Smiling and ready to go! 
Our 8 mile hike on Wednesday of this week took us through a beautiful area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, where we tested our map reading skills and had the opportunity to catch up more from the summer holidays. We stopped in the middle for a picnic lunch and were fortunate to have dry weather until the last hour of the day. Well done Crew Ali and E25 as a whole – we all made it and kept one another going right to the end.
Thursday was a change of pace, including abseiling off an 80ft high bridge on the Monsal Trail in Derbyshire and orienteering using clues generated by the outdoor adventure team. I’m so proud of all of our Crew members for encouraging one another through the abseil process; several of us were understandably nervous and for many this was the first time stepping over the side of something so high with only a couple of ropes to hold on to! That’s what makes us Crew – doing it together, cheering from the bottom of the ravine, coaching from the top of the bridge and having the courage to traverse the space in between. Many thanks to Crew Shackleton in particular for also supporting us during these activities, we aren’t just Crews, we are all members of XP East. Mr Brown made a great video which can be viewed on Crew Shackleton’s blog here.
And it wouldn’t be XP East if the week didn’t culminate in a Presentation of Learning, to which parents and carers were invited. We love sharing our reflections with a wider audience and the Guiding Question for the week had been ‘How Crew Are You?’ Crew Ali decided to focus their reflections on:
- Our strengths as a Crew
- Challenges we have faced
- Challenges to overcome
We know we are not the ‘finished article’; in fact, every piece of beautiful work we do is created through drafting and redrafting, and we apply this principle to our own character development. We have achieved much as a Crew, but we have so much more we can do to be the best version of ourselves. We are going to rise to that challenge.
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life” Muhammad Ali
