10 KM away from the end point on the first day. Depends a lot on your assessor too - some are nicer than others. Don't take shortcuts that are over about 1.5 KM. It's the attitude more than anything - you can be utterly rubbish at navigating, but if you stay positive about it, you'll probably pass. :smile:

Reply 7

13542

If you've done your bronze there's nothing to worry about as it is basically the same. But yeah what I learnt is that bring alot of snacks as you WILL need them.

Reply 8

oreo1234

Yamahooha

What bit are you worried about failing? The walking for three days? The camping? The navigating? The food?

yeah all of that really, like what can go wrong to stop you from passing? like do they ask questions which could cause you to fail if you can't answer them? if you can't read a map very well but other group members navigate and get you where you need to be is that a problem? no i haven't done bronze :frown:

Reply 9

dymphna

Basically, if you follow the rules, and make sure you don't get majorly lost, you won't fail. The rules are basically be self-sufficient (ie. no phones, buying food half way round, hitching a ride with anyone etc.) make sure your group is all together and show you are making an attempt to keep morale up, and as long as YOU don't get injured, you're fine.

Reply 10

oreo1234

Lorypop

Don't take shortcuts that are over about 1.5 KM. It's the attitude more than anything - you can be utterly rubbish at navigating, but if you stay positive about it, you'll probably pass. :smile:

ahh thank you! i'm just really worried because i can't navigate (but there are group members who can) and i don't know what criteria there is, and whether i can fulfill it, to pass?

Reply 11

Yamahooha

Kytiane

Even if you do get lost, you won't necessarily fail - on my silver practise, our group got lost and did 5 miles more than we needed to getting back to campsite, but because we walked in doing the conga and singing our hearts out, we didn't get failed purely because the assessor liked our morale xD So don't worry about it :smile:

Is it even possible to be failed for doing extra? How much extra, does anyone know?

My Bronze practise got called off cos the weather was that bad that we wouldn't be dry in the morning if we did camp.
We got told to make our way to Dartmouth to be picked up by the school minibuses, but my group got slightly....misplaced, walked 2 hours up this huge hill and ended up at a farm 8 miles from Dartmouth, where we had tea and got picked up shivering our asses off by one of my group's parents. School were annoyed, and we were frozen.

In hindsight, it was hilarious :rofl:

Reply 12

jamesBT

It's pretty difficult to fail. For my gold dofe we put in a wrong speed into the route card which meant we had to either walk lots faster or take forever. We spent 12 hours a day walking on the steepest, boggiest and most challenging of routes out of everyone from our school (several groups went). One (particularly unfit) guy had something wrong with his foot and his preparation for it had been "I ran round my garden once and then got bored so I had some cake :cookie:

". EVEN HE PASSED! You will be fine. Just dont do what he did and take stuff like full chess sets. :facepalm2:

Reply 13

Yamahooha

oreo1234

They don't see you apart from a few minutes at checkpoints, and they don't ask questions, it's not like a test or something :s-smilie:

We had members of our group who couldn't navigate, but you can pick it up, just ask them how to do it or ask them for help. You always have two navigators at once, so if they don't agree on where to go next, you can work it out and (possibly) avoid getting lost.
Your route is planned out before you go, which makes things a lot simpler, just look out for buildings that match up on the map etc.

We got told to look for three things that matched up eg bunches of trees / building / rivers where you'd expect them to be, whether the path's turning right or left.
Oh and don't ever trust signs...they can be turned around :wink:

In effect, this for you is like Bronze was for me. When we finished the first day of our Bronze we got told that the first leg we did was Silver terrain. We had to go across a marsh (wet trousers ftw) and went the wrong way around some hills, but we got there in the end, so if we managed you can. Your team will help you :smile:

Reply 14

Kytiane

Yamahooha

Well it's more of the fact that we rolled into the campsite around 8:30, four hours later than what was down on our route card, and it was already dark xD Oh, and nobody had seen us since our.... 3rd or so checkpoint? Oops... :P

Reply 15

Kalliope

We managed to walk 10K out of our way on my Bronze practice (got my final one in 3 weeks EEK) we got so lost --- went to WALES! :frown:

We are sooooo bad LOL!! One of my friends had so bad a migraine we had to held her hands and lead her where to go, cos she couldn't see! And another of my friends kept fainting, about 4,5x! And I still have a black bruise on two of my toes, over a month later! :biggrin:

But even WE aren't going to fail, according to our person-thing :smile:

Reply 16

Lorypop

oreo1234

ahh thank you! i'm just really worried because i can't navigate (but there are group members who can) and i don't know what criteria there is, and whether i can fulfill it, to pass?

I'm doing my gold and recently got lost in a forest trying to find a bronze group gone astray - just stay positive about it and it's fine! I know I can't navigate overly well either :p:

The only criteria to fill is to get from A to B as a group without having to be picked up by a minibus or dying en route.

Reply 17

Revolution is my Name

You'd have to be quite **** to fail, to be honest. The only people I've known to fail have been ones who were ***** and went to a shop or something.

Reply 18

hothedgehog

You basically can't fail an expedition without doing something seriously stupid like dropping one of your group members off a cliff and leaving them to die etc.

Reply 19

=gabriel=

You can fail if you divert from your route significantly, if you miss one or more checkpoints they can make you redo it. When I was doing mine it was pouring down with rain all 3 days and we got lost a bit at the end (had to walk an extra 5 miles or so..) but we made it to all the checkpoints so they let us off.