The Derek Turner Trophy competition is an eight mile incident hike with points for navigation and dealing with the various incidents. This year's event was held on Saturday 3rd December night through to Sunday morning 4th December.

The 1st St. Albans Scouts contingent was James (Team Leader), Oliver, Jazmin and Stephen and it was a great success with them all surviving to tell the tale! Considering the time of year, weather conditions were very good with no rain and not particularly chilly.

We arrived at around 3.15pm on Saturday afternoon and set up camp in the grounds of the Sandridge HQ Scout hut. Our two tents joined around 24 other tents on the site. 1st St Albans were nominated as Team 4 at the pre-hike briefing. A kit check followed and it was touch and go for a moment as Oliver only had some chunky trainers but after a quick huddle, the leaders agreed it was okay to proceed as it wasn’t wet. Phew! With everything and everyone complying with the checklist, it was back for another brief and issue of map and instructions. Nine checkpoints, taking an anti-clockwise route. We waved goodbye as the team set off down the lane into the darkness at around 4.45pm and we wondered if we’d ever see them again. Target completion time was set for around 9.30pm.

As it turned out, the team managed to complete the whole course but took a lot longer than anticipated, arriving back at the Scout HQ at 00.40! They took about three wrong turns but realised the errors, and corrected themselves back onto the route. They had a lot of fun on the various challenges set at the checkpoints, but their favourite was of course the Halfway House where they could rest with a cup of hot chocolate and a hotdog which went down very well!

Having arrived muddied and pretty worn out at the HQ, the four intrepid adventurers hit the hay in their tents and managed to get to sleep around 2am, waking up again at around 7am. After a bacon butty breakfast they shifted into their uniforms in readiness for the presentations, took the tents down and got packed up.

At the presentation at 10am, they found out that they had achieved 14th position out of a field of 18 teams. Considering they were the youngest team and had never done anything like this before, it was a very respectable result, with four other teams trailing behind them. To think that whilst we were tucked up in bed at home, they were still hiking across the Hertfordshire countryside, so a huge well done to all of them for a fantastic effort on what was an arduous and challenging hike and we should be proud of their achievement and determination.

Pete Frost