Completing Ten Tors
Ten Tors was, without doubt, one of the hardest things I have ever done, mentally and physically. But it also was the most exhilarating experience I have been able to do as well. With music from ‘Chariots of Fire blasting through the campsite at 5am, the day quickly started with us gobbling oats down like it was the last bit of food we’d see, if we were lucky we might even get them next morning, instead of a bean concoction out of a ration pack. Then we made our way up to the starting point, Anthony Stile, on the edge of Dartmoor where we were greeted by several artillery cannons and a hillside covered in sleep deprived teenagers like ourselves!
To get to that moment each and every one of the 2000 or so young people had put in a huge amount of effort to be given this opportunity. Our training started on the Dorset coastline on the 30th of November, a day walk. And it only got harder from there! Fast forward 20 weeks later and our training finished with a long weekend of walking ending on Monday 20th of April.
After an epic show from ‘The Red Devils’ (the Army’s display team of parachutists), and the Ten Tors prayer, the guns fired. Hundreds of other walkers surrounded us as we all made our way up to the first Tor. As the Captain of my team of six consisting of Bella, Annie, Bea, Ben, Max and myself, I had to make sure that as well as being joint navigator with one of the girls, I kept a close eye on each one of my team members. Morale had to be kept high and I had to make sure that I wasn’t pushing everyone too hard and in doing so missing the fact that a teammate was falling behind or starting to limp. We managed to make the cut off time at Tor 7 and pushed on to a checkpoint placed between Tor 7 & 8. The next day we pushed on and after a humungous valley climb near the end, we came into camp. We brandished our duck imprinted bucket hats on our heads and held the Sherborne flag high. We arrived to hear our team name blasted over the speakers and lots of cheering.
We had done it. The sense of achievement at the end was extraordinary, and will be hard to beat. I gratefully dumped my bag on my little brother, and pasty in hand, collapsed to the floor exhausted but greatly satisfied.
It is great to push yourself to the limit and it is definitely something that all of you reading need to consider, I think I might lay off the trail mix for a while though.
Written by Tom H (4e)
