Team Hades expedition

2. Team Hades expedition AUGUST 2013

3. The Team • Practice Expedition • Preparing for the Expedition • Our Aim • The First Day • The Campsite • The Second Day • What We Learned • Did We Complete our Aim? • Personal Thought and Feelings during the Expedition Contents page

4. Ieuan Bancroft • David Dascombe • Luke Tainton • Luke Williams • Kyle Bugeja • Chloe Jones • Alfi Bond • Callum Veysey • (Dan Bushell) The team

5. We arrived at Llangorse Lake which was our starting location, it was a hot and sunny day and although we had to stop for a drink every few hundred metres the group had perfect navigation skills and didn’t go wrong once (thanks to good communication and teamwork) and although we started late (due to logistics mess up) we finished in good time. The second day went much the same, the team worked well together with no navigational mess ups. We even had time to practice skills such as taking bearings and identifying natural features in the landscape. Again we finished the second day in good time before heading home out of the heat. Practice expedition

6. Before we set off, we spent months planning what we were going to take with us and what route we were going to take. We decided to take a route that on the first day took us North and then East to the campsite and on the second day took us South and then West to the end point. We also assigned team roles. For example, Bancroft was the team IC, and Bond was First Aid. We all had to contribute to the team’s navigation efforts, but we appointed Williams as our main navigator, just to keep a special eye out in case anything went pear-shaped. Preparing for the expedition

7. Our aim was fairly simple. We decided to take pictures of our faces every so often to show how you deteriorate over time.  We decided on this because we all knew that it would be tiring, so we wanted to see just how tired we would get.  We would have to take a camera with us to get a photo of our deteriorating faces as the day progressed, Kyle Bugeja accepted the responsibility of taking a photo of out tired faces. Our aim

8. We started our expedition through the Wye Valley, heading South (even though we were supposed to be going North!) at 10:00am. We spent some time walking through forest because we had a slight technical hitch (fault with the compass). When we finally realised what had happened, we had to make up quite a lot of lost time. We ended up having lunch behind schedule! After lunch, we were still going a little bit too slow so arrived at the campsite a few hours behind schedule. The first day

9. After the long days walking through forestry, fields and along some roads we were glad to see the campsite approaching us. On arrival we all just fell on the floor for a rest, we were drained of energy but knew we had to unpack and setup the tents. The tents were set up relatively quickly and people began to cook a well deserved hot mess tin of noodles and items from ration packs.  The Campsite

10. We set off from the campsite at 9, bags packed and still aching from the long day of walking before. We traveled making great time at the beginning of the day following the map and working as a team and after traveling some distance we had to travel through a farm, the path was not marked very clearly and after traveling a further 300m we had decided we were not in the right place and we were in fact supposed to be the other side of the hedge, we corrected our position by backtracking a few hundred meters to to the correct path. The second day

11. Constantly check your map and try not to rely on 1 person as even a big mistake may not be noticed. Always have people checking each others decisions so that there is less chance of a mistake being missed. Only carry what we need as you WILL get annoyed and tired because of the weight you are carrying. What we learned

12. Did we complete our aim?

14. Personal thoughts and feelings