By: Blonde Two

Those of you who have spent days waiting around in minibuses for teams of youngsters to appear out of the Dartmoor mist will understand that it is an unusual occurrence for someone you don’t quite recognise to suddenly pull open your minibus side door, climb inside and say, “Right then, make a space for me to sit down.”

But, as you have probably guessed, that is exactly what happened to the Two Blondes on Sunday.  Ordinarily a girl should react to this type of incursion on a scale of “gentle scream” to “hitting over the head with a baguette” but we were in a bit of a “post-wet-night-at-camp” stupor and just turned around in our seats and smiled a bit.

Which is just as well because our intrepid visitor turned out to be one of the Ten Tors very big cheeses.  Please note I am not talking about your ordinary supermarket sized Cheddar here, this guy is one of those proper round, doorstop, take the roof of your mouth cheeses from a Dartmoor farm shop.  He introduced himself, settled himself down and proceeded to gently grill us (and one of our Young Leaders) about all (and I mean all) of the new Ten Tors routes and rules.  Our poor Young Leader took the brunt of the questioning but proved himself not to be wanting as he responded to questions like, “What’s the difference between a Check Point and a Safety Check.” and “What should you do if one of your team members was having a heart attack?”

After this gruelling but very friendly examination, we were given our results and were very pleased to hear that out of all of the minibuses he had invaded (I mean visited), we were one of only two who had been able to answer his key question.  It is always a pleasure to be tested and not found wanting, particularly when you are two ladies in a very bloke-filled world.  It is even more of a pleasure to find out that you have somehow, amidst all of the chaos of Ten Tors training, managed to impart the correct information to your youngsters.

As grillings from big cheeses go, this was a very agreeable one and it gave us the chance to ask some burning questions about routes and future plans.  I wonder if he went away as impressed with the Two Blondes and their protege as we were with ourselves!