The Stonar Way 16.05.25

People moan about children quite a lot. The programme of the moment is ‘Adolescence’ which shows a frightening world of children involved in online bullying, misogyny and even murder. On a lower scale we often hear that children spend all their time on their phones and live in a virtual world, and teenagers in particular do nothing but lounge in their darkened rooms, vaping surreptitiously. All in all, young people, and teenagers especially, get a pretty bad press in the media.

May I suggest that anyone who feels that this is correct and that children are rude, feeble, technology-obsessed layabouts, heads down to Dartmoor for the Ten Tors weekend next May?

As you may be aware, Stonar has been entering teams into the Ten Tors challenge for the last four years and this year, for the first time, we had teams in all three categories - 35, 45 and 55 miles. The teams have been out training on Dartmoor for the last eight months, giving up countless weekends to trudge over Dartmoor in pouring rain, snow, howling gales and thick fog (and on one or two occasions they may even have seen the sun!). They have shown commitment and resilience in an age where instant gratification is the norm.

Last weekend was the actual challenge and 2,400 teenagers arrived at Okehampton Camp on Friday, ready to start their expeditions on the Saturday morning. Now we must remember that teenagers are teenagers and if you gather a massive herd of them together, some of them may get a little over excited. When I wrote about my last Ten Tors event, I compared it to various films (the start was like the charge in ‘Braveheart’ and the end, ‘The Incredible Journey’). The Friday evening was more like a scene from The Lion King, as a thousand children joined a stampede that travelled round the camp; the roar of the crowd getting louder as they approached and clouds of dust rising from their feet. As they ran, children were falling over and getting trampled underfoot. It was quite something to witness and I am proud to say that our pupils were sitting in our camp looking absolutely horrified (come the apocalypse I am convinced that our pupils will be diligently rebuilding society and making sure law and order is in place!).

So, you might imagine that the stampeding children were those awful children we moan about? Well no. By 10.00pm, the camp was completely silent and at 4.30am the next morning everyone was up and there was nothing but a purposeful hum and a smell of sizzling bacon in the campsite. By 6.30am all the teams were amassed on the hillside, ready to set off and you have rarely seen such a wholesome, polite and determined group of teenagers in your life. As the starting cannon fired and the teams swarmed out over the moor, you had to give those teenagers credit for what they were about to endure. The 35-mile teams usually end up walking 40+ miles, the 45-mile teams over 50 and the 55-mile teams would be walking about 65 miles (for context, that’s the same distance as walking from Stonar to Warwick in a straight line in under 34 hours!).

Our teams did brilliantly on the first day and, as the second day started, we were confident we would see some strong finishes. Our 35-mile team strode across the line well before lunchtime, the second team to finish in their group. Next in was our 55-mile team and, finally, our 45-mile team, finishing with several hours to spare.

As we clapped and cheered our teams across the finish line (and let’s be honest, cried a little bit with emotion) you couldn’t be anything other than immensely proud of what these young people, and all the other teams, had achieved. Every single one of them was a credit to their parents and their school.

It’s difficult to put into words how we, as the Ten Tors staff, feel about our teams (and I have already gone over my word limit!) but they show the very pinnacle of what young people can do if you set them a hard enough challenge and give them the freedom to be the best versions of themselves. Don’t believe everything the media tells you – our young people are amazing!

Charlotte Bennett
Director of Partnerships