I am not sure what motivated us to attempt it, I am not even sure whose idea it was, but once the gauntlet was down there was no going back or backing out. Three of us had agreed that we would go on a hiking camp with no food and no money. It must have been a kind of group madness that made us do it, where not talking about one of your regular camping holidays either here, this was to be quite a difficult challenge. We would be away for three nights and apart from water that we would take with us we could only eat and drink what we could find in nature, or possibly steal if we had to.

We chose Exmoor for this madness for no particular reason other than it was easy to get to and although fairly remote, it wasn’t too remote if things didn’t work out. Of course food was the major challenge. One member of our group was an accomplished angler, and he was reasonably confident of keeping us in fish, though three days of eating nothing but fish was less than appealing. He wanted to visit a trout fishery, but as that cost money it was against the rules so he was restricted to river fishing.

He spent most of the first day fishing and caught nothing. This did not go down well amongst the rest of the group, but we reasoned that one day without food would not do us any harm. The following day our fisherman went on strike as we had been so rude to him, but to compensate we did find some cabbages and potatoes growing on a local farm. We cooked these up and they tasted revolting. A knowing look passed from person to person. It was a kind of raised eyebrow that said it all. Our great adventure was over.