Their story, in their words…
Our group set out to do a hiking and camping trip in Dartmoor. It lasted 4 days and was a considerable challenge. We wild camped in the Tors of the park and hiked many miles. It went very well despite running into many challenges along the way and gave us a great sense of accomplishment, especially at the end of the first day after spending a lot of time trying to find our way. We got a lot of memories and a great experience, as a well as a feeling of closeness across the group, it was an unforgettable experience for all us.
On the first Day, after a very long coach ride, we arrived at a town called Bovey Tavey, about 5Km from where we were supposed to start because of differing bus routes. After about an hour of walking, we arrived at Lustleigh. At this point we decided to use the map and the compass to find our way, however we soon realised Lucas took a wrong turn, and the map was also old and outdated, having ditched the map (figuratively) we got more and more lost by the hour. Sabri took charge of orienteering, using a digital map which took us through a forest, in an attempt to find a path, the digital map got us more lost in the forest, eventually walking downhill through naked forest until we found a path.
After a few hours of hiking, we realised we couldn’t make it to the original point, so we settled on a closer camping spot called “Bowerman’s Nose”, which we reached after an hour or so of walking. This was our favourite moment of the hike, after a long day of low morale and being lost we felt incredible having reached the spot, which was the most beautiful of the camping spots, showing us an unforgettable golden sunset.
The second day started off with the worry of being low on water, which prompted Lucas, Ashley and Sabri to go down from the Tor in search of water which they obtained, greatly boosting morale. After this we set off on the hike to reach at least a different camping spot, we settled on reaching a spot called “Hartland Tor”, the original spot to be reached for day 3, as it would make a considerable hike and set us back on track to some degree.
Having begun our walk we passed fields before reaching the biggest challenge which was the hilly terrain, we had to walk up and down 4 substantial hills before we reached an Inn called the “Warren house Inn” which we stopped as one of our checkpoints before the last big trek to reach Hartland tor about an hour and a half later. It was a good spot, we reached with more daylight left and there was a river nearby which helped us, however there was farm animal excretions in a lot of places which we jokingly nicknamed the “Landmines”
The last day we decided to be safe with timing and walk extra to shorten the walk considerably for day 4, So we set off with the goal of reaching a place called “Meml” about half an hour away from Bovey Tavey. We walked about 1/3 of the route of day 2 the same, walking about 20 minutes after the Warren house in, before switching the route before the biggest hill, we opted for a different route which was less elevated and slightly longer, we walked for several hours before reaching a small town called “Widecombe in the Moor” a small valley town in which we rested before hiking back out of the valley, walking for a some more hours, passing the famous “Haytor” on our way to Meml.
Soon after, we reached Meml, having reached it very late in the day, there was almost no light and it was much colder than the other days, it was a real challenge finding a good spot among all the landmines and darkness, but eventually we found a spot, this was our least favourite spot as it was very cold and we were exhausted from the very long hike.
Day 4 was the shortest of all, we picked up all our equipment and made our way back to Newton Abbot after about an hour and a half of walking, to catch the bus to Exeter, passing through Bovey Tavey on the way. After the coach ride we arrived back in Victoria coach, feeling very worn out but equally accomplished.
We’d like to take this chance to thank the Mark Evison foundation to allow us this opportunity, it was one of our most memorable moments as a group and helped bring us much closer together.
