Not All Who Wander Are Lost . . .

. . . but if they aren't, you're doing it wrong.

I am alive.

No one is more surprised by this than me.

Long story short, I now know what hell looks like. It's all featureless, steep-sided hills, impenetrable mist, paths that lead to nowhere, tufty grass and the leg-swallowing bogs that hide among them. Not to mention the rainstorms that soak you utterly to the bone and reduce you to cowering in your tent in the middle of nowhere while your instructor worries about you and one of your team-mates showing early signs of hypothermia.

My feet hardly remember what it is like to be dry any more.

Not nice. Not nice at all.

But let me tell you, I have never felt more awesome in my entire life. I could have cried with happiness when I saw the mini-bus waiting at the end of our route (not in the least because there were veins of fire running through my shoulders, and my hips felt like they were about to shatter into pieces).

Eat your heart out, Fellowship. Mordor is Disneyland compared to Dartmoor.

However, that said, the sheer mental and physical anguish of the trip did spawn some truly hilarious moments. Such as the classic moments I shall repeat to you below. Call them the rantings of six starving, stinking, semi-hysterical seventeen-year-olds, but at the time they were funnier than anything else in the universe.

Enjoy.

Oh, and the promised video from my last post will be coming soon. It will probably be short, and the pictures may be absolute rubbish, but it will be there. Eventually.

***

Six sodden figures are wobbling along a disused tramline. They are one one of the highest ridges on Dartmoor, but even at this altitude the mist is so thick that they can scarcely see three feet down the path in front of them. All around is a swirling mass of white, forbidding fog.

Then, suddenly, the lead figure halts with a shriek.

"Look! Look, up there!" She points into the sky, almost jumping up and down, though the weight of her rucksack keeps her firmly rooted to the damp ground. "Do you see it?"

A great shriek goes up among the group. One drops to her knees and raises her hands to the sky, shouting, "Good God, save us from this unknown horror! What art thou, strange burning orange ball? Where didst thou come from?"

"I think it's ... the sun," says another team-mate, peeking out from under her sodden hood.

"Sun? What is this fabled "sun" of which you speak?" says the lead figure.

All six stare up at the faint outline in the sky until it is once again swallowed by the mist. They then struggle back to their feet and continue on their way as if nothing had happened.

***

The invigilator leans on his walking stick and laughs as the group wind past him, down the heather-covered hill to their camp site. He chuckles at the grim, stoic expressions on their faces.

"Watch out girls," he says jovially, "it's going to be a pretty foul night according to the weather reports.  Let's hope none of the monsters you learned about at the visitor's centre come and get you, eh? Wouldn't want the Hound of the Baskervilles to make off with anyone!"

The last figure stops and looks into the invigilator's eyes with a blank, dead stare.

"If I see a hound, I will turn it into a hat and gloves without a second thought."

The invigilator watches, utterly bemused, as the girls vanish down the gully. Perhaps the weather is taking more of a toll on them than he thought. . . 

***

It is 5:50 AM, and the still morning air is shattered by a loud, incessant beeping. From underneath a frame of wind-blasted tent poles and mournfully damp canvas, a bestial snarl rises and the sound of dull, wet thudding begins, accompanied by a series of words spat viciously at the source of the noise.

"Silence. Watch. Your. Queen. Commands It!"

***

And finally, a piece of riveting, Dartmoor-inspired songwriting that was sung from the base of Ryder's Hill right down to the valley town of Ivybridge. Feel free to sing along - the tune is very easy, and you get the gist of the lyrics pretty quickly.

100 wooly sheep, standing in the bog.

100 wooly sheep, standing in the bog,

And if one wooly sheep

Should wander into the fog

There'd be 99 wooly sheep, standing in the bog.

~Charley R

The Return of the ... Camper?

Yes, I'm back! In one piece! Hallelujah!

Got back from my D of E expedition on Saturday evening, but I'm afraid I've not had much time to come round and post here. It's the last week of term - we have our Prizegiving and final Abbey service on Friday - and everything is mental. In order to keep us all amused after the end of our exams, the school's been putting on activities; high wire course and a self-defence thingy on Monday, a couple of lectures on universities and adventurous holiday expeditions yesterday, and a talk about an African adventure trip today, as well as a session with older students about the sixth form courses and stuff, which was actually really useful.

But that's not what you want to know about is it? You don't want to know about me being all curled up and cosy  in house, nursing my bruises and snuggling under my duvet. You want to know all about my D of E adventures don't you?

Of course you do ;)

Anyway, overall, it was actually really good fun. We got a bit lost on Day One, 'cause of all the little animal tracks in the woods and the criss-crossing paths that weren't there when the map was published. I, in my wisdom, thought I'd found a "path" (NOT!) that lead up the hillside. What ensued went something along the lines of: face branch head face mud leg strap caught trip crash branch branch tree leaf branch scratch trip boot AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

And even when we got to the top of the hill, I tried to climb over the gate and fell off. Oh so graceful as ever.

Day Two was better - going across the top of the moors, sans one group member who dropped out due to sickness. We made good progress, and I wrote lots of poetry for our group project. The previous campsite was a bit less fun - midgie infestations anyone? - and we had to engage in this sort of James-Bond-style roll to get into the tent without letting the little blighters in with us. However, the campsite we got to that day was lovely - there was even a little shelter place for us to sit and eat and leave our bags out of the wet. The others played card games, and I read them my poetry and we all had a good laugh.

Day Three was nothing short of agony. We were following a river through a valley, which inevitably meant the path went up and down and left and  up and right and roundabout and up and up and up and up ... you get the picture. Now, on a good day, I don't think it would have killed me all that much - I'm a strong walker, and gods know I've tackled enough hills in my time. But that day, after three freezing nights in the rain and wet, covered in bruises and limping like am amputee, it was really really hard work. 

However, despite the intense agony that has plagued my left leg ever since, it was really really good fun. We were laughing and singing and telling jokes the whole way, and there were lots of incredible views and hilarious people to meet, and even when we got lost we always found our way back. We ended up taking a wrong track on Day Three, resulting in a funny sort of short cut, which gave us an hour's rest at our next stop. We fell asleep on the windy coastline, watching the waves boiling about between us and the Welsh coast. *sniffles* My lovely homeland...

Anyway, I shall leave you with one of the poems I wrote on the way, atop Dunkery Beacon, the highest point on Exmoor, after the jungle-esque escapade and gate-falling-off that had taken place a couple of hours earlier. I personally think it's a perfect summary of the experience:

The View at Lunch Break

Rising goosebumps on

Arms, muddy

Gremlin paw marks.

Artistically placed leaves

With the occasional twig

For authenticity.

Blue boot gone brown.

Raw red rubbings 

Of racehorse red

And oceanic blue bruises.

Sore feet.

Sore cheeks.

Still grinning.

Camping, Cooking and Caterwauling

It's that time of year again. It's nearly the end of the school year (we break up on the 1st of July, next Friday), and the final stages of all our extra curricular activities are coming up. I'm awaiting the results of my London Acadamy of Music and Drama exam (an acting qualification), and I've finished my time for my Skill (LAMDA), Sport (swimming, if it counts) and Community Service (Combined Cadet Force).

Now, it's time for the final expedition. Three days of walking, carrying all our food, tents and supplies, covering over 16km a day on Exmoor - one of the most unpredictable microclimates in England.

I have no idea whether to be excited or terrified.

Don't get me wrong, D of E is good fun. Thanks to lots of long walks with my family, I've got strong legs, and I love long walks. I love looking around at the scenery, and my part in our group project is to sit down and write poetry at the intervals in our plan that allow us to take a break (we put them in specially, haha!). So, two of my great loves; walking and writing. There's always lots of singing in our group - from badly out of tune Bohemian Rhapsodies to high-pitched, tuneless versions of The Climb - and we can happily laugh along and munch our way through our impromptu lunch. Never mind that one of our four team-mates is a little bit of a slow walker, we've arranged our food and supplies so that she's carrying most of the light stuff, so hopefully she won't be too bogged down by the whole affair. We're even prepared for wet weather, which we suspect will be coming (light showers predicted for Thursday, which is our first day of walking, and nothing yet on the other two).

There's only one part of D of E I really dislike. Camping. It's not that the tent smells, it's not that the roll mats have to be lain on for ten minutes before they'll stop springing back up and hitting you in the face, it's not that the food takes ages to cook and you have to sit there in the cold with your toes freezing off. It's not even the fact that I'm such a compulsive sleep-wriggler that I'll doubtless wake up half-strangled by my sleeping bag. I can cope with these quite easily.

It's just all of them together, on top of group exhaustion, that worries me. Sleeping well is not an aspect of D of E that comes easily to most, and the fact that we're heading off on Wednesday evening and sleeping overnight means we'll hardly be bright-eyed and busy-tailed on Thursday morning. I'm just worried that we'll all be so grouchy and tired that we'll start snapping at each other, and that will make life very painful for everyone involved.

Still, hopefully that won't be an issue as we'll all be on our END OF GCSE high - my last exam is just before we set off - and our mood will be good enough to combat the weather.

Besides, there's nothing a well-placed biscuit can't resolve, right?

Wish me luck - I'll be back sometime late on Saturday, and hopefully I'll have the energy to do you a couple of posts about it on Sunday. That is, if I'm not in A and E with castle-sized feet and a headache like a gale-force headache.

- Spook (The Intrepid .... ish)