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Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 8:46 pm
by JohnClimber
HaYWiRe wrote:
JohnClimber wrote:10/10 from me
My Bear Bones adjustable carbon poles were spot on, cheers Stuart great idea
Even though it rained I was nice and dry overnight :-bd

What bag are you using under the tarp?

Is that some sort of mesh shelter?
It's a Borah bag
http://borahgear.com/sidebivy.html

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 9:54 pm
by gazaddy
JohnClimber wrote:10/10 from me
2/2/ this year
Feb the hardest month bagged early just in case it turns sh!te

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My Bear Bones adjustable carbon poles were spot on, cheers Stuart great idea
Even though it rained I was nice and dry overnight :-bd
Hi , what handlebars are they please.. I have son alpkit bombers which I've not fitted yet and yors look a wider flare with more grip area..cheers

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:08 pm
by barney
2/2 for me with John last night

bivy spot was 20 minutes from the local Spar and chippy, I had the great idea of buying some kitchen foil and wrapping the take away. Got to the bivy spot and even had time to brew a coffee before we both tucked into some lovely warm food. :-bd

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Unlike John I went for the tarp tent because I'm a wuss :oops:

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Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:24 pm
by JohnClimber
gazaddy wrote:
Hi , what handlebars are they please.. I have son alpkit bombers which I've not fitted yet and yors look a wider flare with more grip area..cheers
They are the Digest bars from Ison Distribution via a re seller of theirs

http://www.ison-distribution.com/englis ... t=HBGED44K

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 11:20 pm
by gazaddy
Thanks John

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:33 pm
by Scud
two for two, last weekends February bivvy. 3 old friends came to visit me in my adopted home of North Norfolk, covered some decent distance on the sand from Wells next the Sea along to Brancaster and back, on the saturday, bivvy overnight, then over to ride the beaches near Hunstanton on the Sunday.

Image[/url]53 by Scud75, on Flickr[/img]

Image[/url]26 by Scud75, on Flickr[/img]

Image[/url]17 by Scud75, on Flickr[/img]

Image[/url]13 by Scud75, on Flickr[/img]

Image[/url]c by Scud75, on Flickr[/img]

Image[/url]6 by Scud75, on Flickr][/img]

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 4:55 pm
by Dr Nick
Scud, what sleeping mat is that please? looks veeeeeery comfy indeed.

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 5:24 pm
by Scud
Scud, what sleeping mat is that please? looks veeeeeery comfy indeed.
It is a random one i bought off of "Outdoor Gear Exchange" on Facebook (great place to buy/sell kit as 45000 members!)

The mat itself is a Numo Astro Air, great mat, but i had never heard of it until it was advertised there. I'm 100kg of rugby lad and it's very comfy, better than the Alpkit Cloudbase and Exped Synmat i've had before.

https://www.amazon.com/Nemo-Astro-Air-S ... B0055DY2WY

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:13 pm
by Dr Nick
Thanks Scud :-bd

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 12:02 am
by Charliecres
Having failed in Jan due to illness, I broke my 2017 duck with a cold, damp local overnighter. The loggers had turned both singletrack and bridleways into something more like a WW1 battlefield, which was nice. Still, we managed to console ourselves with a couple of pints of Surrey Puma and some posh parmesan and rosemary chips before heading out to bed down for the night. It was a drizzly, cold night but,hey-ho, it's Feb. Got a bit chilly striking camp (had forgotten an extra layer) and my hands were properly numb and useless all the way home. Once back in the warm I felt very odd and promptly passed out, smashing my face into the bathroom unit. Spent the rest of the day in A&E getting stitches and a whole bunch of ECGs, X-rays and blood tests to make sure it wasn't my heart exploding (it wasn't). Now need to convince my other half that winter bivvies are not a form of protracted self-harm. Bugger. :???:

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 9:39 am
by Taylor
Hope it's just a short term thing Charlie.

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 4:46 pm
by Charliecres
Cheers Taylor. I'm sure it's nothing and so was the doc - eventually.

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 6:49 pm
by Bearbonesnorm
Aye, glad you're alright Charles. Seemingly, many of us are at the right / wrong age for that sort of thing.

I used to black-out while riding on motorways. After 2 years of tests, it was decided that there was nothing wrong with me ... well, nothing to make me black-out on motorways anyway :wink:

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2017 7:43 pm
by Charliecres
:-bd

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 2:06 am
by BigdummySteve
Bearbonesnorm wrote:
I used to black-out while riding on motorways.:
Probably guilty conscience, you do know it's illegal to cycle on motorways don't you?

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2017 10:43 am
by Bearbonesnorm
Probably guilty conscience, you do know it's illegal to cycle on motorways don't you?
Who said bicycle? :wink:

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2017 10:47 am
by sean_iow
2/12

I got February's in at the first opportunity as I am busy at the weekends the rest of the month. All faffing done on Thursday night so on Friday it was just fitting the bags on the bike and head out after dinner. A 17 mile ride from home to end up only 4 miles away from where I started as the crow flies. I found an out of the way spot and with tarp up was swiftly into my bag as there were a few snow flakes falling. Sadly it didn't amount to much and had stopped after half an hour :sad: Alarm went off before first light, coffee made packed up and on my way home by 07:00. Straight home and indoors eating breakfast by 08:00 as I had already promised that on Saturday I'd help a friend put his car (Mk2 Escort) back together, he's got in my workshop but has sold it so needs to get it drivable and MOT'd. Another grid square ticked off, SZ68, and another month done :smile:

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Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 10:41 pm
by Blair512
Having recently joined the dark side and bought a cheapo road bike for running up and down to work on my mate showed interest in coming on a bivvy as long as it was on the roadies and we used a tent, who am I to turn down some company and the chance to get someone new into bike packing!

So I set of on the train heading for Fife early on Saturday morning to meet up with Lee and show him what he's been missing, unfortunatly I left my backpack with all of the gear he was borrowing from me on the train when I got off at Haymarket so I ended up having to go all the way to waverly and run about like a maddy trying to find my bag on the plethora of trains which seem to frequent this station! Eventually I found the right train 5 minutes before it departed again and I was reunited with a bag full of old gear and my all important tent poles. A further half hour wait and an hour on a train got me to Fife and finally I could get on with some cycling.

I headed out to Auchtermuchty to meet up with Lee, strapped the gear to his bike and off we set in to the miserable pissing rain with me raving about how good a time we were going to have and that if you look really far in the distance it doesn't look like it's raining. For the first couple of miles I thought he was going to turn around and head home but we pushed on and by the time we'd ridden the short distance to Lindores it was dry and all was well with the world.

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We pressed on towards Auchterarder, where we planned to eat that night, the pace was relaxed as we only had 30 or so miles to cover before dinner. We made Auchterarder at the back of 5 and the search for a pub was on, after much debate we settled on the Glen Devon hotel, this turned out to be a great decision as they served up the best steak pie I've had in years, all washed down with a few pints of Stella.

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By the time we emerged from the bar it was going on for 9 and I was half pissed so we decided to find somewhere to camp sharpish as the tempreature was dropping quickly. About a mile out of town we found a small area of woodland which was perfect, we were nicely sheltered from the wind and hopefully not to much rain would land on us. I had a cracking nights sleep in my new Alpkit Skyehigh 500, Lee on the other hand spent the night shivering in an old synthetic bag and no ground mat, I wish I had a spare I could have lent him, it would have made it a much more enjoyable experince.

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We rose late the next morning, at a quick breakfast, packed up and hit the road. It was far to cold for faffing around. Making it back to my house was the order of the day and a climb up and over Glen Devon stood between us and the warmth of home. We slowly pulled our way up the climb, I encouraged Lee with promises of an exilerating descent down the other side and flat roads all the way home. As we crested the summit and headed down hill it became apparent that I was lying, a feirce head wind meant we were struggling to hit 10 mph pedalling down the hill and then to add insult to injury it started snowing!

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The rest of the ride was in truth a bit of a slog, head winds, blustery snow showers and busy sunday traffic meant we couldn't relax and enjoy the ride as we had done the previous afternoon and we were both glad when we reached the safety of home. Unfortunatly Lee still had a couple of hours on the train to get back to Fife but not before he got warmed up again at mine.

I had a great weekend, only 65 miles covered and not much climbing done but it was brilliant having one of my best mates along for the ride and in the end it's not all about suffering or KOM's it's about getting out and having some fun on yer bike. Hopefully Lee enjoyed it enough to come along again sometime, I bet it's not until summer though!

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 10:07 am
by RIP
Enjoyed that thanks, nice little example of what it's all about :-bd . Snow's the icing on the cake - almost literally. No mat, Feb = >ouch< though...

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 11:12 am
by Blair512
Thanks Reg, aye he was pretty cold by morning but there's talk of LeJog now so he couldn't have hated it too much!

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 4:22 pm
by Mike
A quick overnight in the woods after a few beers and some whisky with Hux. The night was full of fog, hux got soaked in his bivvy bag and the lunar showed signs of moisture around the vents :-bd

2 headaches this morning and a second bivvy for feb!

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 5:20 pm
by HUX
As above^ followed by a cracking breakfast
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Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 9:48 am
by whitestone
2/2 for Cath and me. Last night was a bivy in a Finnish laavu (a wooden lean to, open on one side. A bit like a bothy but I think they are constructed/run by the communities.) this one was just inside the Arctic Circle :-bd No northern lights, all a bit cloudy at the mo.

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 7:14 pm
by crewlie
A trip up the hill to one of the fire watch towers looking over the Venasque forest. I'd looked at sleeping up here before but it always been a bit too windy, being so exposed. So a decent forecast saw me and my bivvy bag set off to catch the sunset.

ImageFire Watch Tower...Feb bivvy. by Mark Berry, on Flickr

Ate and watched the skies before inflating my mat, which promptly deflated. My first experience of trailside sleeping mat repair (and it stayed up).

ImageFeb 16 by Mark Berry,on Flickr

I misjudged the likely temperature at 500m and woke in mist at 6am, pretty cold, I think I needed more than my cumulus quilt this time.

ImageDSC00957 by Mark Berry, on Flickr

Got up and moving and was rode up a bit higher into where the sun was breaking through.

ImageDSC00959 by Mark Berry, on Flickr

Then down along some nicely rocky tracks back towards home, past this old Jag waiting hopefully for restoration.

ImageFeb 17 by Mark Berry, on Flickr

Re: Bivvy a Month 2017.

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2017 11:18 pm
by Pickers
Mark, that's set a pretty high bar there. Very nice.