SEA Moor Explore is a new charitable organisation based in Chulmleigh, which aims to provide adventurous outdoor activities to youngsters of secondary and sixth form ages.

Established in the autumn of 2017 the first goal was to train a team of 16-to-18-year-olds for the 55-mile route of the Ten Tors Challenge 2018.

Many local schools are able to train pupils to complete the 35 and 45 mile routes but because many Devon schools do not have a sixth form there are very few opportunities for the older teenagers to complete the 55-mile route.

Within a few weeks of the creation of Sea Moor Explore, word spread and a committed team of six enthusiastic youngsters began training; all had undertaken the challenge before and knew what they were letting themselves in for and for four of them a successful completion of the 55-mile route would mean they would have completed the full set of 35, 45 and 55 miles.

Training during the winter months was incredibly challenging with rain, hail, sleet, snow, fog, strong winds and flooded rivers, a soggy moor and most recently on their mock event, a gorse fire which spread over 10 square kilometres right over the route they were due to take.

The event weekend got off to a typically damp start. By the time the event started at 7am on the Saturday the cloud lifted, the sun came out and Dartmoor appeared majestic bathed in the weak morning sunlight. At the booming blast of the cannon the event was started and 4,000 youngsters headed off – uphill for the Sea Moor Explore team!

It became a waiting game for the anxious Team Managers and parents. The teams carry a tracker which the army can see at all times, but only report on their position when they get in to checkpoints so news of progress is very intermittent.

As a 55-mile team they can carry on to checkpoints until 10pm and then have to find a place to camp for the night in the middle of the moor.

During their route planning they all agreed to try to cover about 40 miles on day one and in order for that to happen they had to be at least an hour ahead of their route plan.

However, not content with that, they stormed off on Saturday morning and at one point they were nearly two hours ahead of their route plan which had predicted they would walk at 5km per hour.

The last update the Sea Moor Explore Team Manager, Susan Fraser-Smith, got was at 9.50pm and showed the team high on the moor and still moving.

“I spent so much of the weekend sat in the hangar at the Okehampton army camp checking on the team’s progress. When I saw that they were still moving nearly 15 hours later I was really concerned that they might have pushed themselves so much that they would be utterly exhausted. However, I also knew that they had trained hard and had taken on board the advice to keep eating and keep drinking.”

By 6am the Team Manager was back in the hangar to check on progress. “I was so relieved to see they had passed through their first checkpoint of the day by 6am when the checkpoints open and knew the whole team must be together. They were so determined that the whole team was going to finish and had split their kit so that the strongest and fastest walkers carried the most kit.

“Ten Tors is about so much more than going for a walk on the moor; the youngsters have to be patient and tolerant of each other, they need to communicate well and work together as a team and they need to find personal reserves of strength and determination to carry on when everything hurts if they are to get through the challenge.”

The Sea Moor Explore team slowed their pace on Sunday which indicated they were probably hurting and were tired – all of which added to the anxiety of the parents and Team Manager who by now were all waiting on Dartmoor to cheer the teams home.

A great sense of relief was felt when the Tracker showed they had reached Cosdon Hill, their final checkpoint, at 12 noon and then the wait stretched out as everyone waited for them to appear over the final hill. With binoculars out, the sky line was scanned for about half an hour until they finally appeared – and then stopped!

Fortunately, they only had a brief stop to don layers and appear in their team kit for the glorious walk down the finishing line to the applause of all the spectators at 1.40pm, finishing fifth out of the 18 teams on their route.

She added: “I was so delighted and massively relieved that they had all done it and made it safely back as a full team. The six of them worked together brilliantly – brought together by the common desire to complete the challenge they had to look out for each other all the way round and help each other when they had their moments of pain.”

They had clearly enjoyed rather than endured the challenge as they came over the line still smiling and still teasing each other and had the honour of receiving their gold medals from World, European and Commonwealth medal winning middle distance runner Jo Pavey.