Their story, in their words…..
Our team of 6 travelled to Chichester by train and hiked for 3 days in total. On the first day, we woke up early and met at Victoria Station where we faced our first setback: our train was delayed. Once we arrived at Chichester and began the 8.96-mile hike to our campsite, we found that it was necessary to take multiple breaks and have our lunch then (instead of at the campsite as planned) due to the unusually hot weather. This meant that we arrived at the campsite much later than expected and therefore were unable to complete the second hike planned on that day. We set up our tents, made food and prepared for the first night of stargazing.
One by one the stars started to appear as the moon became brighter in the night sky. We began attempting to take pictures of the moon but sadly found it very difficult to focus our camera on the moon as it was too bright. Later, we observed the ISS (International Space Station) transit across the sky, appearing as a distinctive bright dot moving with speed across the sky. As Jupiter and Saturn were not going to appear high enough until well into the night (12:30am), we all went back into our tents and agreed for 2 of us to stay up and check for the planets at that time. However, the planets were unfortunately on the only side of the camp with the dense forestry so we had a limited view of the sky in their direction and could not properly spot and identify them.
As we each woke up the next day with the sun beaming down on our tents, we prepared for the 7.84-mile hike to Arundel, a nearby town. We packed up our valuable belongings and left swiftly. With much less weight to carry and our water bottles topped up, we were much more energetic and prepared for today’s hike. To arrive in suitable time, we took much fewer breaks and remained motivated with music. We arrived at 1pm, giving us plenty of time to relax, take in the scenic views of the castle and have some well-deserved lunch. At 3:30pm we set off once again on an 8.17-mile hike back to the campsite.
Back at the camp site, we began to prepare our pasta once again. Once ready, a few of us tasted it and immediately complained that there was far too much salt for it to be even remotely enjoyable or edible. After several apologies from the cook, he prepared another batch, this time with an appropriate amount of salt and we shared it evenly amongst the group. By this time, it was already dark, so we looked up when Saturn and Jupiter would reach their highest again and set alarms. At 1am a few of us woke up and checked to see if they were visible. Despite our desperate attempts to locate them in the sky, we could not see them and decided to give up our 30-minute-long search for them, to wake up on time to leave promptly the next day.
With our aim to leave at 8am to ensure that we would not miss our train, we got up at 7am and hastily ate breakfast, packed our tents, and prepared our heavy 10kgs+ bags for the 9.16- mile hike back to Chichester. It turned out that one hour was simply not enough time to get ready, so we only finished packing everything up at around 9am. With one quick, final group photo taken, we set off in the scorching heat once again for our final hike to Chichester station. Prior knowledge of the route from the first day allowed us to cut our hike time significantly and with fewer breaks, so we arrived at the station with time to spare and got on an early train back to London Victoria. Back home, we shared some photos, said our goodbyes, and parted ways for our summer holidays.
This 3-day hike was an incredible experience for us all that we will never forget. Despite being unable to produce any clear photos of the night sky, the rest of the challenge was a tremendous success. The first day proved to be the most challenging, as the heavy weight of the backpacks in combination with the boiling temperatures definitely startled us all. To make matters worse, the heavy up climb we had to take to reach the campsite left us all feeling tired and sore. There was one moment near the end of the hike where one of our members was feeling extremely exhausted; he was down bad. However, a motivational speech from one of the members and the positive, uplifting group environment managed to help him to persevere through to the end. During the process and trip, we developed resilience, teamwork, leadership, communication, navigation, organisation and cooking skills. Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity and allowing us to create amazing memories.
