Heckwood Blog

 Decades on Dartmoor - Matt Hoey 

For over two decades Dartmoor has been both my Heaven and my Hell. As a young 17 year old recruit, straight out of school, I spent many a cold, wet night navigating through the driving, sideways rain to meet the requirements of the Royal Marines basic training syllabus. From the vertical cliffs of Foggin Tor, to the remoteness of Great Kneeset Tor, Dartmoor was an intimidating, menacing place for as young lad from a South coast fishing town. Many a night were spent shivering, looking into the dark, waiting for a notional enemy to...

Trying to be a runner on the Cami de Cavalls - Jon Harvey

Dartmoor is where is all started for me. It’s an awesome place. It’s also an inhospitable hell hole, but
that’s a good thing. It teaches you so much, sometimes in one single day. It teaches you to suffer and
get on with it; sometimes you even enjoy the process. I’ve experienced some of my wettest, coldest
and hottest hikes on Dartmoor. On a good day, it’s beautiful. On a bad day, it can be awful.

Ten Tors, a two hiking challenge, was something I wanted to do from when I first...

The Ultra Unknown - Mark J Smith

I could say that the underlaying passion for my running has come from where I was brought up, my childhood consisted of; the exploration of the moorland, farmland and pockets of woods surrounding a village deep into a valley. This meant that in any direction you could be free to roam any of these luxuries within a few paces of your doorstep. I believe this is the foundation of my passion and a good dose of natural ability gave me the spark to carry out running to this day. In my early years...