Ten Tors 1986

Although I said in my blog here, about not liking PE or sport at school, I was always pretty active, paper rounds, working and unloading lorries, walking to school etc. Also I was a Scout until about 14 or 15 and we used to go hiking! I'm not sure if I appreciated it at the time, but I look back on it with good memories.

One of the biggest hiking challenges arranged for kids was, and I think still is, Ten Tors. This is arranged by the Army each year and is held on Dartmoor. Routes of 35 miles are mapped across the moor by the Army taking in 10 Tors, a Tor being an ancient pile of stones dotted around Dartmoor.

The terrain on Dartmoor is pretty unforgiving. Its beautiful and breath-taking, but equally, it can be dangerous and the weather can turn at any point which makes walking over it very challenging.

You have to be self sufficient, carry all your kit, food, shelter, and make it back by Sunday 5pm. You check in with the army on each of the ten Tor's you are supposed to visit and they record your time passing through. You do all navigation yourself using a map and compass.

Maps have their limitations. They don't show you peat bogs which wobble when you stand on and can occasionally fall through up to your waist (if you're lucky, if not its to your chin) streams that can swell from a trickle into rivers within an hour. Dead sheep upstream as you fill your water bottle up downstream. Its full of hazards and despite the number of people on the moor, you will rarely see anyone.

I remember doing it in 1986. It turned out to be the worst weather in the events 27 year history. Out of 2,000 or so starters only 300 finished. It was pretty challenging.

We were in a 6 boy team that over the 2 days got whittled down to 3. One of our team tried to jump a stream that had swollen into a river. We had him on a rope but I do remember seeing him washing downstream face first with his heavy backpack keeping him under water for a period of time which was far too long. Another pulled a muscle turning too quickly, his backpack was probably double its normal weight due to the rain, and another tried to pitch his tent in a gale and it got torn in half, so slept in a hut that sheep use to shelter. In the morning he was just a face, his whole sleeping bag had been consumed overnight in the mud (cow and sheep shit).

During one of our training walks prior to the event a new lad joined our team (Jason). I said I would share a tent with him so the others didn't have to share with a new person and didn't feel rejected by the team. He woke me in the pitch black at 3am one night saying he felt unwell. Even though he was leaning over me to say this I could not see him in the darkness.

As I was talking and telling him to open the tent and get some fresh air, he puked on my face, my mouth still open talking. It was classic puke, the smell, chunks of veg and a lot of fluid. He did open the tent and slept with his head outside the rest of the night. I didn't bother moving and went back to sleep, the veg drying on my face and the fluid soaking into the sleeping bag pulled up around my face.

I remember getting up in the morning, sick smell still quite strong and walking towards the adults who were with us and I didn't really register why they looked horrified. I realised that they could see chewed vegetables and the sick over my face and smell it on me. I think I have passed onto both of my kids an ability to sleep well in any circumstances. We have a strong sleep mechanism in the family.

On the day of the event Granny was at the army basecamp in Oakhampton and wrote up her view on events which I have added to the site here.

Because the weather was so bad and the Army had to go to significant efforts to shift kids off the moor it made national BBC news. Back at school on Monday there were about 5 of us in my House who had been there that weekend. My head of house (who really didn't like me) called us all to the front of assembly.

I remember her saying that it was such a shame we had all failed due to the weather. All of the others in my House did have to pull out. It made me smile, I think it summed up my view of her in that her automatic reaction was to assume that we would all fail, rather than actually think any of us were capable of anything or just to check with us how we had done. That would take too much interest and effort and that wasn’t her thing.

As we were about to sit down, one of the other lads said "Alastair finished Miss" and I do remember that she looked disbelieving and said "did you Alastair?" I replied, "we were sent there to walk 35 miles around Dartmoor, so that's what I did yeah". Perhaps I can see why she thought I was a bit chippy.

But anyway, the story is about me, not her (needless to say I had the last laugh) but also in my view a bit of focus and determination helps. Having determination doesn’t mean you won’t fail or suffer set backs. Those lads in the team who didn’t make it didn’t fail. They just did it again the following year. Yes its easy to give up and yes there are times to change your goals or re-evaluate whether something is sensible. Being determined and having self control is about grit.

Life will always send challenges at you. In some ways its an endless challenge. But its never the challenge that defines you, just your reaction to it. In the face of greatest adversity, just keep going And accept that sometimes the journey is shit, or the outcome is less than what you wanted. Dust yourself off and move on. There’s no other way. Life cannot be perfect and you cannot always get what you want.

Whether in sports, business, science or life. The biggest failures are often the most successful because they keep trying.