Their story, in their words….
For our Mark Evison challenge, as a team of three we decided upon a physical challenge to embark on a 3 day hike along the coast of Brighton, camping outdoors along the way. As a creative stimulus we also decided to document our journey from the city to the countryside so we could later display our photography in a portfolio conveying the differences in scenery as we progressed out of our usual urban surroundings in London and into the natural, rural landscape of Eastbourne and Brighton countryside.
Independently we planned, organised and executed the photographic hike between the 27th – 29th May 2019, during our school half-term holiday. We had the mindset of improving upon our life skills including leadership qualities, communication and collaboration, as well as having fun together as friends.
On the 27th, we started the day early to allow us several hours of hiking once we got off the train and arrived in Eastbourne ensuring that we had plenty of time to reach our campsite in Alfriston. This was a challenging day for us as the hike was longer than we anticipated resulting in us being very tired and arriving late to our campsite. Despite the hard start, we continued the next day with high spirits and completed the 10 mile circular trail back to Eastbourne to camp once again. We encountered another difficulty as it was raining making it harder for us to prepare our dinner and set up our tent. This didn’t stop us and we continued to have an amazing trip playing cards in our tent and making the most of the situation at hand, a nice change to our normal technonogy-filled lives. On the last day of the trip we took a bus into Brighton so that we could further our photography and our knowledge of the seaside area changing to a more urban environment, it was again raining which limited our photography slightly as we didn’t want to damage the camera but we pushed through and managed to produce our desired product. Lastly, we took a late train home from Brighton to allow ourselves as much time as possible in the city scenery and found we thoroughly enjoyed our time spent together in our travels.
When preparing for the physical challenge we took health and fitness training seriously to endure activity all day. We researched potential safety concerns of the areas and camping in general in order to create a strong risk assessment in the event of a danger which may occur. This enabled us to adapt to the unfortunate poor weather of gusty winds and rain we experienced, by equipping ourselves with waterproof clothing, whilst remaining cool enough for spring/ summer temperatures. When becoming lost off track at times due to unmatched public footpaths, digital and paper maps allowed us to be quick problem solvers in managing moving back on track despite the delays, in a rush to arrive at the campsites before night fell which we achieved (although later than we had originally planned).
From this whole experience we felt ourselves grow as individuals, particularly in the sense of growing up closer to adulthood as well as having a memory to share with each other as we look fondly upon, in a unique way to us. It was an unforgettable trek which led us to develop a new sense of appreciation and the aspiration to further explore nature outside our normal city environment of busy London life as we discovered the quiet collectiveness efforts it brought to us.
