Best bivvies
Ronald Turnbull celebrates his 100th summit bivvy and revisits his favourite summit sleep-outs
IT’S EASY TO UNDERESTIMATE Bleaberry Fell. The ridge along from High Seat is flat, and bits of it are boggy. Even if there was anything to see, you’d be looking down at the squelchy stuff underfoot.
But then you reach the cairn. And what appears front of you is one of Lakeland’s great views. A lake, obviously: you’re eyeballing the islands of Derwent Water. The Grasmoor group, reflecting merrily in the water. Skiddaw, suddenly straight ahead. And a second lake, Bassenthwaite, reaching onwards to a misty glimpse of Scotland across the Solway.
In all this, it’s easy to ignore, down below your toes, the small uptick at the moorland edge that’s the top of Walla Crag. Not this afternoon, though. Because after unrolling my bivvy bag on 99 UK summits, Walla Crag is about to become my number 100.
SHADES OF FUN
It should have been Scafell. But then the weather forecast whispered in my ear: overnight snow showers, Ronald. Minus four degrees, and a cheerful breeze.
There are some forms of fun that actually are fun. There are other forms of fun that you only enjoy after they’re over. One or two of my 99 bivvies on mountain summits have been that second sort of fun. It’s true that a bivvy at minus four can be enjoyed. But for this 100th one, I really did want fun number one – the sort of fun that’s fun all the way through. Even including the nasty bits.
And this is the first lesson of bivvying: flexibility.
A little soft hail fell around us as we descended, bouncing on the ground like small balls of polystyrene. On the higher ground around us the snow was lying. It was deeper than anywhere just across the Vale of St John on Stybarrow Dodd. Or maybe it just felt that way to my companion – a bloke called Russ, who had spent the previous night on top of Stybarrow Dodd. Russ is one of those people I like walking with because they make the things I do seem altogether sensible and mainstream. I have considered bivvying out on all of the Wainwright summits – bagging in its truest sense. But Russ is bivvying on all them virtually non-stop, over the course of a single year (he posts on Instagram as @amountainbivvy.)
Walla Crag will be his 45th.
We reached Walla’s top at around 6.30pm. A chilly wind was blowing, the light was fading into evening, and the view from Walla Crag looked about as lovely as Lakeland gets. Which is to say, very lovely indeed. Supper would be slightly delayed, with photos waiting to be taken in every direction. And then some more photos, as the clouds wafted around Walla and the colours of the sky slowly faded into nightfall.
UP WITH THE LARCH
Around 8pm the clouds thickened up and went a nasty purplish colour, like the bruise you get when a stone was in the
wrong place under your bivvy bag.
The brink of Walla Crag, high above the lake, didn’t seem like such a great place any more.
And this is the second lesson of bivvying: compromise.
You can’t always have it all. Do you want the great view of Skiddaw and Bassenthwaite Lake? Or do you want the larch trees just pushing out their green spring needles, and the deep, squishy heather underneath them? We wanted the deep, squishy heather. A choice that was confirmed when some more of those hailstones started dropping between the larch twigs. It makes a pleasant pattering on the outside of the bag; but when it hits the ground, it bounces in through the breathing aperture you left.
And at daybreak, with the wind dropped away and mist rising like ghosts from the grave of Derwent Water to haunt the streets of Keswick and the slopes below Skiddaw – when that happens it’s easy-peasy to pick up the bag with the sleeping bag and mat still inside it, shake off the snow and wander back to the summit again.
At 5 o’ clock the sun came up behind Blencathra like a freshly squeezed orange. The hills woke up, slapped on some blusher and went back to their job of being beautiful all around the lake. The day’s first visitors arrived: a couple of runners up out of the town. As I took their photo for them, one of them said: “Have you heard about this bloke on Instagram, sleeping out on the Wainwrights?”
I glanced knowingly towards Russ, currently taking pictures of Skiddaw.
“You’re him, really! Oh, let’s see the cookies!”
When it comes to doing odd endeavours over the Wainwrights, Instagram has a lot to answer for. In early May this year, there were actually two Wainwright extremists at it at the same time. Laurie Crayston (@ lauriecrayston, aka the Cookie Monster) was trying to cross them all in one 14-day walk, carrying all his own gear, phone (of course) and also all his food, living on nine crusty cookies every day.
SLEEPING OUT
By 7am we were heading downhill. On Castle Head there was still a great view of
“This isn’t just sleeping. It’s sleeping out. It’s the cheap nylon bag that gives you the freedom of the hills.”
Derwent Water, and the sunshine even had some warmth in it.
At Dock Park we passed two middleaged women looking unexpectedly jolly. “We’ve been for a swim.”
“Wetsuits, and a quick in and out?” we guessed.
“No, wetsuits and half an hour in the water.”
As I said, so nice to meet people who make the stuff I do seem sensible.
At 8 o’clock it was clouding over, but the cafés were just opening to offer hot breakfast and coffee. At 8.30 it was raining. All over Keswick people were stirring from the self-catering and deciding today wasn’t one for the hills. It was, but they’d missed it! At 9 o’ clock, Russ was dipping into the bag to find out which random summit was his sleepout for that night. Looked like it was going to be Long Side on Skiddaw…
A tent is just a way of bringing the indoors to the outdoors. It’s true the tent lacks most of what we look for in the indoors – warm bed, plasma-screen TV, pizza delivery service. But it does give one feature, safely shutting away the sky and the stars and the sunset. In a bivvy bag, you leave your face out in the open air unless it’s really raining. The wind blows through your hair, you watch the plough slowly circling the Pole Star, you wake up at daybreak like the moorland birds around you. You watch the sunlight creeping down the tops of the mountains, and the dawn mist rising off the lake. This isn’t just sleeping. It’s sleeping out. It’s the cheap nylon bag that gives you the freedom of the hills. Even if, unlike Russ, I’m not planning to sleep in mine every night from now until Christmas.