Their story, in their words….
What we did was go on a 15-mile hike around Rickmansworth and Serrat circular, which was honestly an incredible experience!
Addressing the good things first, which was the scenery, waterfalls, rivers, acres of fields and the never-ending forests. It felt amazing to see nature, especially living in a city for most of your life, and not being on your phone as much felt freeing! Seeing so many animals on the way, such as deer, swans, ducks, and a lot of dogs really made us feel like we were truly around nature. Along the hike, there were pubs and hotels that we used when we needed the toilet, which we were quite worried about since we were going to be out for around 12 hours. The best part about the whole hike was walking through the field of wheat, which undeniably the whole team can agree on. It was fun to run through and hide in, our inner child really came out, which we felt like was the most important part about the hike, that we had fun!
However, there were a few cons to the hike as well, first of them being the shortage of water, each person originally brought with them 3-4 bottles of water with them, which surprisingly was not enough. Because of this we had to constantly buy more bottles of water every time we saw a shop, which was not often. This was especially a struggle because the temperature was in the 30s, and we needed to stay hydrated. I would recommend a minimum of 5-6 bottles for a day hike, always overpack water ! Another con was that even though the scenery was beautiful, its thorns were quite the opposite. Throughout the hike we had to pass by narrow paths, that had stinging nettles and thorny branches, so we had to find long branches to hold the plants back so we could make our way through. Sometimes we would unknowingly come into contact with stinging nettles, but thankfully the first aid kit had a gel that would soothe it. One more thing we struggled with were paths that were clear on the map, but not really in real life, as there was a gate we had to go through that was hidden behind a bush, that thankfully was found in the end.
In the end we gained a remarkable experience, that really pushed all six of us to our full potential! Going up and down steep hills, walking on uneven grounds, as well as sitting on hard floors was all worth it in the end.
