By: Blonde One
We Blondes are very good at juggling. Here’s the evidence:
- We manage to juggle our home lives, work lives and jobbie very successfully (most of the time).
- I once tried to juggle on a trip with students to Morocco. I managed to juggle 2 balls at least!
- We have worked with some Young Leaders who were good at juggling on the gorgeous Isle of Man when they were doing their Gold DofE expedition.
On our recent night walk we experienced a very new form of juggling and we were great, obviously! We had to manage a wide variety of needs from the group that we were with.
- We had 2 previous Young Leaders (Giggles and Eager) who had only ever done one night walk before and had not done too much navigation at all since their Gold expedition in July. They needed a mixture of fun, time to chat, teaching and opportunity to have a go.
- We also had Mr Climber with us, who is now quite experienced at navigating. He has his assessment for his Hill and Moorland Leader Award soon and needed to practice. The walk had to be challenging enough for him to find it beneficial.
- Last, but by no means least, we had Mrs W with us. Mrs W is our vital Ten Tors support person. She gives up her weekend in May throughout the whole of the Ten Tors event and makes sure that the staff are fed, watered, happy and entertained. She provides cheese, chocolates, newspapers, chatter, dishwashing skills and a whole host of other invaluable things. What she wanted from this night walk was an introduction to night walking without too much strenuous activity. She needed a gentle bimble so that she could experience the feeling of being in a remote part of Dartmoor in the dark.
- Blonde Two and I needed chance to chat, since we hadn’t seen each other for a few days.
The evening was a total success, with all people having achieved their goal for the trip. We ended our trip with a visit to the Forest Inn at Hexworthy. This pub, thankfully, has just reopened after a period of being closed. We enjoyed lots of chatter, delicious food and the non-drivers enjoyed some Jail Ale.
