Day
1
Merrivale to Teignhead Farm
According
to our timesheets we have a lie in this morning compared to the other days but
judging by how I felt this morning the other days are going to be a struggle to
get used to.
In
order to get the routes done a bit faster we split our group in half with two
routes each this was one of the girl’s routes being lads it was instantly
turned into a bit of a competition as to who had the best routes.
As soon as
we got off the road at the quarry we found our first mistake. Rights of access
are not footpaths so when the green line goes vertically up the quarry wall we
were slow to catch on that the path would be around the edge. Another problem
was how tufty the grass was having most of our routes
off footpaths for the rest of the week is going to take its toll.
It
was a surprisingly short amount of time before we had our first of many prat falls this one courtesy of Hannah managing to
completely disappear into a hole covered by long grass Simon and me managed to
avoid the panic stereotype by falling over laughing (in retrospect not the best
move for group relations). After making it out of the valley of death with
boulder fields and uneven footing because we thought contouring would be easier
than hill climbing we reached our hardest navigational task on the entire trips
routes, it is also exactly what Dartmoor is famous for, a complete lack of
features over a nearly 4km stretch. The year had been dry so not even the small
streams were on the map, a straight line has never
been that hard to keep before.
This
featureless stretch was luckily followed by about the biggest catching feature
of the day (Amicombe brook) a wide meandering stream
and a chance to fill our water bottles for the next stretch. Some discussion
was made over lunch about iodine over chlorine. Iodine has the disadvantage of
killing you faster but it tastes better in my opinion and I think that’s
what really counts…
A
knee injury came up that I had had for a while but hadn’t bothered me for
a week or two so I rather stupidly didn’t have a stick or anything to
strap it with I also didn’t think it would hurt as much as it did.
Towards the end of the day my knee had stopped moving properly and swollen up.
It was very hard to think about dropping out but I wasn’t sure I could
carry on. We reached the campsite with Simon carrying my bag for nearly 2km I
don’t know where he found the strength on the way was another prat fall with Simon carrying my bag on his front he found
he couldn’t see his feet a ditch appeared and we both managed to fall
down. Duh.
Teignhead Farm
was a derelict campsite and home to a billion + midges there small but they can
bite because of science (or something). After taking a ton of pain killers
I’m now an expert on what they all do, strapping my knee and borrowing a
stick off one of our leaders I felt I could carry on. Probably
the painkillers talking. Dinner was what you would expect nasty rice and
lentils kind of stodge down into pure carbs some
people didn’t eat well that night. I welcomed it.
Day
2
Teignhead Farm to
So
this is an early start, even with very hot mid days the nights were cold due to
the lack of clouds this also meant putting on a huge amount of sun cream, I
hate pale skin sometimes. The camp was pretty easy to pack up and we were soon
in the woods heading east. We met our leaders on the road and found out that
some people were pulling out I was glad that I wasn’t one of them 2 paracetamol then 2 ibuprofen two hours
later in a constant cycle kept the pain and swelling away. I was feeling pretty
good again about the whole trip.
The
route today consisted of 26km to try and get the distance out of the way before
we got too tired from not eating and sleeping that well. The direction was
basically straight south to get off the north moor which was mostly army firing
ranges. They were both booked from today onwards so a new area was needed to
give us more room to cover the distance. Navigation was very basic however we
learned that you slow down massively every kilometre over twenty. On the way
into camp I managed to lead everyone into the marsh that fed the dam, we
probably should have noticed all that water came from somewhere… A late
arrival to camp with wet feet meant we missed diving off the wall of the dam
which another group seemed to love. We set up our tents and started cooking
some pasta with sauce, our nicest meal but not the best idea bringing a liquid
sauce after we all agreed on dry stuff to save weight. We ended up going to
sleep on a hill early to be ready for tomorrow.
Day
3
Woke
up with swollen feet from the hill and chugged back the first of the pills
however I soon felt I didn’t need them as my knee was doing much better
with a stick and support. Clair on the other hand found she was turning her
ankle a lot on the grass at the beginning of the day. She was also refusing to
take pain killers, this slowed us down a lot but knowing what it was like to
think you will have to drop out especially after coming this far we tried to be
supportive but it got to the group which made it harder for her.
Now
for the biggest navigational error of all time, from crossing the stream south
of red china clay works we somehow got mixed up and completely lost. Deciding
to carry on walking until we found a feature we recognised we finally stopped
on a hill with a view of the communications mast near
We
went south to a late check point on our original route and found some of our
group leaders waiting. They said it was ok to go on to the camp, that afternoon
we were visited by our assessor which kind of dispelled all the rumours about
him dieing or forgetting us, at that point we thought death was more
likely…
Big
case of hyperness tonight as we only have 15km left
we were all sure we could do it now and even with getting hugely lost we got to
camp with quite a bit of time to spare.
Day
4
Sheepstor to
15km
of easy walk on the last day was to easy so of course
something had to go wrong, it happened to be me (again). After hallucinating
and getting D&V for the whole night I felt pretty crud come morning. Again
I have to thank everyone in my group for packing my stuff and waking up the
unfortunate campsite owners at 5am to use their phone. I was given a nasty
drink of salt and sugar with orange squash, you know its
working if it tastes bad. Still I cant remember much
of the day as I was just following the person in front and eating dextrose tabs
with water.
A
change in our route was decided upon as the ground looked rough and so did I,
we joined the
By
Guy Hiddleston