On the 13th, 14th and 15th of may was the ten tors challenge 2011.
The teams were picked the week before and everyone who wanted to do it made it onto the 35 team except two people, one who filled a space on our 45 team and another who joined 'sexy school's' 45 team
We arrived at bear flat and departed at about 7:10, we then went to Norton hill school because we were sharing a coach with them and headed off to oakhampton whilst on the way I texted friends who would also be taking part. We had a brief stop at exeter services and then arrived at the army base at around 10:00.
When we arrived we quickly unloaded all out kit from the coach and went through 'tent city' to where the three beechen cliff flags were - looking better than all the others!
There we met Mr Brewer and Mr Stewart, Mr Edy had travelled in the coach with us. We then went quickly to scrutineering where I saw some people I knew. Luckily because we had arrived early the cue wasn't very long and we were seen by one of the scrutineeres quite quickly. When we reached the scruitineer he gave us a full inspection (as were are a double green school, we should only have a reasonably brief scruitineering but our scrutineer made us take everything out of our bags and through it all - he even counted our water purification tablets!)
After we got scruitineering stamped on our route card, we dumped our kit at our 'base' and went to the compulsory briefing where they told us all the basic stuff - don't drop litter, motivation, etc.....
After getting briefing stamped as well we went back to our mess tent and planned our route, this didn't take too long and afterwards we went up to the start line to have a look around.
We then had dinner which comprised of pasta which had been left cooking all day with bolonaise followed by Apple pie and cold, straight out of the can custard. Afterwards we had free time until bed at ten so I spoke to a friend from wsj and another from my primary school before going to bed in anticipation....
The next morning I woke at 4:55 from Rob's alarm clock and we all waited quietly as the sun rose until 5:00 when over the camp tannoy came chariots of fire for us to wake up to. This was then followed by other inspirational music such as, we are the champions, these boots are made for walking, dancing queen? and many more. I then had a the most disgusting egg I have ever eaten in my life, and I've had lots of camp cooking (no offence Mr Stewart). We then got a scary briefing from Mr Brewer and Mr Stewart explaining how failure is not an option. We then went up to the start and the atmosphere was HUGE. We took are place on the ring of participants and gave our flags to the teachers (we could see all our other teams because our flags were so much bigger and taller than everyone else's). Then as it approached 7:00, there was then a speech from several important people from the army and the ten tors prayer was read. Two huge guns then went off and all hell broke loose. Everyone ran down the hill at once and it was absolute chaos. We quickly got on route and headed to our first tor. The map of our route can be seen below:
On the way to our first tor I stupidly managed to loose one of my gloves within about the first five minutes. We made our way quickly to Oke tor and were the first team on our route to get there.
We turned around quite quickly and went off down into the valley from the tor. We quickly made our way towards Shilstone tor. On the way - despite Mr Brewer warning us not to - we ended up in a huge bog, the one which someone had died in three years before! We got through it as quickly as possible but needless to say, it had slowed us down considerably. We reached Shilstone tor and were just leaving as one of the three helicopters came to land there. We were much quicker on this next leg, and stopped to collect water where we had done in the last training. About 1/3 up the next tor I realized that I had really stupidly, left the map case with all the important stuff in (route card etc...) at the bottom by the stream. I quickly chucked my bag on the floor and ran down to the bottom of the steam and luckily it was still there! I grabbed it and ran back up to the others - that was REALLY stupid of me!!!
We reached our next tor - Watern, quite quickly and were starting to catch up on the time we'd lost in bog. We then went on to Higher White tor, following the wall that runs along there which didn't take too long, although Tom started to get quite bad cramps and had to stop at lower white tor. When we got to the tor, some of us went to the loo while tom asked the army person in charge how to help the cramp, and was told to have some salt.
We then set off to Great mis tor which was probably the hardest stretch. It was hard because every few meters, tom would stop and just lie on the floor, stretching out the pain, screaming and shouting at us not to wait for him. The Zebra helicopter left just as we arrived. We stopped briefly but decided best to go as quickly as possible so that tom's cramp didn't start again and so that we could try and get to Staple tor (the tor after next) rather then being stopped at Black tor (our next tor).
We went down and crossed the road near Princetown. We then followed a track almost all the way to Black tor. When we got there, we met tom and my friend - tom from jamboree We then walked with his group back up the same track until we reached the road. From there we walked down the road and filled up our water next to a small pub. We then went up a steep track until we reached Staple tor. By the time we'd arrived it was too late to go on so both our groups stayed there for the night. I started to cook everyone meals while they put up the tents. We then stuck our bags our bags in the tents and sheltered behind a rock to eat because it was VERY windy. I then had a chat with one of the RAF people (each tor was manned either by people from the army, navy or RAF and Staple tor was RAF) about vegetarian sausage and beans - breakfast. We then went to bed as soon as we had finished.
The next morning we woke up at around four. By half four we had started cooking and our tent was partially down. The other 'tent team' then got up and helped. By about 5:15am we had packed everything up and were sheltering to stay warm. We then did a litter sweep of the whole area before the army would give us our route card back (we got Tom into the front of the queue to get ours), and at exactly 6:00am, the person in charge of the tor blew his whistle and we were off - a slightly less spectacular start than the day before but good all the same. We went across the 'saddle' of a few tors and before long we had reached Lynch tor, where we met one of our 45 teams. We had a brief break here and then went on, firstly along quite a flat area, then down steeply into a valley and out the other side where the grass was so long we became completely disorientated and it took us a while just to work out which of the surrounding tors we were aiming at. Once we'd worked out which tor to head to, it didn't take us long to get to the next tor - Chat tor. We hardly stopped there, before going straight up the not so steep, hill to our 10th tor - Kitty tor. We stopped there for quite a while because we were so happy that we'd got to our tenth. We then left and went down a really steep hill, and up the other side, whilst listening to a mix of Tom's radio, the grating sound from the winder on Tom's radio and a team near us that couldn't stop arguing with each other. We then went along the top and met Mr Stewart at about 11:40am, who congratulated us and gave us a flag to carry. We then walked 'the walk of fame' down into Oakampton camp and completed the challenge and 11:50am!
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