Now, I expect you are wondering why on earth someone like me would have anything to do with camping and the outdoors, and it’s true that, on paper, the Duke of Edinburgh’s award is everything I hate – sleeping rough, wearing profoundly unsexy waterproofs, eating vile stodge out of packets and cans, having to spend time with stroppy adolescents, nowhere to plug in my hairdryer, and so on. But, in actual fact, I can be surprisingly tolerant of such circumstances provided (a) they are only temporary and (b) everyone is in the same boat. Believe it or not, a few years back I trekked 100km across Iceland and surprised myself at how many luxuries I managed to do without and, when word of this got out at the senior school, the Duke of Edinburgh leaders roped me in to help. My initial reaction was to refuse, as I can’t stand the royal family and I felt rather uncomfortable doing something endorsed by the least likeable one of the bunch, but I put that out of my mind and instead tried to remember what the kids would be getting out of it. The majority of the group had only ever been on family-organised excursions and the boys had never even cooked a meal for themselves, so I was curious to see how they would manage.

The practice expedition took place at school, with everyone camping on the football pitch (kids at one end, adults at the other). During the afternoon the kids spent their time putting up their tents, cooking their evening meal and planning the route for their trek the next day. It soon became apparent who helped out in the kitchen at home and who didn’t – one group had no idea that pasta expanded whilst cooking, and got quite a shock when their meal for five turned into a meal for about ten. The whole notion of camping at school was cosily familiar and well within everyone’s comfort zone but, as night fell, the bravado started to wear off; empty schools can be quite creepy places, especially in the dark. It didn’t help that one of the boys started a rumour about the school being built on an ancient burial ground, and closer examination of his rucksack revealed a vast collection of scary Halloween masks.