More than 170 young people were to receive their Duke of Edinburgh awards at the annual Gaiety Theatre ceremony, which was cancelled due to the lockdown.

It is the second March ceremony to be cancelled.

Bronze and silver award certificates were posted, with a new date set for next March.

The ceremony theme was to be a celebration of the adaptability of the students who managed to complete their activities under the constraints of the January lockdown.

Jack Christian, aged 17, from Ramsey Grammar School, took to home schooling his younger sister during the lockdown as an activity which counted towards his award.

Emily Duckworth, 17, from Queen Elizabeth II High School, volunteered as a first aider with St John Ambulance - having previously been a cadet.

And Ailish Cassidy, 16, from St Ninian’s High School, had to swap her physical activity from badminton to geocaching.

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, similar to orienteering, where participants use a GPS [Global Positioning System] or smartphone to both locate and hide small containers [the ’caches’] at specific locations marked by coordinates.

A typical ’cache’ is a small waterproof container storing a logbook, hidden by other geocachers, which the finder can sign with their codename to prove they have found it.

The residential trips or expeditions required for the gold award were unable to take place during lockdown, but one expedition with a difference went ahead.

In order to qualify for the gold criteria, this expedition was designed to involve modes of transport which could be undertaken around the island solo - walking, cycling, canoeing, and paddleboarding.

Awards coordinator Alison Barnes said that they had been lucky to have the time without restrictions after the first lockdown last March, to send out a lot of expeditions and to keep the expedition season going throughout winter as well.