My DofE experience was intense to say the least. I embarked on my Silver Duke of Edinburgh expedition nervous for what was to come and already aching from the 5am wake up. But, safe to say, I was pleasantly surprised. We spend the three days trekking through the New Forest, a beautiful (and slightly boggy) National Park in the south of England, populated by wild horses and cows.

My groups aim for the hike was to track how each other's moods changed over the course of the trip, each of our results looked fairly similar: 2:30 – Tired and depressed, 3:00 – almost back at camp, slightly less tired and depressed, etc etc. But despite our gloomy outlooks at the time, in retrospect there were some great moments like bonding over dinner and singing songs to keep our spirit up.