“My parents are sleeping,” he said. “My sister is sleeping. My brain is tired. My feet are tired.”

They were bone-tired, all of them, but also adamant on finishing. One boy had asked to be picked up at the halfway mark, and that seemed to make the rest of them more determined. At that halfway mark, the children were given snacks and water, but in exchange, their GPS was taken away, and they had to follow their instincts. But no one complained, since there was no one to complain to.

“I’m going,” Stijn observed. “I don’t know why I’m going, but I’m going.”

It was nearly 2 a.m. when they stumbled into camp. There was a crackling fire, and boiled sausages tucked into soft rolls. Owls were on the hunt, and their shrieks could be heard in the tree canopy high above.

The campers wolfed down the food, stared into the fire for a few minutes, and stumbled to their tents. When Stijn emerged the next morning, bleary-eyed, at 11 a.m., he considered himself a veteran.

He no longer missed his PlayStation. And he said that someday, when he had children, he wanted them to experience a dropping.

“It shows you, even in very hard times, to keep walking, to keep going,” he said. “I have never had to do that before.”

Claire Moses contributed reporting from London.