Ten Tors 2011 - The Event

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!

Ten Tors Training - Dartmoor 3

From 27th to the 29th April was Ten Tors training 'Dartmoor' three. We arrived at the sports barn after school on Wednesday and unpacked all our kit to go through as if doing scrutineering. After this, we went down to the co-op while the 45ers and 55ers did their scrutineering. When we got back we were given our rout cards and went to plan our route. It was mainly going straight from one tor to another as the weather had been good so we didn't need to go around bogs etc... We then went to bed as soon as we could.

The next morning at 4:00am we were woken up by the lights being turned on. We quickly got dressed and packed up all our kit before grabbing a breakfast of a flapjack, some fruit, some flavored water and a pan au chocolat. We then loaded out kit into the trailer (not a horse box this time). And went into our mini bus to eat the remainder of our breakfast and catch some sleep.

After a brief stop at Exeter services, we went straight to Okehampton army base and unloaded our kit. We then went to the gate where the event would start. Our team where the last to be allowed to leave, we had staggered starts, but were still the first to reach our first tor - Row tor before the two teams that left before us (our other 35 team and the 35 team from Mr Brewer's, sisters school (castle school)), even though I did almost step on a discarded grenade.
We then powered on (seriously with Tom leading us) to Oke tor. When we reached the top we saw our other 35 team crossing the river at the bottom as we left to our next tor but didn't see them reach the top our come down the other side, we were later told that one of them had fallen in the river and they had had to wait 30 mins for him to get changed. We then went on to Sharpitor where we met Mr Brewer's sister and her colleague followed by Watern tor, Quintins man and the Sittaford tor where we met Mr Brewer and Mr Mason. We then went on to a large rive crossing where we met Mr Stewart and his dogs, followed by Higher white tor where we met Mr Brewer's sister again followed by Beardown tors where we met Mr Brewer's sister (the Brewer family say that they have mastered the ability of apparition). We then went down through a farm and along the road from two bridges to Princetown. We then made use of the toilets in the town (but they stunk so much we would almost have been better off waiting till we camped. We then continued along the road until we turned off at Black tor where we were first to arrive for the night. We then set up our tents, collected some water, lit our trangia and cooked our ration meals while the other teams trickled in. We then set up our tents and cooked our dinner on the trangia's. The teachers then came to check on us and when the left we skillfully avoided the pile of skin that Josh had peeled off his feet before going to bed.

The next morning we got up at around 4:00am and quickly took down the tents and cooked our meals on the trangia's before the teachers arrived and after checking we were all good, our team were dismissed first. We then went from Black tor, to South Hessary tor. From there we followed 'the yellow brick motorway' down to higher hartor and then up Eylesbarrow tor where we met Mr Brewer's sister and her colleague again. We then went down into a very steep valley and up the other side to down tor. We then went along to Cramber tor followed by Black tor where we had camped.
Mr Brewer then phoned us and told us that because we were going so quickly, instead of going straight to Leedon tor we went to Sharpitor first. We then went to the road at the bottom of Sharpitor where we met Mr Brewer, Stewart and Mason and they told us we were doing very well. We then continued up to Leedon tor. We were then planning to go straight across to North Hessary tor but Joel Flint and his friend blew their whistle from the bottom of the tor. We presumed they were calling us when actually they were calling the other 35 team who had just reached Leeden tor. We then walked together up to the huge mast on the top of North Hessary tor where we met Mr Brewer, Stewart and Mason again. We then walked down into princetown with Mr Brewer to the mini buses where we sat, ate and drank while we waited for the other teams. While we were we spoke about who wanted to be on the team for the actual event. Cobi said that he didn't want to which left 8 people going for 6 places.

A week later we were told the final 35 teams for the event which consisted of; Me, Tom, Rob, Ollie, Tom and Josh. Adam and Marcus who didn't get in then went with different 45 teams and also took part.

Below is what Mr Stewart wrote for the school about the training and the up coming event:
"TEN TORS CHALLENGE FOR BEECHEN CLIFF

This  weekend 24 Beechen Cliff  pupils  will take on the

challenge that is Ten Tors. This event requires the teams

of six to navigate across Dartmoor and be self­sufficient

for two days,  whatever the weather.  These pupils  have

been training since January  spending 3 weekends  on

Dartmoor and a long day in the Black Mountains, Wales,

to practice and refine their skills.  Year 10 pupils will be

attempting 35 miles, Year 11 will walk  45 miles  and 6

Year 12 pupils  will attempt  the 55 mile event. They  will

gather along with 2400 other youngsters on Okehampton

Camp this  Friday.  The place becomes  a tent city  as

organisations set  up their base camps.  The buzz  starts

and the atmosphere will build along with the anticipation.

Teams  undergo kit  checks,  route planning and briefings

before the adventure begins.

The teams will start at 7:00am Saturday and aim to finish

before 5:00pm Sunday  afternoon.  If successful  then

bronze,  silver and gold medals  will be allocated

accordingly. If they  finish outside 5:00pm then to quote

Ann Robinson they  will ‘leave with nothing’.  The stakes

are high.

Ten Tors  is  one of  the most  challenging events

youngsters  at  this  age can attempt, both mentally  and

physically.  It  is  held  in high regard by  employers  and

Universities  alike and Beechen Cliff has  a proud record

with the event.  Every  year the finish is  well attended by

parents  and spectators  as  well  as  making local  and

national news.

You can follow  the progress  of our teams  by  visiting the Ten Tors  website at

http://events.exeter.ac.uk/tentors/ and following the links. We wish all our teams  well and hope to report

success next week. Regardless the experience will be unforgettable!!

Mr Brewer, Mr Stewart, Mr Edy, Mrs Denning, Mr Mason."

Ten Tors Training in The Black Mountains

 
On the 13th March, everyone doing ten tors met at school at 7:00am, ready to go down to abergavenny and the black mountains. The drive wasn't too bad and after dropping the 45 & 55mile teams at a car park, we (35miles) were dropped at the bottem on the Black mountain with Max (one of Mr Stewart's two dogs)

Max, Mr Stewart's Dog

Climbing the Black Mountain

The two teams decided to go as one as there was no real point in splitting up, so with me taking Max, we went up. It took us about 30mins - 1hr to get to the top and on the way we encountered wild horses. When we reached the top, we met Mr Brewer (& his dad), who told us that we should split up, our team went off first towards table top mountain (which was actually down hill because it was a smaller mountain than Black mountain  .
Once we reached table top mountain, us, the other 35 team, the 45 team and Mr Stewart who were all going the same way walked together. We went down the side of table top, then through a farm, along a lane, through another farm where we realised that the farmer had fenced off the way out with barbed wire - so that meant over the barbed wire fence - yes the two dog as well!

We than ran down to the end of the field - literately as Max was pulling me over. When we reached the bottom of the field there was a road, so we stopped to orientate ourselves so that we knew which way to go, the 45's worked it out first and headed off but the rest of us wanted to check first. The 45's then returned saying that they were wrong and it was the other way but we worked out that they were right the first time after they had already gone off in the wrong direction. The rest of us went the right direction until we reached a  pub where we found the other teachers.

The view from the viewpoint

Mr Brewer told us that we had to go off on our own again so my team headed off first along the road with me navigating. We turned up another road and along a footpath which, after going two farms, ended up at a view point from which you could see all the way back to Bath, Mr Brewer was there and told us that when we reached the end point - the hospital, to be careful not to sit on any hypodermic needles. We walked quickly down the road and eventually reached a housing estate which we went through until we reached the hospitals and the mini buses.



 The 55 team were already there, the other 35 team arrived about 15 minutes later and the 45 team arrived about 30 minutes after them. We then took the mini buses back to Bath

Mere - Mr Stewart's other dog sat on Tom for the journey home

Ten Tors Training - Dartmoor 1

This weekend was the first proper ten tors training which took place on the south moor of Dartmoor. We arrived at school (B4 geography room) at 7:00 and after putting our phone numbers into a spread sheet we were given our route cards and planned our routes. We did this, listened to Mr Brewer and said hello to Mr Stewards dogs, Max and Mere, until 9:00 when the sports barn was free for us to move into. 

Once we'd moved in, we checked our kit, adjusted our bag straps, and divided up group kit. We then decided unanimously that my roll mat was harder than the wooden floor, and went to bed.

At 4:00am we were woken up and quickly packed up our kit and ate a breakfast of pan au chocolat, flap jack, fruit, fruit juice and strawberry and kiwi flavored water. We then all put our bags in the horse box (makeshift trailer) and boarded the mini-buses, for most of journey from school until Exeter services, I slept.

When we reached Exeter it was just before 7:00am, I bought some red salmon and cucumber sandwiches from M&S for lunch on Saturday and Sunday. We then set off it the minibuses towards our start point...princetown.

As we drove across the north moor towards princetown and amazing sunrise came up over the moor.

When we reached princetown, everyone got there waterproofs on and gaiters (except me because I don't have any) and almost immediately set off towards our teams first tor: North Hessary tor (below and left)

The start in Princetown (bottom right)
to North Hessary tor (top left)

When we were climbing it, the tor was so misty that we didn't see the giant mast on the top of it until we were about five meters away from it 

The transmitter on
North Hessary tor

We then went from North Hessary tor to Rundlestone the B3357 and followed it left (west) until Yellowmeade farm junction were we reached a stream and a junction where some of us filled up our water bottles, we then went diagonally across a stretch of the moor to king's tor, successfully practicing to use a compass bearing, where we met Mr Mason and had a short break

North Hessary tor (middle left) to Ruddlestone (top right)
to Yellowmeade junction (top middle) to Kings tor (bottom left)  

We then went south along a bridleway to Leeden tor where we met Mr Brewer and Mr Stewart who wanted to check that we ALL knew where we were (which we all did). We then went down the other side of Leeden  tor and crossed the B3212 to go up to the top of Sharpitor where we again met Mr Mason. We then went back down Sharpitor the same way as we had come up and followed the B3212 right (north east) until we reached Black tor. At the top of Black tor we had another rest and ate some food for our lunch before going down the other side, crossing an annoyingly wide river/bog and then ascended hart tor

Leeden tor (top left) to Sharpitor (bottom left) to Black tor (top middle) to Heart tor (top right)

 At the top of Heart tor we met the other team from BCS doing 35 miles and decided to walk with them to the next tor, South Hessary tor, which, after walking through some seriously boggy terrain and massively regretting being the only one without gaiters, we arrived at it to find Mr Brewer and Mr Stewart who told us that we had to split back up into two teams. We rested at South Hessary tor for a bit while Mr Brewer explained to us how that the whole of Dartmoor used to be on a tectonic plate boundary and used to be a mountain range like the alps and had be eroded down to how it is today. 

The Devonport leat

Our team were the first to be ready so we left before the other 35 mile team and went south along the well build public footpath that Mr Brewer continuously referred to as being "a motorway". Because of the path being a lot easier to walk on than the moor we went exceptionally quickly for quite a long stretch and caught up on any time we had lost in the bogs between Heart tor and South Hessary tor. About halfway along the path we saw Mr Brewer going the other way which was strange because we had only just seen him about 10-15 minutes before, he claimed he had aperated :)  We walked with Mr Brewer, whilst discussing who would win in a fight between Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort - we didn't reach a conclusion. We then reached Nun's cross and the end of "the motorway" where we met Mr Mason who we left along with Mr Brewer heading north west. We had been advised by Mr Brewer to find and follow the Devonport leat back to Black tor where we were camping for the night, unfortunately, we found a section which came off the leat first which confused us a bit, luckily after finding the proper leat and meeting the other team again, we all followed the leat back to Black tor, just before we arrived we filled up our water bottles from the leat and climbed the side of the tor about half way up, until we found the flat ground which we would be camping on.

Black tor (top left) to Heart tor (top middle) to South Hessary tor (top right)
along "the motorway" to Nun's cross (bottom right) following the leat to the flat field on Black tor (bottom left) 

Not wanting to have to pitch our tents in the dark, we quickly pitched them, put our stuff inside, and lit our trangia to boil the water for our ration packs. At about that time, the teachers turned up and checked that everything was running smoothly before leaving us to eat our dinner. At around 6:00pm, just after it got dark, we decided to go to bed to get the optimum amount of sleep ready for the next day.

At about 9:00pm it started to rain, which wasn't a problem. At around 10:00pm the wind really picked up which was more so. At 11:00pm we woke up to find that one of the guy ropes on the outside had been ripped out of the ground by the wind and Josh who was in my tent, went out and fixed it, At about 1:00am we woke up to find that one side of the tent had effectively collapsed onto the third person in our tent, Ollie, making him quite wet! Me and Josh moved ourselves so that Ollie was no longer submerged and attempted to get to sleep again. At 5:30am the alarm on my phone went off and we all got up and started to get ready for walking at 7:30am. We soon realized how wet everything on the inside was, due to the extreme wind, and put our waterproofs on (I found a puddle had materialized all around my coat) we quickly packed away all our personal kit and met with the other 35 mile team to decide that due to the weather we would act as one big group. 

First we put all the bags in one of the other tents and started to take down ours which was a lot harder that it sounds when it is half 5 in the morning, dark, the wind powerful enough to blow you over (I was almost blown over twice), and with rain constantly pelting it down. After we had packed away the first tent we moved all the bags again and started to pack away the tent that bags had been in (I don't have a clue why we did it in this order). After we had finished this we were about to start putting down the third of our four tents when the teachers arrived back saying not to.

We were then told that we were in a severe weather warning and because of this were not able to do the second days walking, but our teachers, deciding as always not to take the soft option, said that we could walk back to Princetown instead of taking the mini buses. 

We then quickly packed away the other two tents and were split back into our original two teams. My team was ready first so we set off along the B3212 towards Princetown. 

For the whole of that walk the weather didn't stop and I was blown into the opposite side of the road twice, luckily it wasn't very busy. 

It didn't take us very long to reach the reassuring sign which said: 

Although it wasn't snowing :)

We quickly made our way through Princetown to the inn where the teachers were staying and the minibuses.

We then drove to Exeter service station, where we gave all the school kit we had been carrying (tents and trangia's)  back, before relaxing inside for about 15 minuets

We then went on the 2 hour drive back to Bath where we unpacked all the kit and finally went home...