Cadet150 DofE Gold Residential - Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth

Cadet Staff Serjeant Richard Salter from Tiverton Detachment in A Company attended the above names Cadet150 course. Read his account of the prestigious event below.

On Wednesday I travelled up to Portsmouth to start my Gold Duke of Edinburgh's Award residential. As part of the DofE award you have to complete a one week activity away from. This year is the 150^th anniversary of the Army Cadets and to celebrate they held a one week residential on a war ship and at Britannia Royal Naval College for 150 selected cadets from the UK. I was one of these cadets, and was the only Army Cadet from Devon. On the way up I was really excited about what was coming up but also quite nervous. This would be the first time I had been away from home for that length of time without knowing anyone else who was going to be there. When I arrived at Portsmouth there was a bus that took us to the warship RFA Argus. This ship was really impressive and had just had a £9 million refurbishment. This was the first time I started to meet the rest of the people on the course. As we were not in are cadet uniform the topic of most conversations was finding out where people were from and which cadet force as the air and sea cadets were also there. Everyone was really friendly and easy to get on with. When we got on the ship we were shown our accommodation for the next two days. The room was about half the size of my bedroom and fitted nine people. This was the most compact room I had ever stayed in. To fit everyone in the room some people had to get into the three tier bunk beds as there was not enough standing space for nine. Although this was very tight it forced everyone to get to know each other, which was a good thing in hindsight.

On Thursday morning we went back onto shore to go to some navy museums and we also had a tour of Portsmouth harbour. We had a look around HMS Victory which was the war ship that Lord Nelson was killed on, this was really interesting. I had been on this ship with my primary school so it brought back some good memories as well. In the afternoon we were due to set sail to Britannia Royal Naval College. Unfortunately, this plan did not really work. The boat had hydraulic problems meaning they could not operate the anchor so the decision was made that we would not be able to sail. Everyone was really upset about this, but there was nothing we could do. We spent a lot of time just waiting in our cabins until a new plan was put together and we then spent the rest of the day looking around the ship. This involved a tour of the ships hospital which has exactly the same facilities as a NHS hospital. I was really shocked at what good facilities they had on a boat. We also had a fire fighting demonstration and a look at the boats bridge, where the captain sits. By know everyone was starting to get into friendship groups and getting on with each other. We stayed on the boat again in the evening ready for a long bus journey to Dartmouth the next day.

On Friday morning we left the ship and were given “shore leave”, meaning we had the opportunity to look around some of Portsmouth shops. My little group decided we would go up this massive viewing tower 200m above the ground. When we got to the top there was an amazing view of the whole of Portsmouth, you could see for miles as visibility was really good. We then got on the buses to go to Dartmouth. About half way through the journey just before Taunton everyone began to think that someone didn’t want us to get to Dartmouth as the bus got a flat tyre. We were just before a busy roundabout on the dual carriageway and the tyre was completely flat. As this was such a busy road very quickly queues began to build behind us, due to this a police car arrived to find out what was going on. As we were going to be there for a couple of hours until someone could come to fix the tyre, the police said they could take people to the toilet. Three people at a time we went by police car to the local services toilets and back to the bus. Due to the massive queues the police car had to put its sirens on to get the cars to part to let us through. This was turning into a real adventure, and probably a bit more fun than going by boat. Eventually the bus was fixed and we made it to Dartmouth. When we arrived we were split into our divisions or groups for the rest of the course, which was with completely new people so the process of making friends and forming a team began again. In the evening everyone was given a presentation of what we were going to do on the course by the course director. They started with simply a picture slideshow of photos and played Heather Small’s Proud in the background. It was really simple but got me really excited about the course. I got this warm feeling inside that I was a part of something very special.

On Saturday the main course began. The aim of the course was for everyone to come out with a qualification making them amble to run their own DofE centre and a level 2 award in Team Leading from the Institute of Leadership and Management. Every morning was spent on the parade square with the colleges Drill Serjeant Major. He had the jobs of making all 150 of us look smart for a final parade at the end of the course. This would normally be easy but as there were people from the Army Cadet, Air Cadets and Sea Cadets everyone knew very different drill. I really liked the Drill Serjeant Major surprisingly. Somehow he managed to some across as a nice funny and approachable guy but at the same time you were scared to make any mistake in front of him. The rest of the morning was spent working towards the DofE Leadership qualification. A lot of it was theory of leadership and DofE but we also had to complete various command tasks. These tasks were there to enforce the importance of team work and time management. A lot of people found the DofE leadership part of the course quite boring but I quite enjoyed it. In the afternoon we went down to the water and had the opportunity to drive picket boats and whalers. I really enjoyed this. We practised things such as driving the boat into shore and man over board drills. In the evening we competed in Inter Division sports which was a game a bit like basketball, but the basket was someone holding a bucket. Apparently the navy play it a lot on ships.

Sunday was a similar day we spent the morning completing DofE leadership modules after doing some drill. Again we did command tasks and each time we improved as we learnt from our previous mistakes. In the afternoon we went on a Low Ropes course. This was just like a big wooden climbing frame with ropes on. We had to complete various team building tasks on the course. This was really enjoyable and after completing it everyone got on really well as a team. People were talking more and generally having more fun. We then went on to complete some bigger command tasks. We were in groups of 5 and each person took it in turns to take the lead. We had to complete tasks such as building a tripod to keep wires off the ground and building a flag pole with limited supplies. Again this was good fun and helped the group turn into a team. In the evening we completed inter division tug of war and a relay. I am obviously not the best build for a tug of war team but I still took part and was surprised how tiring pulling a bit of rope could be.

On Monday we had the usual drill session this was then followed by a Military Information morning. This comprised of looking at some weapons that the infantry recruiting team had brought down. We also had the opportunity to go on a laser shooting game and a DCCT. A DCCT is basically playing on the Wii but with real pistols instead of the Wii controller. We then got to go on some motorbikes supplied by the Royal Signals White Helmet Display Team. This was the first time I had gone on a motorbike and I really enjoyed it. We did not get long on them and could only go in a circle but it was really good fun. We then moved onto a Bridge Trainer. This is a mock version of the bridge of a ship where the ship is steered from and the captain sits. It was really realistic you could drive the boat and navigate on the charts and the projected view in front of you made it look like you were going that way. They could also change things such as how rough the sea was. Although the boat did not move the image showed a rough sea and it felt like you were moving. In the afternoon we continued with our DofE Leadership training. In the evening we had our course dinner. It was a black tie event and many VIPs were invited. The food was really good and it was a three course meal. In the background the best Royal Navy Combined Cadet Force band was playing and they were really good. After the meal we had a motivational speech from Debra Searle. She is one of 10 trustees of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and rowed solo across the Atlantic. As well as that she has now done TV Presenting, written three books, gained an MBE and done motivational talks at big companies such as Vodafone, England Rugby, Marks and Spencer’s, Microsoft and many more big names. She was really inspirational as she told us about how she got through this huge challenge.

On Tuesday morning we went back on the water to go in the picket boats again and complete a quiz to see how much we remembered about Dartmouth from our last trip. I have been to Dartmouth quite a few times before so I didn’t find this too difficult as I could rely on previous knowledge. We spent the rest of the day completing the DofE Leadership Course and we started filling in our Institute Of Learning and Management Level 2 Award in Team Leading Booklets. This book was about 30 pages long, most of it was information about team leading and we then had to complete 10 questions about it. The simplicity also made the qualification feel useless but it will be a good addition to my CV.

Wednesday was the last full day of training we completed. In the morning we had a full rehearsal for our final parade which would complete in the afternoon. This went really well. For the rest of the morning we finished off our ILM booklets and started packing up. In the afternoon we had a church service in the college's own church and this was followed by our final parade. The inspecting officer was Commodore Mansell who represents the reserve forces and cadets in the UK. He inspected every person on the parade and this took about an hour. It required a lot of self discipline to stand still and in silence for that long. After the parade we were allowed to have some free time in Dartmouth. In the evening we had a Ceilidh. This is basically a Scottish disco, we had a live Scottish band and completed various Scottish dances. Surprisingly this was really good fun and I really enjoyed it, even though I'm not normally into any kind of dancing.

On Thursday morning we tidied up the camp and said goodbye to everyone. I then went home, unpacked and caught up on what had happened in the world in the past week as when you go away on these camps you are completely cut off from the rest of the world.