On the 29th of May 2005, cadets from our squadron took part in the Folkestone cadet's march (also called the spitfire walk).

    The day before the event we me met up at the church at around 2:45 and waited for Mr. Poutney to arrive with the minibus. When the minibus pulled up I thought that there would be loads of room for us and all the kit we had brought for the stay over at St. Martin's plain... Well that's where I was wrong! First we had to load our kit into the minibus and then somehow try to get to get to our small seat without treading on the mountains of kit we had put in the bus. After about 15 minutes of strategically moving pieces of kit around the bus so we wouldn't get crushed by it, we set off for Folkestone.

    During the journey to Folkestone Mr. Poutney had brought a rather large collection of heavy metal CDs and classic songs, and sang most of the way to Folkestone mainly listening to a band I hadn't heard of and queen (unfortunately for Cdt. Costen who now has a distain for queen after he went gliding!). When we got to St Martin's plain we unloaded our kit and set up our camp site which was rather a struggle in wind, but we eventually got our tents up for the night's stay.

    Once we had set up our camp we headed to Tesco for something to eat, and then into town for a night out - which I have to say was a rather odd night out. The first things we saw when we parked outside the seafront were an old derelict hotel building and a closed down sea front amusement park. We had split off into groups and wandered around the town for something to do. My group mainly spent our time wandering round the town looking for a place to eat and ending up at a kebab shop (yuk!) and a fish and chip shop. After we had something to eat my group went into an arcade where we found a mini sized bowling alley which we all had a go on. We met up with Cpl Meacham, Cdt Tolson and Cdt Catlin and went down to the sea front where we sat on a pebble beach throwing stones into the sea. Unfortunately for me I got splashed by a wave and had to spend the rest of the night walking around with soaking feet. After this we met up at the minibus and set off back to the campsite.

    On the day of the walk we ate our breakfast and had a wash and then took the tents down and got ready. We started warming up for the walk by doing some basic stretches and checking that our footwear had been fitted properly and that we had enough water to drink for the walk. At about 9:00am we set off for the 16 mile walk. This was the part of the walk that made me think, "Why on earth am I doing this again?" but I dealt with it and kept on walking. Most of the walk consisted of walking up very steep hills, walking through fields and feeling like we were in the middle of nowhere.

    After we had passed our third checkpoint we crossed a motorway where we were very lucky to see the red arrows display team fly right over us. We were the only group around for a mile or two so we regarded it as if it was just for us. After watching the display team fly over we carried on the walk to the Battle of Britain memorial where we stopped for a drink and had a look around. We looked over the cliff that had a great view of the town of Folkestone. I thought it was about 150 feet down (scary when you're looking over and there's no safety barriers). Near to the end of our rest we had our photos taken in front of a spitfire and then set off. Just as we had set off for the last checkpoint of the walk it started to rain which felt like a relief at first but then began to get annoying as I didn't have a waterproof jacket with me. I wasn't all that fussed about it as we only had around 4 miles to go. After we had gotten to the last checkpoint we felt good that there were only around 2 miles to go until the finish point, so we picked up the pace to get out of the rain and have a sit down. When we got to the hill that leads to the finish line we formed up into two ranks and marched into the camp. Once we had crossed the finish line we had a rest on the grass and then were awarded a certificate and a shiny red and gold medal for our effort. Feeling really chuffed that we had finished the walk, and tired, we clambered back into the cramped minibus with all the kit literally crushing us as we set off home. Another to add to the list of the people caught on camera sleeping was me, which adds to our hall of fame (along with Sergeant Bronze and Corporal Robinson).

     It was a walk for a good cause and we had raised some money for charity, but I said  I said "never again"!

    Although I said it at at the end of this walk I'll probably end up doing it next year.