20th – 23rd of July 2020

“Duke is a programme that equips people for life regardless of their background, culture and physical ability. It pushes young people to their personal limits and recognize their achievements” – The Duke of Edinborough International Award

20th July 2020

We are off again. Swerving through the hills of Sri Lanka to go on another adventure. We had already been on our practice journey in November. Our final adventures journey for the silver award was meant to be in March but obviously, that wasn’t going to happen. We had been discussing trying t find a way to do our final journey in these trying times. So, Mr Lockwood offered for us to do it during our summer, I mean it’s not like we had anything better to do and we can pretend we are going on a fun little holiday with our friends. Out of the 10 candidates 5 of us decided to go. Alex, Talia, Chloe, Lenny and I. Poor Lenny.

We started our journey at 10am on the 20th, our plan was to stay for 3 nights so that we had a day dedicated to go back and forth from Colombo to the Knuckles. We had a 5-hour bus ride ahead of us before we could be lost in between the mountains and among the clouds. A large part of it was us singing throwbacks and Lenny regretting that he decided to go on the trip with us, but he was a good sport about it all. We stopped at pizza hut on the way there for one last greasy snack before we were off to eating rice and curry for the rest of the trip.

Our Pizza-hut detour. Photo: Me.

Once we had gotten to the camp it was already very late in the afternoon and we needed to start setting up our tents for the night. Alex as our head camper girl definitely carried the team, commanding us on what to do. We never actually set up a tent before, we always ended up taking them down so it was a challenge trying to figure out how to put everything up when the pieces are all in detached bits. Thankfully we had Alex and Chloe to help as I was definitely the weak link.

Once the tent was up it was time for showers and dinner. This is where we ran into another problem. Chloe and I seemed to have forgotten our plates and utensils because we had gotten too confident in the fact that we usually were supplied these things in the other journeys. So we sat there embarrassed having dinner off of the plates that the camp had given us. To be fair we had brought plates every other trip that we did and got too confident with thinking that we didn’t need them… we started thinking about how we could try and make plates out of leaves.

21st July 2020

Today was a basic hiking day, we had a late start to the morning and only started our trek at 8:30 and the sun was really strong. We started the hike by going down towards the Meemur village and having lunch there. We got there at around 10am, put our bags down and continued on to the temple.

In the village before going off to the temple. Photo: Me

Once we had gotten to see the temple we had met an old lady who was looking after the temple. She lived a little higher up from the cave temple which even I found difficult to hike up let alone being a 60-year-old woman hiking up by herself!! Her place was decorated all over with rubbish left from past visitors, she had a wall made out of toothbrushes and decorated trees with plastic wrapping paper. We also had the pleasure of hearing her sing. Most of her songs were stories about her family like her son and her husband. she sang to us for 20min and then she wished us safe travel.

Going to the temple where we met the singing lasy. Photo: Chloe

After we scoffed down our rice and curry lunch that we had in one of the local’s houses we were off trekking again. Due to it being EXTREMELY hot we decided to detour and swim in one of the lakes for the rest of the afternoon. Our guides told us that we could go rock jumping and of course, being the silver adventure scouts that we are decided to take the risk. The water was absolutely freezing but we had a lot of fun after our exhausting day.

Alex and I swimming at the lake on our first full day. Photo: Me

We took the jeep back to the camp (a little bit of a cheat but we will let it slide) and had showers so we could start our route cards. I think it was safe to say that this was one of the most productive groups that I have ever had. We finished in record time and now it was the period in which Chloe and I had to sit there with our heads tucked into our shoulders eating off of the camps plates and cutlery, still hadn’t found a solution to that dilemma.

22nd July 2020

Today was one of our hardest hiking days that I think we have done in the history of our DOE experience. We set off to hike to the bat cave on the top of this mountain. On 4 separate occasions during the hike, I thought I was going to kick the bucket and accept my fate of not making it up the hill. However, she persevered and we all made it up this verticle mountain. We had been hiking this particular part of the hill for 20 min but luckily the guide was rather impressed that we made it up that fast. We got up and rock climbed to the inside of teh cave and were greeted with mountains of bat poo that wasn’t the best rewards after a 20min hike.

The aftermath of the bat poo cave. Photo: Alex

We had taken the jeep back (cheated again) and brewed a lovely smell and bat poo between the 7 of us plus the guides. We got back in the afternoon and hung out in our tents to chill and shower all the bat droppings off ourselves. All of us were hoping that we could have a nice swim in the stream to cool down but it was a dream left to be desired because it started to pour.

The afternoon was filled with playing cards and being attacked by what I thought was a bird but was a moth (yes that’s how large it was I thought it was a bird). Chloe and I ended the night at dinner accepting the fact and feeling comfortable with using the camps plates.

Alex and I chilling out in our tent. Photo: Chloe.

23rd July 2020

Our last day 🙁 luckily we persuaded Mr Lockwood and the seals to let us go to the lake for one final jump-off our beloved cliffs. The water was freezing as usual. Our final goodbye was a 20-foot jump off another level and it was absolutely exhilarating and a nice way to end the trip. We packed up our homes (the tents) had a farewell milk tea and jumped into the jeep to move onto the bus where we slept for the next 5 hours.

Packing up all of our stuff. Photo: Alex

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