THE WINNER

A hike less ordinary

Like many a grateful worker, I spend most of my time slouched at a computer in slightly grim surroundings. Daylight is a bit lacking, as are any movements from the elbow up. I am the worker that caffeine built.

In a break from all that quotidian normality I dragged my pasty face up to Duncansby Head (north of John O'Groats) this summer, with the foolish intention of hiking the length of the UK. Fifty-one days and 1,100 miles later I made it to Land's End – shattered and sweaty, but oddly refreshed too. Save for a few brief crossings of cities there had been nothing but fresh air, nothing but expansive silence, nothing to remind me of everyday life for nearly two whole months.

The route was a smidge longer than necessary (it can be done in under 900 miles) but it was worth it to take in some of the most spectacular walking routes our country has to offer: among them the West Highland Way, Pennine Way and Cotswold Way, finishing off on the heart-burstingly picturesque South West Coast Path.

I set out with visions of reading great works by night and crossing the country by day, all very grand. Unsurprisingly, the reality was less romantic. Though the views were unforgettable, the evenings were dominated by hand-washing socks, eating like a Dyson and dressing sorry feet. That being said, there was a simplicity and natural rhythm to the days that I really took to. With my focus always on getting to the next stop, it was a refreshingly uncomplicated way to live for a while.

Keeping costs down, I stayed in hostels where possible, and they became part of the adventure. From the grandeur of Carbisdale Castle to the rugged outcrop of Tintagel, they added another layer to the experience, not least because of the other travellers I met. Rose Cottage B&B in Fort Augustus, comfortingly plush in an understated way, is fondly remembered, too. (It also has a lot to do with the owner waiting with a cup of tea and a piece of cake when I eventually traipsed in off the Great Glen Way; I almost Frenched her, I swear to God.)

It was undoubtedly the stupidest thing I've ever attempted, but it turns out that pushing through discomfort is all about the situation. Your feet are in tatters, knees sore and you haven't had a proper night's sleep in ages – fancy hiking 35 miles on one of the hottest June days since records began? Er, no actually – but sometimes deciding to finish means it's as good as done.

Chatting to a hiker in Scotland, I explained my route and he was quite indignant: "But you look so ordinary!" Though falling short in the charm stakes, he was absolutely right: I don't look the type. But what I lack in lucky genes I try to make up for in stubbornness and, as it turns out, a little stubbornness can get you a very long way indeed.

Tess lives in Kennford, Devon

The judge: Travel writer Jason Webster (author of Or the Bull Kills You, published next February by Chatto & Windus) said: "Tess's story was funny, immediate and, most crucially, had meaning. It also showed that you don't have to go to the ends of the earth to have an adventure."

The prize: An eight-day trip to Tasmania for two people, including a six-day guided adventure with Tasmanian Expeditions (tasmanianexpeditions.com.au) and flights.

THE RUNNERS-UP

Mongolia or bust

The Kazakh policeman shook his head again and made an action approximating driving at great speed. He used only two words of English: "Too fast."

Instinctively we both turned to the tiny Suzuki in disbelief – spare wheels tied roughly to the roof, paint melting in the sun. In motion, the car's engine wheezed like a chronic asthmatic and made sporadic protests against working in fifth. At rest, hunkered low over the suspension, it just looked knackered. I raised an eyebrow in disbelief, but didn't know the Kazakh for "We dream of going too fast". This looked serious.

So went my first meeting with the constabulary of Kazakhstan. He'd wanted my cowboy hat in exchange for our freedom and had fingered the cheap leather stitching throughout our conversation. An hour later and we'd settled on a $5 bribe.

Of course, the trip did hold other interests; it's only that the sheer scale of the Mongol Rally (from the UK or the Czech Republic to Ulan Bator in Mongolia) tends to throw experiences at you in one long, continuous shriek of excitement. Travelling through 11 countries in four weeks – sharing the driving with one friend and one non-licensed sister – presented moments both of classic high adventure and of angry team dynamics.

We spent our first night by the side of a motorway outside Bruges; three nights later we were in the attic room of a dive hotel on the Ukraine-Russia border, plotting our route to Moscow. A week and a half later still, we had put a hole in the fuel tank and were staked out at the side of the road hoping to be rescued. Which we were. Twice.

By the time we'd met our cowboy-loving policeman, we'd seen the Silk Road cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and were speeding onwards to Siberia and Lake Baikal. All stunning places, all beautiful experiences.

mongolrally.theadventurists.com

Adam Lane, London

Two go mad in Mexico

"Two girls wouldn't be safe," said one friend in LA. "Banditos will slit your throats," said another.

I was worried, especially when Bronwyn collected me in a clapped-out VW (and she didn't even mention that a part might need replacing) for a trip down the coast from southern California to Mexico's Baja California.

Crossing the border was easy and Mexico resembled the set of a western. Wanting to discover the real Mexico, we took a desert dirt road heading for the Pacific at sunset. We heard crickets; a man on a donkey waved.

We slept in the car at a long deserted beach. In the morning we swam, leaving our clothes near the water's edge. Turning, I saw our car was still there – as was another vehicle, a truck, full of Mexicans wearing cowboy hats.

We pretended to ignore them, and it sped up the beach. Laughing with relief, we knew we'd pushed our luck. I got into the car, but Bronwyn was along the beach when I noticed the dot. The truck was coming back. I shouted to Bronwyn but the surf was noisy. Locking the car, I ran after her. The truck followed.

Two men approached, speaking Spanish. Something metallic flashed in the sunlight; now closer, I saw it was a knife. The others got out. Approaching, he drove the knife into a shell and smilingly handed us a skewered abalone (an edible sea snail). His friend squeezed a lemon and watched as we tasted it. "Mmm, bueno!" we said.

They laughed and slapped me on the shoulder before returning to the truck, which sped off again. This time we left quickly, but minutes later, broke down.

"Might be the fan belt," said Bronwyn quietly.

I couldn't believe it. The fan belt lay in the dust like a dead snake. We'd have to use my knickers. They got us 10 yards. I tried another pair, then Bronwyn's too. What if the next Mexicans were not as gentlemanly? This was no place for stranded women with a trail of shredded knickers in their wake.

"I'll find the main road," I said. "Stay locked inside." I walked a mile in shimmering heat. No cars. Returning for water, I don't know what I expected to see, but it wasn't another truckful of Mexicans looking at Bronwyn, who lay on the roof, as if posing for a fashion magazine. Nervously, we climbed in among the men. They could have taken us anywhere. Luckily, it was to a village, where women bashed maize into tortillas, cooked them for us, and even produced a fan belt.
Emma Macdonald, Charlbury, Oxfordshire

Welcome to Spider Town, Cambodia

After several weeks of impressing my Cambodian hosts with my prolific consumption of crickets, ant sauce and internal organs, they decided the time had come to introduce me to another local delicacy.

When we stopped for lunch one day in Skuon, also known as Spider Town, I knew I was in trouble. On arrival there didn't appear to be any arachnids for sale. My visible relief was misinterpreted as disappointment, so a random street child was dispatched to obtain some. We sat down at a food stall, and the kid soon reappeared with the goods. I picked up the bag and looked inside.

The spiders were moving.

The bag was flung across the table. I believe I may have whimpered. My host, slightly annoyed, explained that he had meant cooked spiders. The live ones, each the size of my fist, were rounded up and stored in the back of the car "for later". The apologetic child reappeared with another portion. Definitely fried this time, we were assured. My amused companions inquired as to whether I might be a bit arachnophobic and, showing no pity, suggested that eating one would cure me of my fear. A kind of desensitisation therapy. Unable to dispute this logic, I acquiesced. A big fat one was deposited on my plate.

I looked at it.

It looked at me.

A large crowd had gathered, awaiting my response. There was a long pause. I wondered whether it would display a lack of cultural sensitivity to scream and flee. Probably. Taking a deep breath, I speared it with a fork and tentatively nibbled one leg. Not so bad. Crispy, with a slightly sweet glaze reminiscent of barbecue sauce. The hairiness wasn't as off-putting as I had feared. I bit the legs off one by one until just the juicy, hairy torso remained. The crowd watched expectantly. Without the legs it really didn't look so bad. I popped it in my mouth, thinking to myself, just pretend it's a nice tasty cricket…

Just pretend it's a tasty cricket!

You know you've been in Cambodia too long when you're trying to coax yourself into eating a spider the size of a kitten by pretending it's something more palatable … like a cricket.
Jennifer Hulse, Leeds

Have an ice time in Canada

Crammed behind drums of propane and diesel, shovels, ice drills and crates of eggs, I gazed at the white wilderness passing 500ft below. I was headed, with four other volunteers from the WWOOF scheme (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), to help open up and run Blachford Lake Lodge, 85 miles from where the road ends and the bush plains begin in Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories.

The Twin Otter's skis bumped onto the ice. Overlooking the lake, the main lodge huddled under its cape of snow. Deserted for four months, since the summer season ended in October, everything inside, and I mean everything, was frozen: soap solid in dispensers, mops immovable in buckets, vats of HP sauce stone hard.

On the first night, I lay in bed, transfixed for hours as the northern lights shimmered and shivered across the vast sky.

It was two days before the generator thawed enough to produce electricity; for 10 days all water was scooped by jug from a hole drilled through the lake's metre-thick sheet of ice. We removed bear boards, chopped firewood, cleaned water tanks, restocked composting lavatories with worms and snowshoed walking trails through thigh-deep snow.

Bi-weekly flights brought supplies to be rushed indoors (beer and salads spoil quickly at -25C), and guests. They skied, snowmobiled and walked around the lakes, fished through the ice, lounged in the lakeside sauna, sipped wine in the outdoor hot tub. But primarily they came for the northern lights. It was a Japanese engineer's sixth visit in two years and he stayed out all night. On the lake in his snowsuit with a complex of cameras, he could have been on a moonwalk.

When staff dramas or guests' demands became too much, I escaped for a solitary walk. On a windless day, when the silence was absolute, a raven's sudden cry was as startling as a gunshot. Minute shards of frosted snow cracked from trees, filling the air with crystal dust. The cold pierced my nostrils like a battalion of needles, dissolving the migraines that so bedevil my life behind a lawyer's desk. 

See wwoof.org for general information and wwoof.ca for placements in Canada, including Blachford Lake Lodge (blachfordlakelodge)

Ruth Bowen, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

Carry on up the Amazon

We waited for hours while they loaded up the onions. Next came the tomatoes. Then, long after darkness had fallen, they started on the mangoes. It was a valuable first lesson in Amazonian riverboat travel, namely: patience is everything.

The engines of the ageing Luiz Eduardo were eventually started and we headed upstream into the night. The illuminated high rises of Belém, the Brazilian city near the Amazon estuary, slipped away into the distance and soon it was just us, chugging gently through the ink-black river under a limitless moonlit sky.

On the instruction of our guidebook, my girlfriend and I had secured our hammocks at the bow end of the top deck, the least noisy and crowded place on the boat, it had said.  

In fact, we were packed in like sardines. Hammocks were straddled above us and slung below us, forming a thatch of brightly coloured human cocoons. Between the prodding limbs and relentless snoring, the nights were infuriatingly long and restless.

Our days, on the other hand, were of infinite languor, swaying in our hammocks, fixed by the leaden heat, absently listening to blaring forró music while the endless jungle drifted by like an impenetrable green wall. Occasionally we would pass an isolated settlement on the river bank, a logging boat, a determined oarsman paddling upstream in a canoe.  

Our lazy rhythm was momentarily broken when a passenger flung himself overboard. The rumour was that he had jumped in a moment of madness after learning of his wife's infidelities.

He was soon picked up by a passing motor boat, brought back on board and tied up among the onions and tomatoes in the lower holds.

On the fourth day we approached Santarém in the fading light of sunset. Here we would swap the cramped confines of the Luiz Eduardo for a comfortable pousada and the white sand river beaches of nearby Alter do Chão.

As we crossed the gangplank, they began to unload the sacks and boxes just as slowly as they were stowed. The water grew dark under the crimson twilight, and the harbour lights danced on its rippled surface. 
Michael Romyn, Oxted, Surrey

Crossing continents: Trabzon to Sochi

The vulpine Turk in Trabzon Shipping's grimy dockside office was in no mood for negotiations. "One person, one motorcycle; $370" he barked in Russian, flashing a villainous smile at us while holding out a well-greased palm. It was an extortionate amount to pay for the 12-hour, 200-mile Black Sea crossing to Sochi but he knew as well as we did that, with all land borders between Georgia and Russia closed, there was little choice.

Unswayed even by the comedy of our "motorcycles" being a pair of zebra-print 20-year-old mopeds he relieved us of our cash and handed over the ferry tickets.

Two days later, following several cancellations due to alleged "bad weather", we drove our mopeds into the rusting bowels of the Guniz. Turkish-owned, Moldovan-registered and Georgian-crewed, the old tub had faded velveteen seats and antiquated safety notices that clearly hadn't been replaced in 50 years. A glance at the suspended lifeboats revealed half of them to be missing valves, which rendered them utterly useless. We retired to the bar for a stiff gin.

Our fellow passengers were a motley assemblage of Turks, Russians, Kazakhs, Georgians and Uzbeks; evidence of Trabzon's position as a hinge between worlds. Three Uzbeks, returning from the hajj on a trio of matching purple bicycles, prayed towards Mecca. Huddled groups of Turkish men played clattering games of backgammon. In one corner sat four Russian bikers, their bulky Yamaha tourers making our ageing mopeds look all the more risible.

Hours later, the sensation of the Guniz lurching drunkenly on the waves interrupted fitful dreams of storms and sinking lifeboats. We'd hit one of the Black Sea's notorious off-coast squalls and the little ship was plunging and listing at the mercy of the tempest. The only human movement was people staggering to the loos to vomit – the stench soon permeated the ferry.

Thankfully, by dawn, the squall was behind us and through the mist we could see the Caucasus rising majestically to our right. Over reviving coffees one of the Russian bikers complained of having hit the ceiling at one point in the night, so violent was the storm.

The next afternoon we rode our mopeds down the gangplank and into Russia, and the divide between Asia and Europe felt so immediate, so real. Rows of polished super-yachts and sub-tropical palms greeted us, a world away from the rusting decrepitude of Trabzon port we'd left behind. Now it was only Russian customs between us and the open road …

Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent, Regil, near Bristol