This is the first page of my AS level English Language, about my experiences of Ten Tors. I've had the results back so I assume it's alright for me to post it now. I got 48/50 so I hope you enjoy.
I don’t really know what I was doing in some rundown
community centre in the middle of Blandleaze, Bristol, but I was, and on what
was left of the wall was a notice. Nothing fancy, ‘do you want an adventure?’
It was in Comic Sans so probably not, however my curiosity took the better of
me and two weeks later I found myself at a meeting with sixty other gawky
misfits.
An
enthusiastic man with an unfortunate nose informed us that the Ten Tors
challenge, contrary to popular belief, wasn’t just a walk in the woods. It was
instead a reckless thirty-five mile scramble over hills and under valleys, into
bogs and around missile testing centres, through the ‘beautiful’ monotonous
moorlands of Dartmoor. Endorsed by the Duke of Edinburgh, who even abandoned
his own award for it, and monitored by the army since its creation as a
training exercise in 1960, this was the precursor to any outdoors challenge
since. The challenge itself ran over 26 varying trails through Dartmoor, each
visiting ten of the imaginatively named tors (Black Tor, Cat Tor, Bear Tor,
need I name more?) before the final walk of shame to the finish, cheered on
while the glares of thousands of infuriated parents wondered why you had beaten
their child again and when could they go home?
Before
I signed up to this ludicrous venture, I figured I would need an excuse to do
it, and decided on why I was doing it. The first reason was that it would go on
my CV, and alongside Drama and Music; it would look good to have a genuine
achievement on there. It is more important to universities to see that you can
work in a team to complete a challenge, than that you can count to ten, and who
doesn’t want some extra kudos towards uni? My second point of motivation was
that the previous fifteen years of my life had been full of idle
procrastination, and if I was ever going to leap out of the frying pan and into
the fire it might as well be now. Finally, it was now or never for Dartmoor. It
was under attack from china clay miners, careless farmers letting their sheep
graze through the hills, and also the army bombarding the hell out of the
hillsides.
I
figured if I made up my mind quickly, I could forget about the whole deal until
it was over. Maybe a small ramble through the park once in a while, then the
unfortunate chapter in my life would be over. This is how I understood it
worked, what was the point of doing a ‘challenge’ if you had to exert yourself?
As soon
as I received the kit list, however, I knew I was in too deep. The sleeping
bag, I quote, had to have a ‘comfort level down to zero degrees’. I didn’t even eat ice pops if they were
anything close to zero degrees, the idea of spending a night in the wilderness
when I would be in effect a human rocket lolly, really didn’t appeal to me. And
the very fact that we would need a ‘survival bag’ brought to mind images of
nights curled in a Tesco carrier bag in the middle of a hurricane, pegged to
the ground by a solitary shard of rusted tin. Some of the other equipment
needed was just daft; -it was recommended army procedure to carry around a pen
and paper at all times. I don’t know
about them, but drawing quick sketches of the landscape wasn’t on my agenda.
Tom Bedford 25/09/2013 20:20
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