After almost two weeks of snow, ice and general coldness a bunch of Explorer Scouts from Esher District and their Leaders decided it would be a great idea to go do some outdoor activities in Devonshire. Luckily it didn’t snow while we were there, chances are if it had we would have ended up stranded.

The first night was fairly uneventful, we didn’t met with adverse conditions on the journey so we got to Buckfastleigh at a reasonable time. Our lodgings for the next two nights were functional, if not particularly homely.

Saturday morning we awoke nice and early to the customary shout of “Morning Campers!” The plan was to be up, out for a walk on Dartmoor and back again so we had time to get changed before rock climbing in the evening. So the half hour or so between the end of breakfast and our pre-arranged departure time was filled with activity as people rushed to get everything they would need for walking. After a couple of last minute dashes to collect final items we were ready to go.

Before long we had parked up the minibus and were ready to depart from Postbridge. We were split into three groups and two of these groups were doing essentially the same route in opposite directions. However Adrian (who was in the third group) hadn’t deigned to tell anybody that he hadn’t actually put this detail into the route plans. The upshot of this was that we, the ‘backwards’ group ended up following the other group until we stopped and spoke to each other and realised what was going on.

Due to the increased water levels from rain and snowmelt some of the rivers and streams we had to cross were unusually high, as a certain Simon Heather found out to his dismay. While attempting to ford a stream the tall and intrepid Simon strode fearlessly into the middle of a fast flowing river only to find that it was rather a lot deeper than he’d first surmised. Submerged up to his hips he had no choice but to turn back and clamber out, defeated, onto the bank he had entered from (Disclaimer: I wasn’t actually there when all this happened but I did see the stream and it did look rather wet.)

When it came to my team’s turn to cross the stream we simply walked in the opposite direction, down the stream, and found a place where we could happily step across, admittedly this was after we’d run into a rather damp Mr. Heather.

Apart from that one small episode no one else seemed to encounter any major problems whilst on the hike and we all made it over Hameldown and back in increasing rain to the minibus around the planned rendezvous time. This meant that we had time to return to the centre, dry out and pick up some fresh socks, which was far more useful than it sounds, before we went rock climbing.

The Dartrock climbing centre was really quite good - and indoors! They had a traverse wall and bouldering section in addition to a ‘traditional’ climbing wall. While we were there we did a bit of everything traversing, going sideways, bouldering, going up whilst clambering around/over things, and climbing, you can probably work it out. Later that evening was fairly quiet due to the chronic lack of energy from which people were suffering, we did have a rather intense game of scrabble though.

On the Sunday we split again, as the sun was out the majority of people went down into some caves while the rest went for another hike. However as Simon didn’t run afoul of any more bodies of water I’m going to concentrate on the caving side of things. We entered the haunted Baker’s Pit down a long metal ladder, a great first impression. Once we reached the bottom we crawled through a tight crawl space which led into a relatively large cavern. From there we crawled, squeezed and, occasionally, walked through a series of tunnels and caves for about an hour and a half. Once we had finished we were all covered in mud, tired out and very happy to see the sun again. There were also some hibernating bats, turns out they’re not as big as you’d think.

So, all that was left to do was to clean the cave mud off ourselves and our equipment, then clean it off the showers, building and surroundings, have a late lunch, load up the transport and set off back to Hinchley Wood tired & happy.