Preparation for the “mother of all exercises” started as soon as we left the parade square. Our colour sergeant recommended that we should eat plenty of fatty foods prior to the exercise, before switching to starchy food a few days before the start – a practice known as carbo-loading. This was to help our bodies build up an energy reserve, of which we would be in dire need in the ensuing days. I’m sure beer has a high carbohydrate content – at least I managed to convince my conscience of this fact, if no one else.

The long weekend was spent roaming the shops of Liverpool Town Centre, seeking out those last-minute vital bits of kit. That, and sleeping: a commodity which would soon be in short supply. On the return journey back to Sandhurst, I went over again the route I had planned to get my team around the course. Ex LONG REACH was a thirty-five mile yomp around the Welsh Hills near Aberystwyth. It involves navigating between a series of checkpoints, in the order of your own choosing, in the fastest possible time. To slow down the teams of competitors, the Directing Staff (DS) unsportingly interspersed the stops with command tasks. My strategy was for our intrepid team of eight men to race around the course at top speed, completing all of the command tasks, and gaining the maximum number of points. That was the theory. In Wales, as well as in battle, the first casualty is always the plan….

Rudely awoken by our inept driver, his final juddering halt causing my face to slam into the seat in front, we file sullenly off the coach into the damp gloom outside. Kitted up with bergan and webbing, we are almost ready. Callsign Two-Two-Charlie makes its final preparations: loads are adjusted for maximum comfort (or minimum discomfort?) and as a preventative measure a pot of Vaseline is circulated to prevent chafing during the long tab. (Fortunately, there are no car headlights to illuminate the scene!) One last radio check, and we leave the dimly lit coach behind us, and head for the hills.

I can hardly wait for the Army to introduce the new generation of radios. For as soon as we’d got a little more than a kilometre from the start point, all comms were lost. It was not a question of being in a ‘dead spot’ (an area in which radio waves cannot be received or transmitted) as the problem did not clear up as we moved. We learnt at the Signals Wing at Sandhurst that the UK PRC 349 radio set has a range of up to two kilometres. I think this should be amended to read eight metres: this would be achieved by writing the message on a piece of paper, tying it to the radio, and then launching it with a swift over-arm motion in the direction of the recipient. Due to its greater bulk, the 351 has an amended range of just four metres.

Now isolated from the outside world, we plodded on with our decided itinery. In the dark, we once became navigationally challenged in an area of broken ground. We knew there was a dangerous cliff in the vicinity and visibility was poor. Rather than risk life and limb in the poor light, we retraced our steps to our last landmark and tried again – this time with more success. Considering we could have been hit with snow, hail or drenching rain and gale-force winds, the heavens were kind to us and threw only enough water to wet us through, and just enough wind to warrant an extra layer. The pace was relentless and we took turns at leading from the front. As legs tired and feet blistered, morales peaked and troughed in the group. When some of us were down and feeling introverted and miserable, the rest would probably be on a high as a Mars Bar sugar-rush kicked in, and would chivvy the laggards onwards.

At around the fifteen hour point, Checkpoint Zulu loomed menacingly on the horizon. Zulu was perched on the highest point of a conical hill of such steep and gargantuan proportions that the closely-bunched contour-lines on the map could not hope to do it justice. When he saw it, [Crown Prince] Tameem, our rather large overseas cadet from Qatar, believed he had met his nemesis. Despite the torrent of verbal ‘encouragement’ from our Company Sergeant Major – he’d decided to join us for this leg of the journey – he still lagged behind, further and further. Exhausted, we all made it to the top, as CSM Billy Mott recited tales from his experiences on Tumbledown.

From here onwards, things deteriorated slowly. As the light slowly failed again, people switched to autopilot. As night wore on, teddies were primed and ready to throw. Tempers fraying, we tried our best to be civil to one another.

Wales has a bizarre geography: it has one sided Escher-like hills which only go up, and never down. It was one of these steep inclines which was nearly the downfall of Tameem. He began to go down with exhaustion and was pulled out for safety reasons. One man less, we stumbled to our bivvi site and collapsed into our sleeping bags for a couple of hours of troubled sleep. Waking up, and feeling much worse for having slept, we didn’t hang around, and made best speed for the finish. The last long leg afforded us a superb view of the finish point across the lake: tantalizingly close if you had wings; a world away if you only had legs to take you round the perimeter. At the end, we jumped into the four tonne Bedford, for once not bemoaning its lack of any form of suspension, simply grateful for the little things in life – like swapping two legs for four wheels.

The euphoria of finishing kept us awake through the immediate and hectic post-exercise admin, but on boarding the coach back to Sandhurst, sleepy heads reclined on comfy seats and in the space of five minutes, not a single man, bar me, remained awake. Packed lunches opened, but hardly touched, lay forgotten on laps. I felt my own head droop as I headed down into a slumber which no amount of bad driving from our coach driver could disturb.