Happy Birthday Prince Philip

This week I was on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition and today happens to be the Duke's 90th Birthday! The expedition went really well although we were not very lucky with the weather. It was quite rainy on and off especially in the evening, so after dinner with the rest of the staff we all went off to bed rather early because it was quite chilly as well as damp. I had hired a wee bothy for £5 and I planned to sleep there. The staff all had dinner on the covered area outside it. I thought it would be comfy (it has bunk beds) and would save me the trouble of pitching my tent. However it was really grotty and the rest of the staff wound me up about it, pointing out the holes in the floor which they said would let in rats or maybe even foxes! And that the mattresses looked as if they had mice nesting in them. One of my colleagues even made a pretend poo out of earth and put it in on a mattress! At least I hope it was pretend! So in the end I decided to sleep in the car. I reclined the front seat and got into my sleeping bag. At first I was quite cosy but during the night it got very cold so I kept waking up. Not the best sleep. The weather continued mixed the next day but the good news was that the pupils all did really well and passed the expedition section of their awards. Our assessor was a good laugh and told us all sorts of stories about his life, including meeting the Duke of Edinburgh on numerous occasions because of being involved with the award for many years. Shona was doing a supervised assessment with him and she passed it and is now fully qualified, so now we have our own assessor, hooray! By the afternoon the weather had brightened up and we all ended up sitting outside a pub in warm sunshine while the pupils got their feedback. I was so proud of the whole lot of them, they literally screamed with delight when they were told that they had passed! The girls that is, the boys were suitably cool about it, but were pleased too. Moments like that make it all worthwhile!