What We Offer

The expedition section is the part of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award that most participants find both the most demanding and the most memorable: planning a route, carrying your own kit, and completing it as a self-sufficient team, assessed against the standard for your award level. We deliver that section end to end — training, practice expeditions, and the qualifying expedition itself.

Award levels we cover

• Bronze — the entry point, typically for participants aged 14+. Shorter routes, closer supervision, and a strong emphasis on the basics: navigation, campcraft, and working as a team.
• Silver — a step up in distance, self-sufficiency, and route-planning responsibility, building directly on Bronze skills.
• Gold — the most demanding level, with longer expeditions and greater independence expected of the team throughout.

Whichever level a group is working towards, the training and practice expeditions we run are built to DofE’s own standards for that level, so participants arrive at their assessed expedition properly prepared rather than just present.

What a typical expedition looks like

• Training sessions covering navigation, campcraft, first aid awareness, and the specific demands of the terrain the group will face.
• A practice expedition, run under supervision, that mirrors the conditions of the real thing and surfaces any gaps before they matter.
• The qualifying expedition, assessed against DofE’s requirements for the award level, with our team providing the supervision structure the framework requires.

Throughout, groups plan their own route and carry their own kit — that’s the point of the award — but they’re never doing it without proper preparation or a safety net behind them.

Our coaching approach

The name Own Pace Outfitters means what it says. Expeditions can be physically and mentally demanding, and not every participant arrives at the start line with the same confidence or experience. Our coaching is structured and patient: clear instruction, plenty of practice before anything is assessed, and room for participants to build competence at a pace that works for them rather than a fixed drill. That approach comes from years of hands-on youth work across Scouting, archery coaching, and bushcraft instruction — the same grounding behind our sibling programmes, Zanshin Archery and Greenwood Bushcraft.

If you’re a school or DofE centre weighing up expedition providers, get in touch — we’re happy to talk through what a season with us would actually look like for your group.