On the 27^th & 28^th June, the Scout Hiking Expedition of 2026 took place consisting of 8 Scouts and 4 leaders. The Scouts who completed it for the first time this year were Tobias, Lilly, Solomon, Matthew and Emilio; the other 3 who completed the expedition for a second time were Connor, Dylan and Leon. 

Stats  

Total km walked were between 27km & 29km   

Total of 0 major injuries, but with a few minors, including Lilly and Matt getting small cuts and all of us with bug bites. 

I joined day 1 on the Saturday after just 4.5 hours sleep due to arriving back in the early hours having been on a week-long holiday in Marrakesh. On day one we hiked for around 8 hours, and on day 2 we hiked for around 5 hours, finishing the expedition mid-afternoon. 

 

Day 1  

We arrived at the Scout Hut for final prep and bag checks and then set off in the minibus for a 40min drive to our start point at Danebridge in the Dane Valley. We set off strong but then quickly found ourselves lost in like a tiny ravine forest where we spent 40 mins trying to work out what should be the right way. 

Solomon fell down a hill: all of us helped him back up 3 times, but then Lilly fell down the same hill and we helped her up. Then Matthew fell down a hill: Emilio took his bag off to help Matthew and whilst doing that his bag took flight rolling down a hill into the river. He collected his bag, then leader Dan showed up and rescued the group to the correct route. 

Nothing else particularly eventful happened until later when we tried all four corners of a field to try to find the way out, before realising we were wrong again.  

After lunch, we continued walking and talked a lot. Matthew sang random songs, some of which included Old McDonald, Reach for the Stars, with Three is a Magic Number being his favourite, plus others I can’t recall. 

After a long hard day, on a circular route followed by a walk alongside the River Dane, everyone made it to camp at Gradbach with the group – aptly named ‘immortal snails’ – being 40mins behind the first group ‘Ogs’ (the Originals). We took a short break, with me being especially tired, then set up our hike tents. After the tents were up, we all cooked our food on our gas mini stoves and we all had some sort of curry, meatballs & sauce or chilli con carne, all with rice. After this we went to wash up and got ready for bed, but it turned out the toilets were forever years away from our campsite, but we did it in the end and finished sorting out our stuff in our tents and finally getting some much needed rest. 

Day 2  

We woke at about 7.30am ish, got up, packed all of our stuff and put it outside of our tents. We cooked all-day breakfast in a tin on our stoves, and two had sausages & beans. After washing up and cleaning our teeth, we took our tents down and sorted our our lunch rations. We topped up with fresh water and the groups set off 10 minutes apart from each other. 

Soon after we left the campsite, it started raining and lasted for 30 to 40 mins, which didn’t help anyone’s mood, until we caught up with the other group after being able to see them in the distance for a while . Then Dan made us wait in the rain  for 8 mins,  so the  other group could get ahead again. This happened again at all check points until lunchtime, when we figured out Solmon’s shoe was broken. 

Once we got to the lunch stop, we got out our stoves, ate our non-hot food whilst we cooked our pasta, then ate that too. We walked the last 2 km together as one group and made it to the finish point at the foot of Shutlinsgloe as one team. We got on the minibus for our ride back, with everyone very tired. We made it back to the Scout Hut and went home. 

Tobias Dodd, age 13, St Andrew’s Scouts