Their story, in their words…
On the 28th of July until the first of august, the four of us took a hike in Exmoor. Due to costs and rescheduling issues, this was cut from 7 to 5 days. We chose this spot in southwest England due to how it way easy enough for us to do but still challenging.
We began in Taunton to find our way to the campsite after being dropped off there on the coach. After a long 1 hour walk to B&Q to find our gas stoves we finally took 2 busses to where we needed to set up camp for the first time. Getting our hiking bags set up and comfortable on our backs was really difficult!
Keyi was able to help offer advice on how to distribute the weight properly, while Yasmin took care of our money for bus tickets and Carolina helped us set up gas stoves for the nights, which was really helpful and we were so tired from alternating between walking a and travelling all day. Setting up camp also took about an hour as we figured out the equipment, but this would soon shrink to half of that time as we got used to it.
On day 2, we hiked from cutcombe to porlock. This was the most challenging day. After hiking out of the woods, the sights were amazing, which made the hike worth it! We eventually got to our second campsite, which happened to be a difficult 40 minute walk up a steep hill onto a farm. (It was very peaceful though, and we still took pictures with some cows).
By the third day we had become more used to this, plus our bags were lighter from eating / giving away the food we packed or knew we weren’t going to eat. after a difficult hike for a few hours to out next site, blue anchor, we were rewarded with some flat terrain near a beach for one hour. The campsite was lovely too and well maintained, much to our enjoyment. By now we had come more efficient at setting up camp and organising ourselves, which was one of the things we had plan to gain out of this. Additionally, we had become a lot better at map reading and had less anxiety about whether we were going the right way, as we hardly got lost today. Keyi was really good at this, but the rest of us still had to help each other slightly due to our inexperience. In the evening before bed we rewarded ourself with a trip to the beach (about five minutes away), having some hot chocolate that Carolina brought and taking pictures. It way very fun, though the tide was coming in too much and we had to leave early
On the Thursday, we hiked a little less due to being so fatigued from the day before. Our feet were worn but we were determined to pull through. After the stunning views of the hill but painful hike, we actually encountered some flat ground, which was really lucky. We had lunch on the trail ( comprised of snacks and protein bars as we had done that last few days). This is when we noticed we were getting almost 30,000 steps a day – which probably explained why we were so hungry and were eating a lot. I did get us slightly lost, but luckily the others were there to help. We finally got to our campsite at around 4pm, feeling relived. We set up camp at Quantock camping, which happened to be very quiet. We had to go to bed early to catch the flixbus at 10am all the way in Taunton the next day.
Overall ,after reflecting on our experience, we have been very grateful for the opportunity. We learned teamwork during map reading and setting up. We learned Communication when planning the trip and deciding when to take rest breaks (and trust that we took many). We learned Organisational skills for packing and planning / setting up camp, and we learned how to be more efficient in general. Additionally, this motivated us to get fitter and was fun!
