The Student Room Group

What are your best stories from DofE?

I got sent home a few hours in because I had diarrhea. I had stomach pain so bad I used the phone to call the teachers. Next thing I knew I was in the school minibus trying not to sh* myself. What happened next caused my maths teacher to avoid eye contact for weeks after. Hopefully I’m not the only one with an embarrassing DofE story cause this keeps me up at night lol.
Getting so horribly lost that we had to be picked up as we were meant to be at the car park to be picked up three quarters of an hour earlier. Some of us were in tears.

I have many stories actually, but I'll just say that it once rained constantly for four days on one expedition...
(edited 1 year ago)
Two to share
Well i nearly set the tent on fire because i thought there was water in the cooker (turns out it was methylated spirit) and poured it on the tent to drain it out.
We also finished earlier than the teachers expected, meaning we had to walk across a completely unmanned train line that a teacher was meant to be on because we got to the checkpoints earlier than they thought.
How we weren't killed i dont know, it was one of these country lines that high speed trains go down. There was a steep hill up to it and a steep hill down so it took us ages to traverse it because we had to pull each other up.
We also had to go through a field of very randy cattle and we got chased by some dogs at one point.

Still less eventful than my year 12 biology field trip when i had an ear infection and the room was literally spinning. Having to navigate through a forest when you can't walk in a straight line is quite difficult.
(edited 1 year ago)
I never got the chance to do it :frown:
my school didn't offer it, there was a centre near me that I would have done it with but it was too pricey :colondollar:
I sat on a bush of stinging nettles and tore my leggings and had to work 8 miles with a makeshift skirt wrapped around myself🙈
Thats just one of many incidents 😶
touched a stove to check whether it had been lit or not... it had
we got lost every. single. time.
on our pre-practice walk we called 999 and the police took us to the pub down the road lmaooooo
my bag was so heavy that when i picked it up from a bench and put it on it flipped me head first into a puddle
- Got chased by a herd of mother cows. We struggled so much to get across the style and then we started trekking through the field, when we saw about 40 cows charging forward on the other side of the field, which was fine since they weren't coming our way - that was until they took a sharp turn and headed our way. Some of us ran forwards, others ran backwards. I ran down the road and found a use for the whistle to distract the cows. Everything after that felt like we were in Maze runner since we had to get help through jumping over barbed wire and trying to find civilisation again. The exhaustion after the adrenaline rush was a whole experience in itself.

- Went up a mountain when we didn't need to (an extremely steep one where we held onto the grass for our dear lives). There were rabbit holes as well. With the backpacks pulling us backwards, it felt like we'd tumble back at any point. One us crying set my panic attack off (I've got a fear of height :rofl: )but we supported each other and managed to get to the last check point.

- Went off-route for around 6 miles after misjudging a T-junction. Managed to knock on a door and randomly find an ex-DofE instructor who sent us on our way. Also saw a sign saying 'Beware of the free range children'

- I wore shorts bc of the heat. Who would've guessed we'd have to walk through a field of nettles and then a small and narrow path with nettle bushes either side. At least we managed to find some Dock leaves to put on the nettle stings.

- Oooh when we arrived at camp, everyone seemed to have taken way too many hayfever tablets, so their eyes were swollen shut. That was a difficult day with hayfever to fight against.
our dofe campsite was spread out across several fields, and different groups were assigned their own camp fire. For some reason or another, there was a gathering around my fire pit of most of my year on the trip. Now, my fire pit was on a hill and at the time of the incident, I was sitting at the bottom in a friends tent, legs dangling out. I'm watching the group at the fire pit, and then watch as a boy leans over with a lynx deodorant can in hand, and tosses it into the fire. The expected happened, being a solvent can and very clearly reading "DO NOT PLACE NEAR FIRE" on it, you would think he would've deduced it would not be a good idea. All I remember was the sudden roar of the fire, the very loud boom accompanied by my whole entire year running down the hill screaming, a red faced teacher bellowing after them. Luckily, no one was hurt and everyone came out of it unscathed, but a little warn out from that sprint away from the teacher. Lesson learned for the boy, warnings on cans are there for a reason!
Original post by mobo1019
I got sent home a few hours in because I had diarrhea. I had stomach pain so bad I used the phone to call the teachers. Next thing I knew I was in the school minibus trying not to sh* myself. What happened next caused my maths teacher to avoid eye contact for weeks after. Hopefully I’m not the only one with an embarrassing DofE story cause this keeps me up at night lol.

Sat down in a seemingly empty field to argue about our map. During the course of our intense discussion we failed to notice we were being surrounded by cows. In June. Calving season.

Ended up having to sprint out of the field whilst being chased by three cows. Jumped over barbed wire. Two girls from the group ended up with scratch marks that required stitches.

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know I was in fact correct about the map. We had indeed been walking the wrong direction for over an hour.

Yes so much fun.
my group had a 15 minute break and we spent that whole time listening to our group leaders educate us on what haemorrhoids are which was very odd tbh. oh yeah there was also a really cute field mouse that was lying on a fence post dead so we dressed it with wild flowers and it was very sad but sweet :s-smilie:
Original post by vapordave
we got lost every. single. time.
on our pre-practice walk we called 999 and the police took us to the pub down the road lmaooooo


Wait why did you call 999?
My expedition was cancelled because of covid :rofl:

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