A wonderful afternoon began when I witnessed an Airbus A400m Atlas heading for a flyby over Dunmail Raise and Thirlmere. The rest of the evening and through the night certainly wasn’t without drama!
As soon as I got in the tent and sorted my gear out, I fell asleep. I slept from 16:30 until 19:30! I woke to extreme buffeting on the tent and an urgent need for the gents! My late dinner consisted of vegetable soup with Cumberland sausage and pasta, followed by a dessert of nuts and dried fruit. Look how handy the third edition of the Eastern Fells is for a sturdy base for the stove!
Margy asked me on social media: “How do you stay warm?” I use two two-season sleeping bags and a bag liner, rather than a four-season bag. This gives me more flexibility during the colder months; if it gets too warm using two bags, one can be opened out and used as a quilt. I’ve always used this method. After my last toilet break, I strip down to undercrackers and socks. Your bare skin then warms the trapped air in the bag and you stay toasty (air is the best insulator).
The wind got really strong through the night, but thankfully my tent is bombproof. Any other tent than a pyramid-style tent would be down now on these dome-topped summits. I wouldn’t have any other style of tent to be honest. My tent is only two-season, but it has lots of ventilation. This allows me to cook inside while still laid in my sleeping bag. Downside is that it can get really cold inside, and my water can freeze; I’ve even had snow drifts inside the tent on some camps. But I prefer to camp this way.
After sixty plus gales from 9pm until about 2am, they seemed to have calmed down a little allowing me some sleep. However, at 5am they came back with some venom! Desperate for the gents, I reluctantly squeezed out from the warmth of my sleeping bag and headed outside to what seemed like an expedition to the North Pole. I got back inside and laid there holding onto my pole; tent pole you perves! Two hours later, and with no sign of the cloud shifting, I decided to pack up everything and head back down to Grasmere. The forecasts were for clear skies and four-mile winds, which would likely be fifteen to twenty-mile gales over some tops. However, it was far more and well over sixty, but thankfully I was in my trusted bombproof tent. I got back to the car at 10am, got home at 11am, and had some grub and a lovely bath, then a few hours’ kip.
Here are a few pics:
