Page 45 - Wish Stream Year of 2016
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Exercise DRAKENSBERG CADET
With Sovereign’s Parade nished and Christmas on the horizon, six Of cer Cadets from Ypres Company swapped the rain and cold of Hampshire for the heat of midsummer South Africa. Friday 16 December 2016 saw the group y from Gatwick with their instructor, Capt Peter Berry (LANCS), to Johan- nesburg via Addis Ababa. Upon arrival they picked up a rental car and completed the six hour drive to the Sani Pass Lodge, their base for the week.
The Sani Pass sits in the Drakensberg Moun- tains and is the only road from South Africa to its small neighbour Lesotho. At its highest point it sits 2,874m above sea level. It was in this spectacular scenery that the group carried out the training required to complete the Summer Mountain Foundation Course. For most of the cadets, this was their rst experience of moun- taineering in heat and at signi cant altitude, so the rst day was spent acclimatising to the new conditions and trekking the local area. The deep valleys provided several pools which the cadets utilised for a quick cool off! A highlight of the trip was the sighting of small groups of wild Chacma Baboons on the mountainsides.
The various day hikes were an excellent experi- ence, allowing cadets to learn and develop new skills including map reading, small team leader- ship and operating in an unfamiliar environment. The heat in the mornings was normally followed by heavy thunderstorms in the afternoons, giv- ing a good variety of weather. Evenings were
OCdt Eeles
then spent back at the lodge, putting prodigious amounts of meat from the local shops on the BBQ. Steak, which is notoriously cheap in South Africa, was eaten on a large scale!
Having had an excellent opportunity to develop their physical, mental and leadership skills, the team headed back to Johannesburg on Friday 23 December and arrived back in the UK on Christmas Eve. The group would like to thank Capt Peter Berry, the Commandant, Capt Lam- bert RLC, New College Commander and the Sandhurst Trust for making the trip possible.
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