DofE Silver Pre-Assessment

On Friday 30th March and Saturday 31st March, Beechen Cliff and Hayesfield did their Silver DofE pre-assessment in the Black Mountains.

We met at Hayesfield upper school at 8.15am on the Friday, and drove, via Abergavenny, to the start point, which was just below Cockit Hill. As group 2, we were the second to leave, and started by heading around 'Mynydd Troed' and down a path, through a farm, and crossing over the A479. Group 1 mist the path, so carried on going around 'Mynydd Troed', leaving our group at the front. We then went up, along a footpath, through some more fields, where we stopped for a while for lunch, where most of the other groups caught us up. Several groups had already left by the time we did, so we were about in the middle. We then headed down a gentle valley, and back up quite a steep other side. By this time we had joined to group 3, and as a result, both groups were moving much slower than they should be.
When we eventually reached the next manned check-point, we were told by the staff that if we didn't speed up, we wouldn't get to where we were camping until 10pm!
As a result of this, we let group 3 go first, and then I forced my group to go much quicker. We soon caught up with group 3, and then other took them as we were keeping up a good pace.
We eventually got to the campsite before 7, but it would have been much later if we hadn't sped up.
We spent the night chatting after cooking before going to bed at around 11pm

We woke up quite early, and left the campsite around 8. We headed up to the top of the mountain which were already most of the way up, before going down along a spur. We then followed some paths until we reached the bottom of sugar-loaf mountain. By this point, some of our group were really tired, and were struggling, so the teachers came down to meet us, and helped motivate them while letting the faster people in our group go on ahead. I then met up with group 3 (by this point we were at the back), who left just as the rest of my group caught up. The next part of the route was much easier as I had done the reverse of the route already on ten tors training, so were able to skip out a long path that most of the other groups took, which meant we arrived at the minibuses at the end, 3rd instead of last - over half an hour before the last group.
We then drove back to Hayesfield school, and went home.