Stuffed Crusts, Stuffed Faces, Stuffed Sleeping Bags, film and footsteps.

News - 25th Feb 2024

Stuffed Crusts, Stuffed Faces, Stuffed Sleeping Bags, film and footsteps.

Our training this weekend started as a rather relaxed affair on Friday night. After putting up the tents, our young adventurers settled in for a large adventure film screening after devouring their choice of Dominos Pizza and ice-creams. 

Breakfast was a slightly different affair with mostly pots of porridge, but this was satisfying just the same as the students used the gas camping stoves to bring to the boil their golden syrup oats and morning hot chocolates. 

We headed up onto a slightly snow dusted Dartmoor bright and early but our walk south of Dartmoor didn’t bear such snow witness. We set off South from Princetown to Nun’s Cross passing fell runners who were at 9:30 already some 11km into a 50km “Dartmoor in a Day” Winter Traverse race / challenge. Turning back on ourselves to turn again West we followed the Devonport leat to Crazy Well Pool. In true Dartmoor fashion we were blessed with all manners of weather; the saying four Seasons in one day could have easily been repeated four times though. Dartmoor certainly hasn’t missed out on all this rain we’ve been tolerating, the ground was rather squelchly underfoot.

“Across rivers and streams backpacks not loose nor tight, like a deer rangale they leap in flight,
But upon landing, wet as a frog, their graceful illusion finds another bog.”

So sunshine and showers with cold winds blowing our teams made a North then Westerly route to Cramber, Hart, Black, Leeden and Ingra Tor’s. Not quite content with ourselves and thinking the Winter Traversers weren’t taking all the Dartmoor Limelight we headed for the King’s Tor railroad loop before a switch-back to Princetown and thus completing our route for the day of 18km . 

Our young adventurers did exceptionally well for their first camp and following walk. The directing staff took a step back from the teams as we moved into their shadows allowing a longer leash as they started to take the routes themselves as a young team.

Thanks to Mr Le Puill for the immersive cinema setup and thanks as always to our staff for facilitating the training and camp.