Duke of Edinburgh Awards

Can my daughter take her own kit on D oF E outtings??

or more to the point can she take my light kit instead of the normal kitchen sink??

Thanks in advance!!!

Yes.

Best not let her out in one of those pink tents though, get her a green one.

That is rarely a drama. However be aware that:

- They may not welcome her turning up with her own single person tent if that means the others in group are left lugging a tent (undoubtedly cheaper and heavier than yours!) between 1, 2 or 3 or whatever. 

- some restrictions on stoves allowed to be used (no pressurised fuel, pierceable gas canister stoves) and again if she turned up with a single Ti pot and tiny stove that may inconvenience the others left lugging a trangia.

 So sensibly equip her with clothes and personal items but please be cautious in equipping her with tents/ stoves. DofE is all about working as a team and your daughter's advantage may hinder / burden others. Some dad's (particularly with daughters!) won't care about that but I am sure you appreciate value that she gets from being part of group too.

Tent and cooking are likely to be shared, probably using issued kit.  As others have said, it's a team effort thing, so she must do her bit for the team.

I'd have loved to have got my lot using my drinks can burners and clones, but there's no way on earth that would have been allowed (and quite rightly so).

So, pack, clothes, washing and sleeping stuff are the areas where you can help.  Bear in mind that she will have to take spares as required by DofE; sensibly, they assume that the inexperienced will need a change of clothes.  The pack will need to be big enough to carry her personal kit, and her share of group kit.

The girls in my group wore cotton sweatpants and hoodies, something I wasn't too happy about.  A number of them also carried and wore fleece onsies for sleeping.  Most of them were animal-inspired, and it was quite amusing...

The one reply that I heard in answer to the assessor's question 'what did you learn from the practice' was 'not to bring so much stuff this time...'

Previous thread previous thread.

Diddy - my daughter has now completed Gold and son has done Bronze and I know where you are coming from!

However some good advice above particularly with regard to communal kit lik tents, stoves etc.  We did give them a 2 man TN SuperLite Voyager to share with others in their groups.  Just be aware though that if you do that the other kids might not necessarily look after kit like you would yourself!

Best thing to do is kit them out in decent personal gear and try to make them realise that they do not need all that food they insist they need to survive 1/2/3 nights!  One time Jennifer brought more food back than we would have taken in the first place!

I suspect Diddy's daughter might already have her own boots but if not I'd definitely agree about having her own boots.  I got both Jennifer and Craig fairly cheap boots out of Go Outdoors - they've worn out fairly quickly but it doesn't really matter as the've outgrown them anyway.

At my school when I did DofE (up to Gold) we were able to borrow tents (Vaude Hogans or Mark 2s) and stoves (gas trangias). Clothes, rucksacks etc had to be supplied by us.

It wasn't compulsory to borrow school kit, but it was highly recommended to ensure decent kit. As an example, my team had the excellent Vaude tents, but other groups bought cheap dome tents, which did not stand up as well to the wind on Dartmoor.

I understand that different schools do it differently, as some will offer a much greater range of kit. There are no official restrictions (I think) on using your own kit, as long as it is suitable. Different centres may have their own policies though.

As far as I know, talking to a friend who runs a Guide Group.

 Tent's, cookers, maybe "set" items, everyone has to use them. Carried as a group/team.

 The likes of clothes, sleeping bag, mat, are personnel choice. Carried by person.

 Food may not be, there could be a 'set' menu, carried by group/team.

 You can also carry "extras" if you want, but you carry them.

> What do others (DoE supervisors?) think?

Tent and kit splitting seems quite normal.  The group I've started working with have a variety of tents, but they're each 3+ man tents, and they have two tents per group (max group size is 7).  They carry a Trangia stove (or remnants thereof), but are issued mini-hob burners in camp.

It would be unfair to lumber of member of the team with the entire tent, probably weighing 4+kg (they're cheap and cheerful; finite resources, etc).  So, the fly, inner, poles & pegs are split between three.

Our group are not allowed to sleep on their own; there has to be at least two in a tent.  Risk assessment.  Plus, sleeping alone breaks up the group dynamic, and isn't good for team building; 'ooh, she's thinks she's better than us', etc. likely to lead to ostracism.

> Just be aware though that if you do that the other kids might not necessarily look after kit like you would yourself!

That's why the tents are cheap...

They are not allowed to cook near the tent.

As GOF says, it's an issue of risk assessment & duty of care.  Inexperienced campers (which most Bronze DofEers will be) are a significant risk to themselves.  And cooking involves some of thre greatest risks.

> Getting her to listen to my advice is another task in itself.

Indeed; that seems to be a common problem.  You and their supervisor can give them all the advice you like on packing light, taking sensible clothes, etc, but they'll still sneak in three pairs of jeans, a dressing gown, hair dryer, straightening tongs, litre glass bottles of shampoo, etc. etc....  The do seem to learn to pack lighter next time, though...

She (at only 14 yrs) doesn't think their tents are good enough, for our wet climate 600 feet up in the Scottish Borders where they will be camping.

There is a tendency for some well versed in premium kit to be a bit snobbish about less premium kit (and I will freely acknowledge I'm throwing stones at my own glass house here!), but I would be very surprised if a DoE programme would be sending out teams with gear that is fundamentally inadequate.  It might not be the nicest stuff going but the folk supervising its use year on year will, I suspect, know what the local climate is likely to throw at it.

"Good enough" is actually not that high a standard for a night out in a tent, unless you go out of your way to choose an exposed pitch on a wild night.  It's worth remembering that the sort of thing gear junkies like me like to use is vastly over-engineered for most jobs it's used for, and paying a lot over the odds for e.g. ease of pitching is a moot point once it's up and you're inside.  So why do I use very expensive tents?  To quite an extent, because it floats my particular and rather contrived boat, and I can...

Pete.

captain paranoia wrote (see)

... a dressing gown, hair dryer, straightening tongs...

What's wrong with that? It's what I always take!

Peter Clinch wrote (see)

... the sort of thing gear junkies like me like to use is vastly over-engineered for most jobs it's used for...

I suspect that's true of many - if not most - of us, Pete. The three-berth Vango I use for my fair weather car-camping trips has withstood any amount of rain and some pretty gusty winds and it only cost me forty quid new. No doubt my Zephyrus (itself an inexpensive tent) would withstand gale force wind better but I bought it for its low weight, small pack size, and ease of pitching 'as one' not for its weather resistance.

That said, I think sleeping bags are one area where it's better not to compromise. If my son had been a DoE participant and had a free choice of bag (assuming the expedition was in cool or cold weather) I'd have felt better if he'd taken a decent down sleeping bag.