Their story, in their words…
We attempted a hike across Devon, passing through Exmoor and Dartmoor national parks. Unfortunately, while on the coach to our starting point at Minehead, one of our group’s members began to feel sick. After starting our walk, we realised that we had underestimated how steep the hills were in the exe valley, causing us to walk at a slower pace than we had calculated during our practice walks in London. The great views at the top of each hill were an amazing reward for the struggle we had just completed, and the downhill sections provided a very welcome break.
When walking down yet another wet and slippery hill, two of the other members of our group fell, injuring their knee and ankle, causing us to slow down even more than anticipated. Due to this we had to make the rest of the way to our first campsite in the dark, arriving a bit later than we hoped.
Because over half of our group was sick or injured, we decided to cut our walk short on the second of 4 days, but despite the setbacks we all really enjoyed the experience. We learnt about the importance of checking the topographic details on our maps to ensure we knew what the terrain would look like before arriving, and plan our route accordingly, as well as allowing for unprecedented setbacks in our plan so that we could continue our trip if something unexpected (like sickness/injury) were to happen. Navigating in the dark, whilst unplanned, was really fun, and was a great test of our ability to find our way around in difficult conditions.
To make up for cutting the trip short, those of us who weren’t injured decided to walk the remaining the 75km over the weekend, walking 50km on Saturday and 25km on Sunday helping us gain experience with another (easier to plan) challenge.
Overall the trip was an amazing experience for the whole group, and we learnt a lot of valuable lessons about planning any future hikes we do.
