Page 46 - Army Mountaineer Winter 2022

CADETS
EXERCISE KNOYDART
CHALLENGER
Lt Col Cath Davies, Army Cadets National Adviser for Adventurous Training
After the interruption of Covid lock down, the HQ Regional Command Cadet Branch AT team dipped their toes cautiously in the water by organising some national AT expeditions in the UK. One obvious reason for restricting these to the UK was the potential disruption to travel due to possible Covid outbreaks overseas, but another was to showcase the potential to carry out exciting and worthwhile AT here in the UK at costs achievable to any part of the cadet organisation. A continual response to our efforts to encourage increased AT activity in the cadets is “it costs too much”; with Ex Knoydart Challenger, we sought to kill two birds with one stone.
The Knoydart Peninsula is the most remote area in the British Isles, accessed north and south at the road end of two sea lochs, but only by ferry to the only
settlement, Inverie, in between. That makes an expedition on foot here a real wilderness experience, more so than trekking expeditions in some places much further afield. As a young training officer with City of Edinburgh Universities’ Officer Training Corps, I had taken some 50 first year Officer Cadets plus instructors to Knoydart as the expedition culmination of their Easter AT camp. This meant a lot of students who had arrived in Scotland for the first time the previous October had by the end of their first year seen more of Scotland than most Scots! I saw the changes in these young people, albeit older than the Army Cadets, achieved by this experience and it was from this exposure that the idea for Ex Knoydart Challenger was born.
In May half term, 19 Army Cadets and 9 Cadet Force Adult Volunteers (CFAVs), recruited nationally, deployed to a Cadet
Training Centre at Dingwall on the Black Isle near Inverness. This gave them a firm base from which to carry out the planning and preparation for the expedition: create a transport plot, route plan, identify campsites and attend presentations on the history of Knoydart, mountain weather, access, conservation, mountain hazards and risk management. Each team was given responsibility for a different aspect of the expedition to fully engage them in the enterprise and learn from the planning process.
The team moved from Dingwall to Fort William by coach via the Great Glen and Loch Ness, deviating only slightly to visit the Commando Memorial at Spean Bridge. Then it was on to the Jacobite steam train, otherwise known as the Hogwarts Express from its use in the Harry Potter film series, to cross the Glenfinnan viaduct and travel on to the port of
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