You can easily eat 10 cereal bars in a day, and there are never, ever enough tent pegs.
Thinkstock / Alex Finnis / BuzzFeed
1. When it rains enough, no waterproofs are actually waterproof.
2. Neither are walking boots.
3. Having your feet turn into two giant blisters is exactly as fun as it sounds.
4. Compeed is a true lifesaver.
5. Trangias suck.
6. Hills suck.
7. Carrying the tent sucks.
8. Roll mats are essentially useless.
9. Unless you had one of those fancy blow up ones, which were comparative luxury.
10. The smug feeling you get when your group goes the wrong way when you told them it was wrong is 100% outweighed by the despair of having to retrace your steps.
11. The smell of meths will stay on your hands and clothes forever.
12. It's extremely possible to eat more than 10 cereal bars in one day.
13. Walking 25 miles, sleeping in a wet sleeping bag, and then doing it all over again is a fundamentally terrible idea.
14. Especially when you remember you volunteered to do it.
15. The people who put sponges under their backpack straps are basically geniuses.
Thinkstock / Alex Finnis / BuzzFeed
16. Shoulder bruises aren't sexy.
17. Neither are hip bruises.
18. And neither are you after you've spent three days without showering.
19. If it has to, your body can go quite a long time without doing a shit.
20. Five minute breaks are always longer than five minutes.
21. There are never enough tent pegs.
22. Sometimes there aren't even enough tent poles.
23. It is possible to be very cold and very sweaty at the same time.
24. Putting up a tent in the dark is fucking difficult.
25. Boil in the bag meals are surprisingly OK after you've been walking all day.
26. The meatballs and pasta one is the best.
27. And the all day breakfast is pretty good too.
28. Water takes several years to boil on a Trangia.
29. That's only when you can light the fucking thing in the first place.
30. Matches suck.
31. Maps suck.
32. Walking through rivers deeper than your walking boots sucks.
