After two years of taught skills development across a wide range of outdoor sports - from surfing to ice climbing - Coleg Llandrillo's Outdoor Education students had to organise, plan and complete an end-of-year, seven-day expedition of their choosing.

They had originally planned to go up to Scotland, with the primary aim of climbing the beautiful yet challenging mountain, Ben Alder.

This trip was to involve a 20km canoe down Loch Edict, preceded by three nights of wild camping on the way. This would then leave two days to climb the mountain before a 20 km paddle back.

But, the weather forecast was for freezing levels down to 600m, strong north-easterly winds and heavy snow down to the valleys. This made their initial expedition plan potentially extremely problematic, arduous and very dangerous, with the potential of getting snowed in and stuck at the base camp because of the winds, meaning they would not be able to paddle back.

The students worked hard to quickly come up with a plan B that would work with the predicted weather.

Cycling from the west coast to the east coast of England still met the expedition aims and avoided the worst of the weather. They opted to cycle the 'Way of the Roses', from Morecambe to Bridlington, which is a distance of 170 miles in total.

Tutor Mike Hendry said: "It was very hard going, but they all supported each other, worked hard and pulled together to very successfully complete the big trip".

There are limited places available on the college's Outdoor Education courses starting shortly, so for more information, contact the Learner Services team on 01492 542 338 or visit www.gllm.ac.uk