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Ten Tors (May 2010)

On Friday 7th May two students from Welbeck DSFC travelled to Oakhampton camp on Dartmoor to rendezvous with four members of Somerset Cadet Battalion ‘The Rifles’ (ACF) with whom they would make up the Somerset ACF 55 mile team for the Army’s annual Ten Tors event.

Ten Tors is an event run by the regular and reserve forces for young people aged 14 to 19. The challenge is to reach ten checkpoints at the top of ten of Dartmoor’s Tors over distances of 35, 45 and 55 miles.

Having completed the 35 and 45 mile events on previous years the next logical step was the 55 mile event. This was never destined to be an easy weekend. Due to commitments within Welbeck we had been unable to attend three out of the five training weekends, but as we found out the rest of the team hadn’t been training particularly hard either. With one member of the team attending only one weekend and two others attending only two, things weren’t shaping up too well.

At 07:00 on Saturday 8th May the event was started with a ‘pep talk’ from Commander in Chief UK Land Forces General Sir Peter Wall and the firing of the cannons. We were out at the front and would have been the second team on our route to check into our first Tor, however the moor was against us and we ran straight into a bog, and a bog on Dartmoor is unlike any other - you do not sink your foot in and pull it back out, you lose your leg and crawl out, only to take two more steps and be back in again!

Nonetheless we arrived at Shilstone Tor in good time, a quick check in and on we moved towards our second Tor. No more than 2 km later (of a 14 km leg) one of the Somerset lads began to struggle from an illness he had been suffering from all week. This meant that we lost a lot of time and had to take a detour to an extra Tor to drop him off! Finally we arrived at the bottom of Sittaford Tor no less than one hour and forty five minutes behind time, this being pretty disastrous as we were almost second through the first Tor. On the final ascent to the top of the Tor a second member of the team went down with an recurring tendon injury meaning he could not continue. Things were going from bad to worse, with the rules stating that no team can continue with less than four - teamwork was becoming more important than ever.

After another 14 km leg to Coombestone Tor we had managed to regain about an hour and 20 minutes, although this still left us about half an hour behind time. Onwards to Pupers Hill and we were doing well, however while assisting a struggling team from Wiltshire our eyes temporarily strayed from the map. This proved to be a disastrous mistake, as although we only followed a track approximately 50m too far, when you’re working in the bottom grid on the map you’re in serious trouble and after following a bearing from the track for approximately 1.5 km we realised our mistake. However due to the fact that we were off the bottom of the map there was nothing we could do to rectify the problem other than to walk due North until we could find landmarks on the map and the ground.

Eventually we reached Trowlesworthy Tor, but even though we had worked so hard to regain lost time our mistakes had come back to haunt us, and while doing the sums on the way up to the Tor we all knew that we would be very close to missing the 20:00 crash time at the next Tor. With a split amongst the team, with some wanting to give it a go anyway rather than be pulled off and give up, the team leader had the final say and the team was crashed at Trowlesworthy Tor, a thoroughly devastating moment for all involved, both on the ground and watching the computers back at HQ.

The failure of the team can be lessened, however, by the achievement of covering over 27 miles in the 12 hours that we had been walking. Many lessons have been learnt from this weekend such as the need for thorough training for everyone in a team as well as 100% concentration and discipline 100% of the time, and although the blame for the failure could be attributed to individual team members or events Ten Tors is a team event, and as the glory of success would have been shared, the failure should be also.

Tom Milton & Archie Selka – Alanbrooke 09e

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