The The Back around Christmas of 2007, me and my mates were still a bunch of layabouts in our mid-20s.

We worked odd jobs here and there, so we weren't complete wasters, but we spent most of our

time sitting around my mates flat, just drinking cans, smoking soap bar, which is cannabis resin, and flicking through the channels

on a skybox.

One night, we were looking for something half decent to watch when we came across some Ray Meres thing on the Discovery

channel. For those of you that don't know, Ray Meres was like a less exciting 90s version of

Bear Grills. He'd go all around the world showing you how to survive in places like the Arctic

or the jungle or what have you. It was cracking TV seeing him eating raw fish or foraging

for berries and as we watched we started

playfully arguing over which one of us would be the first to quit if we went on some

mad survival trip like that. What started as a stupid argument ended in an actual bet between the two of the

lads and I think they were just messing around at first, but then the more they

talked about it, the more serious it got. And then the next thing I heard, they bet each other a hundred quid

that they could outlast each other out in the wilderness, and we were seriously planning some

survival camping trip to Wales. Luke and Ben, the two lads who made the bet, wanted to go down to

Dartmouth more where the Royal Marines train. Dartmouth is this big empty floodplain for the most part and Ben's brother who was in the army said they'd die if they went there in February or March like they were planning to.

Instead, he suggests they go to this place called Kilder Foras up in Northumberland.

He said he'd been on exercises around there years ago and that it's the closest place he'd

ever seen in the UK to actual wilderness. They'd also have a much better chance of finding

water, food and shelter which would actually put their survival skills to the test

instead of just dumping them in the big soggy desert that is Dartmouth more, when they had their

location, Ben and Luke were as good as gone.

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