A PUBLIC schoolgirl who drowned on a Dartmoor training exercise did not have the experience or training to cope with the conditions, a classmate revealed yesterday.

Charlotte Shaw, 14, died after being swept down a flood-swollen stream as she helped her friends to cross it as they trained for the annual Ten Tors expedition.

Her friend Zoe Whitley, now aged 17, told an inquest they received only basic instruction in how to cross rivers and were never issued with ropes to use.

Charlotte, from Frithlestock, Torrington, North Devon, was walking with nine others from Edgehill College in Bideford in March 2007 when she died. The school has since been renamed Kingsley College.

She was swept down the Wallabrook stream on North Dartmoor which had grown to four times its normal width of one metre after hours of torrential rain.

She died in Derriford Hospital, Plymouth after being rescued by a Royal Navy helicopter crew. She spent at least 20 minutes in the water and was carried 150 metres downstream.

She slipped over and fell in the water as she threw a friend's rucksack to the other side of the stream from a metre-wide island part of the way across the four- metre torrent.

Charlotte's mother Jennifer broke down in tears as she heard how the entire group had asked to come off the moor five hours before the tragedy but had been told to carry on by their teacher Christopher Fuller.

Miss Whitley said they all went on three previous training trips and were trained in how to keep warm and dry and how to carry and put up tents.

The training trip on to Dartmoor was an overnight exercise in which they walked with teachers on the first day but were then left to cope on their own the next day.

They woke to find their teachers had already left and struggled to strike camp in dark, cold, wet and windy conditions and then walked for two hours through flooded bogs to reach Rough Tor where they met Mr Fuller at 8.30am.

Zoe said: "We were not told how to cross swollen rivers. We were told how to check how deep it was, but we were never told how to cross them.

"Nobody ever talked to us about using ropes. It was never advised that we take it. Ever. The earlier trips were only day trips to get used to carrying the equipment.

"We did not expect the weather to change so quickly and I don't remember anyone telling us anything about it.

"We were just so young and had no experience. We just did not know what to do. I knew it was too dangerous to cross. It was white water and was running.

"I don't think we were ready to be left on our own. We should have had more river crossing experience. It is easy to say that now, because of what happened."

She said they were all so cold and wet by the time the met Mr Fuller at Rough Tor at 8.30am they all wanted to stop. She said: "We all decided to leave as a team. We were tired out and really wet and the weather was already atrocious. He said if we could complete this, we could do the real thing.

"We said we did not want to carry on. Most of the girls were crying. We told him. I felt like I was forced into carrying on. I felt there was no other option unless I broke my neck or something.

"Charlotte Shaw was always really positive. She was not as down as the rest of us. Me and my friend Yasmin were just fed up and did not want to carry on in the rain.

"We were freezing and could not feel our fingers. The weather was horrendous and we were getting more tired and clumsy. We were not so much walking as stumbling and falling through the bogs.

"The others had pulled us out so many times we had used up all our strength. We were all talking about what we would do first when we got home, whether to have a hot bath or to eat or to go to bed."

She said they carried on until they reached the river, which they had to cross because the alternative was a detour of at least seven kilometres, which they were all too tired to make. She said: "The river was gushing and really wide, we just wanted to get home and be safe and out of the weather. We were too tired to walk round it. I was cold and my judgment was affected by hypothermia."