THIS year saw another successful Ten Tors Challenge with five teams from Queen Elizabeth’s School taking part.

There are several challenging walks in Britain today, but Ten Tors is the only one catering solely for young people and is believed to be the largest and most challenging event held nationally.

The Ten Tors Challenge is limited to 2,400 individuals (400 teams of six teenagers).

The Challenge involves walking over the rough terrain of Dartmoor and visiting 10 nominated tors or checkpoints in under two days.

The teams must be self-sufficient, carrying all the equipment and food they need to complete their route and camp out overnight. 

At Queen Elizabeth’s training walks started back in the autumn term and despite some challenging weather conditions, training increased in duration and distance until the event at the end of April.

The training paid off and the groups arrived at Okehampton camp on the Friday morning to prepare for the event.

The day passed quickly with route planning, final kit checks and some time for the students to explore the many different static displays. 

This year the Army had even organised a music festival, which was well attended by students from across the establishments.

After an evening meal of pasta Bolognese, the teams settled down for an early night.

QE Leaders were up at 4.15am to cook breakfast for the teams, who were woken up at 5am to the sound of the now legendary "Chariots of Fire" being played over the tannoy system.

Understandably there was some nerves in camp but all of the students managed to eat breakfast and pose for team photos before leaving camp in their teams to make their way to the start.

This year the event was started by Colonel Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam OBE who, in drawing on his experience as Deputy Chief Medical Officer during the Covid 19 pandemic, was able to remind all of the students how important it is to be resilient in the face of many challenges which set the scene at the start perfectly.

At 7am cannon fire signalled the start and the teams were on their way.

Throughout the weekend everyone was able to follow the progress of teams as they worked their way around their assigned routes. Unfortunately, on the Saturday, three of the QE students had to drop out due to injuries.