Can I do the duke of Edinburgh?

I want to do the Duke of Edinburgh award?

• Hi I am at university now and I am 21 years old. I never had the opportunity to do the Duke of Edinburgh award because I did not know about it. I am reading the information on the website now, but any help as to how to go about it and what it entails would be cool. Thanks guys.

• Answer:

  Yes, I did The Bronze walking award (in my school, you could do canoeing, biking or walking). I did it in 3rd year so when I was 14/15 and to be honest it was the hardest weekend of my life lol. You have to do a practice expedition and a a qualifying expedition, for bronze that's 2 full days walking and 1 night camping ( for silver 3 days & 2 nights and gold 4 days & 3 nights.) It rained the whole weekend and it was impossible to get stuff dry so we had to wear wet clothes the next day. But it was quite fun too :) You have to do 3 sections: Volunteering, skill and sport. You have to do 2 of these for 3 months and one for 6 months. I did badminton for my sport, I went to the film making club at school for my skill lol and me and my friend worked in a charity shop for volunteering. We did the volunteering for the longest, 6 months. The camping was fun, but on the practice the leaders stayed nearby but on the qualifying they leave you alone. We were out in the middle of no where on the practice but in a small campsite on the qualifying where there was one other duke of Edinburgh group from another school there, but no one else. We had a group of 10 I think and we walked separately in groups of 5, then met at the camping spot at tea time for the night. I finished mine within the year, and now have my certificate and badge, but you can take longer. I don't think it costs that much, I can't rememer how much it was though. However, I never carried onto to do silver although some of my friends have just finished it! You can jump straight to silver without doing Bronze first. I'd recommend you do do duke of Edinburgh though, it's a good experience and it's quite good fun. We did it in the Pentlands, Edinburgh, and we actually got lost on the qualifyer for a few hours and ended up walking around in circles for like 2 hours and the leader had to come and find us and help us lol. But we still passed! Good luck if you decide to do it :) :)