On Friday Scanner no sweat after terrifying tunnels
INEVER knew I was claustrophobic, until I had claustrophobia. I should explain that. I never realised I had a distinct dislike of dark and enclosed spaces until I found myself in one, unable to move in any direction.
It happened during the Royal Marines Commando Challenge a few years ago, an event which takes place up on Woodbury Common in East Devon and raises a great deal of money for charity.
Teams of runners and walkers set off at intervals from Bicton College and make their way up on to the wild and windy common.
Once there, you go through a kind of natural assault course which includes deep pools of mud, deeper pools of water, steep hills up, steep hills down and a couple of signature obstacles which stick in the mind for a long time afterwards.
One of these is the Sheep Dip, which is a deep-ish pool of water with a large, metre-thick concrete barrier across the middle. There is a hole in this barrier, of a diameter just about wide enough for a person to pass through. The hole is below the surface of the pool and in order to pass through it you have to take a deep breath, immerse yourself in the filthy, icy water, and dive head-first through it. One Royal Marine pushes you through from one side and another Royal Marine pulls you through from the other.
This is not the worst of the obstacles, though. There are tunnels burrowing under the ground, made of concrete pipes. Again, you go in head-first and scrabble through in the darkness, emerging into the daylight again about 15 or 20 metres further on. The floor is all mud and gravel, the roof an unforgiving, skullgrazing concrete, and it is pitchdark. It is unwise to go in with a head torch on, in case your beam catches the little reflective eyes of creatures which might make their homes in the pipes.
I was fine in there until, about halfway through, the person in front of me stopped, because the person in front of them had stopped, because the person in front of them had stopped. The person behind me also had to stop, as did the person behind them. I was, therefore, underground, in a concrete pipe, in the dark, with my hands and knees in pools of cold mud, surrounded by the faint scrabbling of who knows what kind of animal.
I couldn’t go forwards; I couldn’t go backwards; I couldn’t go up, down or sideways. My heart rate soared, as it is slightly as I write this column. I had to get out, but I couldn’t work out how to. I closed my eyes tightly and it seemed to help, slightly. Finally, the people in front of me started to scrabble forward again, and eventually we were all out in the daylight.
Never have I been so pleased to have a Royal Marine Commando bawling at me to do a dozens pressups in the mud. I did them with a smile on my face that said I had survived my underground ordeal.
The other day, I was wedged into a head and neck brace and manoeuvred into a hospital scanning machine with strict orders not to move. It was a shiny tube which closed in around me and hugged my shoulders while it clanked and banged and whirred around me.
But was I scared? Did I reach for the panic button they had kindly provided? No chance. I’ve scrabbled with rats and Royal Marines in the terrifying tunnels of Woodbury Common, and nothing else can frighten me now.
‘I’ve scrabbled with rats and Royal Marines in the terrifying tunnels of Woodbury Common’