Indoorsy.
“…And it’ll look great on your CV.”
We were gathered in the assembly hall listening to Miss Peacock reel out a litany of reasons why taking part in the Duke of Edinburgh award would benefit our minds, bodies and souls, but the CV thing was what sold me. Perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind instinct told me I was going to need some help beefing that baby up even though the country hadn’t fallen off the edge of the economy yet.
It was 2003. My fingernails were painted black despite daily debates with my teachers. A full third of my face was engulfed in a midnight blue sweep fringe and about the same fraction of mental space was taken up thinking about the nuances of my MySpace profile. School nights were spent chatting to friends on the phone as we hadn’t quite covered all bases during our eight hour day together and the weekends were spent venturing out on buses or trains to sit in parks drinking Strongbow or variations of it. Most Sundays we hung out in the concrete wasteland of Southbank watching skateboarders clatter up graffitied walls, hoping to the sweet lord one of them would come over and say hi. The Thames glistened in the background along with Waterloo Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, The Houses of Parliament but we didn’t even see them. Not interested, who cares, where are the boys.
We were almost, but not quite, out of the phase of prank calling each others parents, and almost, but not quite, comfortable with our transition from girls to women. Thirteen; a challenging age. Especially at an all-girls school.
After Miss Peacock’s speech we came in for a huddle. “What do you think?” Asked Holly.
“I’m in,” I said. “It’ll look good on our CVs and it could be really fun. I’ve never been hiking or camping before. Have you?”
“Once.” Nik said with brevity. “In France with my parents, It was freezing and rained all night but we had a great time – the misery really brought us together, actually.”
Alright, fine. We’ll haul our South London arses to the great British countryside.
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A Thurday in April, 8am. The weather hadn’t quite warmed yet. About twenty of us stood on the platform at Clapham Junction. Weeks previous our mums and dads had looked at the checklist, sighed and accepted their £300 fate to buy camping crap we’d never use again.
Sleeping bags dangled off the edge of our giant backpacks which matched our width, depth and most of our our height. The haphazard, panic-packing of our parents gave away the fact they too were about as outdoorsy as house cats. Mats were strapped to the bottom of our packs and camping stoves, waterproofs, compasses, inflatable pillows, two days worth of clothes including spares for disasters (river falls, quicksand sinks, wolf attacks, unexpected periods), cans of baked beans, instant noodles, pasta, pesto, sausages and other fry-able, boil-able goods, all stuffed in, filling our packs to such capacity they easily came in a head taller than their bearers.
The train pulled in to Platform 13 heading to Arundel, a sleepy village in the rolling green countryside of Sussex. We were buzzed and excited on the train, sitting in sixes, swapping and chomping on snacks that were meant for the hike ahead. Teachers were there but they sat in a far corner of the carriage, happy to leave us to shout, laugh and scream off our excess energy.
The six of us were fully ourselves, our full characters, not yet muted or reduced by criticisms from boys or comments from girls. Our cracks and gags were cranked up to 100 at all times, jokes doused in inside knowledge of each other, from pet hates to phobias, pranks in Physics to a funny comment last year about Ms. Kenner’s haircut. The laughter poured out easily; we were going on an adventure.
The Duke of Edinburgh award was launched in 1947 to encourage young people to learn some basic life skills. The format is simple: go on a hike, learn to map read, camp, and then take part in voluntary service. This could be a few days at an old people’s home, helping the homeless or volunteering for a charity.
We hopped off at Amberley and met Mr Campbell, our Physics teacher who would be our supervisor for the 14km hike to our camp. We’d been given lessons on map reading in the previous weeks and shown how to use a compass. Luckily none of us really understood the distance. 14km was just a number to us.
“This way guys!” Holly and Nik were first to take the role of map-readers. We felt prepared, strong in our stiff new hiking boots. The sea was only a couple of kilometres away; salt on the fresh morning breeze confirmed it. Holly and Nik led us over a wooden stile, thick with thorns and bracken and we found ourselves in a field with short cropped grass. The noise of the train faded away and suddenly it was just us six, Mr Campbell, and the open air.
At first it was strange. To look at a landscape uncluttered by council blocks and high rises, to stare out over the green and yellow Sussex fields without any visual obstacles. I realise more now than I did then the necessity of this occasional space.
With Nik and Holly leading the way we walked with gusto, intoxicated with the novelty of it all. At this time back in London we’d be huddled in our corner of the field gossiping and complaining, dreading the next lesson. I always thought our school looked like a juvenile detention centre; a wide, grey, joyless building silhouetted against a permanently overcast South London sky. To me Streatham was and still is completely void of charm.
Our first snack break. This kind of hunger was new to us. Its the kind you get from hours in fresh air, spending your energy the way it was supposed to be spent. Hunger you only realise the power of when you sink your teeth into a ham, cheese and Branston pickle sandwich and virtually inhale it, realising with satisfaction that nothing in life so far has tasted better than this.
Nik and Holly had swapped map-reading duties with Frances and Steph and we’d swapped fields for woodland. Except for a slight detour where we’d ended up on an ominous looking country road that led to a dead-end, we stayed on course. We’d pair up and have low, meditative heart-to-hearts about topics we hadn’t touched on at school. Mostly we walked in comfortable silence. A stream accompanied us for several kilometres and at one point someone spotted a hedgehog. London felt a long way away.
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A further three hours and we’d arrived at our campsite. The meditative energy surged upwards into mass hyperactivity as soon as we were reunited with the rest of the Streatham girls. “Did you get lost?” “Did you see any animals?” “Fiona fell in the stream!” “I heard Maya pissed herself???”
The tents were set up for us. About 15 in a small field surrounded by wood and a road that led to another Sussex village. There were picnic benches, showers and a small reception area where the campsite staff watched this gaggle of hopeless London girls unpack the strange contents of their giant backpacks.
My feet were sore and blisters were beginning to form but that thought was quickly eclipsed by the small issue of how the hell to use a camp stove. We all gathered round Nik – the only person who’d used one before.
“You’ve attached the handle upside down!” “There’s not enough water in there.” “Maybe you should turn it the other way.” We each offered redundant pieces of advice until one of the campsite staff put us out of our misery.
Thirty minutes later us thirty intrepid explorers, conquerers of the outdoors, were sitting proudly with our camping bowls filled with various concoctions our clueless parents had packed for us. Nik had Instant noodles, I had spinach and ricotta tortellini, Frances had bread and beans and Steph had a bowl of her mums casserole left over from the night before. But it didn’t really matter what we ate or how it tasted – it was edible, we’d cooked it on a camp stove and we were eating it outdoors. We radiated with pride.
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That night I slept badly. The air was damp and cold. I’d kept my wet socks on thinking they’d somehow warm my feet during the night and woke up with two solid ice blocks as replacements. Frances was still sleeping. I unzipped the tent and poked my head outside. It was early. Birdsong penetrated the grey morning and the fir trees that had been shadows last night dripped green with dew. I took a deep breathe, realising for the first time what people meant when they said ‘fresh air,’ and squelched barefoot to find the toilets.
Twenty minutes later everyone else was up. The camp stoves were out again and the smell of bacon and sausages hung in the air. We were too young for coffee but Steph made some anyway, “I just can’t wake up without it,” she insisted.
We had 14km left to hike until we completed our Duke of Edinburgh bronze expedition. Frances and I spent the first part of the day map-reading. Two of us were recovering from a small tiff from the night before but as we walked the tension dissipated and an hour later everybody had forgotten about it.
Mr Campbell had opened up. The bald, miserly Physics teacher with teeth like Mark Corrigan and an attitude to match told us a little about his favourite hobby – chess. That’s the beauty of hiking. There’s something about walking side by side or single file that blows the conversation wide open. The intensity of eye contact is removed, self-consciousness dissipates and a steady stream of realness pours out.
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I never really completed the Duke of Edinburgh bronze award. In order to do that I needed to do community service and, after the hike was over, I lost my momentum. I had every intention of helping at an old peoples home but never did.
13 year olds grow up fast, especially in South London. A few months after the hike Nik slept with a guy that Frances liked and Steph stopped talking to Holly over a miscommunication/rumour that only Holly could have been responsible for.
Still now it brings me joy to think of those days when we were fully ourselves, our full characters, not yet muted or reduced by criticisms from boys or comments from girls. And as a reminder, a private joke to myself, I still put Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award at the bottom of my CV.
Alice Austin
