December 2019 – A Wet and Windy Wild camp

Ooh I love backpacking at this time of year, there’s the crisp fresh air, none of those annoying insects, the wondrous vistas and the gentle reminder that I’m maturing in years as I wrestle my fully laden rucksack onto my back!
This time, I’m in Essex catching up with my camping buddy, Des (link to his excellent youtube channel below) and our plan is to camp at a nearby spot that he’s found. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t looking great and the location was fairly exposed to the elements so it was essential that I packed the right equipment.

Every time I organise my winter camping kit, I convince myself that I’m packing relatively simple and lightweight kit. But yet I am astounded when I find myself having to shoe horn everything into every available crevice of my 70 litre rucksack. It’s the sleeping bag that does it, my three season sleeping bag seems to dominate the space available in the main compartment of my rucksack. I could gamble and pack my lighter summer sleeping bag, but since when has it ever been worth sacrificing comfort and warmth!

Barneys top tip: When preparing for a camping trip, It’s always helpful to check the local weather forecast. Don’t just look at the daytime and night time temperatures though, consider the wind-speeds and the chill factor that this might have on your location. The wind chill can often make the forecast temperature feel much lower than it is. The BBC weather website and app has a very useful feature which tells you what the temperature may ‘feel like’ in real terms when accounting for wind chill.
Happily Des lives in a relatively flat part of Essex and the walk into camp was straight forward. However, the final part of the walk was interesting to say the least. The destination was beside a lake and given that we’ve had a deluge of rain in recent weeks, it meant the paths were well and truly water-logged. Des warned me that the path to camp may be a ‘little boggy’ but I didn’t realise it would be this bad! I packed a couple of carrier bags to use as ‘emergency waders’ just in case but, in the end, I decided to take my chances with my hiking boots. 

  
I think we each said a prayer to the wild camping Gods and tentatively made our way along the path. I used my stick to probe for the shallowest path through the puddles (which were more like ponds!). There were several times when my boots were almost completely submerged, but somehow we both managed to make it through the ‘water-logged path of doom’ without drama.
Later in the day I removed my boots to check my socks and was delighted to see that they were lovely and dry. I now have lots of faith in my Scarpa gore-tex hiking boots for passing such an arduous test.  A lesson learnt here is that it really is worth investing a bit of money in your footwear. I say that because I’d be very confident that the cheaper brands of boot that I’ve owned really wouldn’t have stood a chance in those conditions and I would most certainly have been donning the ‘emergency waders’.

When we arrived at Des’ chosen spot, we quickly realised that camping there wouldn’t be a great idea. The wind was blowing a hoolie and we wouldn’t have been very comfortable setting up camp there. We retreated back along the ‘water-logged path of doom’ to a second spot beside the lake that, although a bit cosy for two tarps, was a much more sheltered spot.

Upon arriving at camp the first order of business was to get a brew on. I brought my Trangia Triangle along for this trip and a shiny new Eagle kettle that was an early Christmas present from my wife (Thanks Sarah). I’ve been wanting one of those romantic camp kettles for a little while now!
 

We then decided to set our tarps up as a means of providing ourselves with a bit more protection from the cold wind that was still blowing through the woodland. It was at this point that I made my first mistake. With the high winds (20mph +) I should have hunkered my tarp down so that it was low and out of the wind, but instead I pitched it fairly high so that I could sit under it in my hammock chair. I foolishly prioritised comfort ahead of the conditions that Des and I were facing.  A short while after pitching my tarp, I was cooking some sausages for my lunch when I noticed that the tie out points on my tarp were taking a real beating from the wind. Two corners in particular were pitched quite high and they were flapping about and putting the tie-out points under a lot of tension. I thought this was unnecessary and not likely to end well for my tarp so I quickly decided to take it down and re-consider my options while eating lunch.  
So there I was, my confidence had been knocked, things weren’t going my way, I was feeling the cold from the bitter wind blowing through camp and in truth, I wasn’t really enjoying this experience. I started to dwell on the idea of bailing out.

I think Des was feeling the cold as well because, while I was faffing around with my tarp, he had gathered some wood and got a fire going in my honey stove. On reflection, I think another thing that knocked my confidence was that I was too pre-occupied to ‘do my bit’ and help Des out with the wood prep. It’s fair to say at this point that I was a terrible camp mate!

After lunch, I opened up to Des about my thoughts on bailing out of camp and the fact that things really weren’t going my way. I think I did this knowing what kind of a response I’d get from Des and I wasn’t disappointed! “f##k off, you can’t bail out now, it’s only a bit of wind…..”. Des, of course was right, I was just a bit down about things and needed to start taking more positive action. Thanks for the kick up the back side Des.
 

I put my thicker socks on to warm up my feet (while my feet were dry, I think the wading through the deep puddles had transformed my boots into a pair of ice blocks!), I also reached for my tarp once more and established a low-slung A-frame shelter. While I was doing this, Des decided that he wasn’t happy with the fire and opted to do away with the stove and establish a larger open fire.

I’d also set-up my sleeping quarters for the night – a brand new Mil-tec bivvy bag containing my usual Exped Downmat, Quechua pillow and Alpkit Mountain Ghost 300 sleeping bag.

All of these options proved to be a game changer for me. The tarp was much more stable in the wind, and it didn’t take long for us both to feel the warming effect of the open fire. We were also very fortunate in so much as there was a lot of oak available to burn and this is a lovely warm wood to use on a fire. I had quickly transformed from someone who was downbeat and thinking of bailing out on camp, to a happy and jovial camper who was very grateful for the warm embrace of the fire. 

With the winter solstice just around the corner, daylight is in short supply and by 4pm, darkness had descended on camp. As I stared into the glowing abyss of the fire, it didn’t take long for me to start thinking about dinner, I’m such a greedy g!t!

Sausage, eggs and beans – a cheap, simple meal and easily one of my favourite things to cook when camping!

Des and I spent the rest of the evening sitting around the fire, enjoying a couple of beers and talking nonsense!

The weather was forecast to get wet and windy from 9pm onwards and it didn’t disappoint, we took this as our queue to bed down for the night. I was warm and comfortable in my new bivvy bag and was grateful for the weather protection that it offered because the rain was very heavy through the night and the high winds started to blow the rain into the open ends of my shelter. I awoke a couple of times through the night, mainly due to the sound of myself snoring or the heavy rain beating on the tarp.

The next morning we awoke to a very different day indeed. It was calm and bright, but very wet indeed. It was clear that we had a lot of rain through the night as the ‘water-logged path of doom’ was even more water-logged than yesterday (ooh ‘eck!). Time to get the kettle on and start packing up camp. 

As I packed up, I noticed that the new bivvy bag suffered with a bit of condensation during the night as there was some dampness on the lower half of my sleeping bag. I must admit that I wasn’t entirely surprised that the bivvy bag would suffer with condensation. Most bivvy bags do seem to have issues with breathability and I think it’s a bit difficult at the moment to pass judgement on this particular bag. The weather conditions were far from ideal, I sleep very hot (which probably doesn’t help) and should note that I remained warm and comfortable in my sleeping bag. I was however very impressed at how spacious it was and indeed how wind and waterproof it proved through the night. I’ll see how it performs on future camping trips and then think about posting up a more detailed review at some point down the line.

Once Des and I had packed up, we ensured that the site was nice and clean and we tentatively waded our way back through the water-logged path. As we walked back into town, it became evident quite how windy it had been because there were one or two fence panels blown over!

It's fair to say that this camping trip was a tester. But it has marked my 12^th camp over the year and I think that’s my third year of camping once a month, every month. It’s been a real pleasure to enjoy the outdoors and experience all the different seasons in all their glory. Just getting out through the seasons teaches you so much about the outdoors and how you must respect the conditions and learn how to adapt your camping rituals.

Once again, many thanks for checking in on my blog. I apologise that it’s been so long since my last post, sometimes other priorities take over and I don’t always get the time to produce these blog posts. I enjoy writing them though and will endeavour to keep the blog updated throughout 2020.

Feel free to let me know what you think about the blog and why not think about subscribing so that you can get notifications of my future posts.

Happy New Year

Oh and here’s a link to Des’ youtube channel and the video that he posted of this trip, if you like what you see then why not subscribe to his channel and help him reach the 1000 subscriber milestone.