'Completing my Duke of Edinburgh gold practice award'

At Nexus Fostering, we are proud to offer the Duke of Edinburgh's Award.

The Duke of Edinburgh Award gives young people a chance to experience team morale, volunteering opportunities, a sense of achievement, and reach the goals they want to aim for. One of our young person R shared her insights into the recent expedition.

'At the start of July, I completed my Duke of Edinburgh gold practice award. This was a very interesting experience and so much fun, and I had the best time with my group.

We started off by pitching tents and cooking food. The first day of walking was really fun, lots of climbing up hills, but the views as we climbed higher and higher just kept getting better and better. We could see for miles! The hills were challenging at parts yet fun to explore whilst we climbed. We explored a place called Luds Church, which was breath-taking. It was like a mini rainforest in the crevice of the rocks. We took some time to get photos of the scenery, as well as pictures of the group. It was just stunning. After we had explored, we then climbed up some more hills, where the views just kept getting better. When we returned to camp, we cooked food and sat around the campfire before heading to bed.

The second day, we were just cruising up the hills and exploring. We walked through many fields with free range livestock, such as cows and sheep. We passed through many fields, each one getting tougher but more breath-taking views as we progressed. We had a great time just exploring and checking out everything as we gradually got higher. When we got back to camp, we all played some football and played catch before cooking dinner and finally heading to bed.

On the third day, as we climbed up through the hills, we had a river running in the valley below us as we walked, and it was just utterly beautiful. I got some gorgeous photos of the river as we climbed. One of our breaks involved us stopping by a tower, which was stunning as it overlooked the valley, which by this time was pretty far down below us. We also had fun making a stone tower, balancing many different stones on top of each other and seeing how many we could stack.

Next, read Jess's story, a young person who has turned 18 and is staying living with her foster carer - My experiences, love of fun fairs and my foster parents | Nexus Fostering