2012 Bivvy* a month challenge

[Taylor]

7/7 done

Last one was a bit of a damp squib, damp being the key word.

Noisy bands playing music down the valley, stags bellowing for their hareem of women about 100 metres away, Badgers making a racket in the undergrowth, pheasants inspecting my camp at 5 am and TigerMatt's favourite......Slugs.
Topped off with loads of rain.
Friday evening was ok but bedtime onwards was torrential type stuff.
No pics as I forgot my camera.


Overall, not the best bivi but july ticked off as per the challenge.

[gairym]

July trip - well and truly done!

[Chew]

7/7 for me.

Bivi at the top of Snowdon this morning. Video of the decent to follow.

[Blackhound]

7/7 for me also, just a local one.

[gairym]

8 out of 8!

I did some maths on Friday and realised that I have no free evenings for the rest of the month and so, beginning to panic about the '2012 Bivi a month challenge', I opted to do a 12 hour stealth-bivi last night.

About 20:15 after finishing dinner I set-off, rode 10 miles and slept under the stars.

Minimal kit: mat, groundsheet, 700g summer bag and a tiny tarp (just in case) - sorted!

It warm as hell last night (for the first couple of hours I was laid on my sleeping bag in only my shorts) and so no need to spoil the view of the stars with the tarp - lovely.

Up at 06:00, to the patisserie by 07:00, full of cake/pastries by 07:15 and home by 08:30 - pretty much 12 hours exactly!

Here's a nice little shot I took this morning (I slept inside that ruin you see behind the bike):



Bring on next month.....

Gairy.

[Blackhound]

8/8. Was supposed to get a Eurostar to Lille and a TGV to Lyon to ride back up to Lille. Grench conductors would not allow Elliott and myself on TGV with our bikes as they were not bagged.

No problem, we just rode towards Oudenaarde and bivvied near a canal. Next day we were riding through some lovely Belgian villages and back to the French border, it was a Belgian holiday and everything was shut. Next day we rode from near Givet back into Belgium, travelling through Bastogne and into Luxembourg and Germany. Except for the area near Chareroi these three days were excellent. Germany and Luxembourg was beautiful. Back into Belgium and then France before heading North this was a lovely trip of about 500 miles.

Clervaux, Luxembourg:


P8161009 by blackhound59, on Flickr

[Taylor]

8/8 with Ian, Mark and Steve.

[Chew]

8/8 for me too. 5 nights out tramping a across Wales.

[Taylor]

Single night on Dartmoor with Ian and Mark.
9/9

[gairym]

Damn it - I'm very quickly running out of September!

I'm going to have to squeeze in another stealth bivi sometime in the next week (we leave for the UK a week tomorrow) otherwise I could bivi before/after the Coed Y Brenin Enduro but it's not ideal (as I'll be knackered and already have some free accommodation sorted).

Ok, I need to get planning - I refuse to not complete this challenge!

[Chew]

September ticked off, with a week of Sea Kayaking off the west coast of Scotland.



Loading the Kayaks up with camping gear, food then paddling out to the islands for a spot of boat tramping.
It was also a bit choppy at times as well

[Cheeky Monkey]

Jealous

[Blackhound]

9/9, got a localish one in last week bivvying in a country park.

BB200 for October.

[pedalhead]

Looks very cool Chew. Got a pic of the kayak loaded up?

[Nick]

Slept on the overflow carpark at CyB before the Enduro at the weekend so that's two months in a row for me now.

[gairym]

Gutted!!!!!

I failed to get a night out in for September.

After my herniated disc (twice) and then my concussion and whip-lash incident I was in no state to be camping and so I waited until Saturday night to make one last attempt.....

I was up-North having a beer and curry with some old school mates and asked one of them if, once we got back to his, I could pitch my tent in his garden rather than use his spare room and then I was going to hope that you guys would forgive the lack of 'wildness' and deem the effort worthy of continuation in the challenge.

But.....once we got back (around midnight) I realise that I'd forgotten my tent poles and so my plan was scuppered until my mate said that I could use his pop-up tent for the night.

Thinking that I might yet 'successfully' complete the challenge for September I accepted but once he popped it up and left me in his garden for the night I realised (just as it started raining) that the tent was actually about a foot shorter than me and that if I spent the night pushing up against both ends that not only would I be miserably cold/wet but also that my wife's down bag would be soaked and so I reluctantly retreated to the house.

So.....3/4's of the way through the year I have failed this challenge which, whilst not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, has really got me miffed (on top of missing the Coed Y Brenin enduro last weekend, a weekend at the Afan Forest this coming weekend and then the BB200 next weekend).

On the plus side my back's slowly improving and I'm thinking that I might walk the first bit of the BB200 route (setting off just after you guys) and camp the night somewhere for the night next weekend and so maybe I'll see a bunch of you there for the start.

Yours, down and out (of the challenge), Gairy.

[Blackhound]

Gairy,

These things happen, bad luck. Start again, try and do 12 consecutive months from October!

My enthusiasm for the idea was that we have all this kit and probably do not use it enough to justify the expense. Or is it just me? So a little challenge likes this will get me out once a month and either try different kit or go somewhere different.

[Chew]

Got a pic of the kayak loaded up?

The Kayaks loaded up in the pic. All the stuff goes in the hatches in the front and back of the kayak, in those black hatches.

Hard luck Gairy
I'm the same as Kevin. The challenge is more of an excuse to get out and have an adventure once a month, even if its only to the woods around the corner.

[gairym]

cheers guys.

of course it doesn't really matter as it's already served it's purpose and gotten me out more than i would otherwise have managed but it's still a bit annoying to have missed out on doing the whole year!

i've got a couple of nights out in October planned already and so it's not as though i'm lacking in nights out under the stars.

[nobeerinthefridge]

This thread is a great idea!. I'll need to give this a try next year, no, bu66er it, october - october!. As you guys say, it'll get me out more, and it'll also gimme a chance to test out kit and see what works/doesn't work. Excitement mounting....

[Bearbonesnorm]

Myself and Mr (you said it wasn't far) Davies, have just spent a lovely couple of days out in the hills. There was no fixed plan although I was hoping to explore some trails I'd been meaning to visit for quite a while



As is often the way with deepest, darkest Wales ... the map shouldn't always be believed. This should be the start of a long, downhill bridleway running over a 'surfaced' track. It wasn't, in fact it continued to look something like this for the next couple of miles before ending at a knee deep river



I'm always a little surprised by how quickly it goes dark at this time of year, one minute you're riding along and the next it's black. I did have a couple of potential overnight spots in mind, one of which was marked 'fire hut' on the map and indicated a building. Obviously it was located at the highest point of the forest we were in, so off we went. An hour of quite exciting, riding in the dark without lights brought us to our prize ... bugger all. Whatever structure once stood there was long gone, so I found the only remaining 10 square feet of dry ground in the entire forest and stuck my Trailstar up.



I was awake nice and early so caught the sunrise from my bivvy bag.



The wind had got up during the night so it was pretty fresh packing up. Luckily the high camp had saved us from a temp' inversion that covered the valley bottoms in frost. After 10 minutes riding we both started to warm up, which was great until we hit 2 rivers, both of which were thigh deep and both of which needed crossing



The remainder of the day carried on in pretty much the same vain ... rivers, rocky tracks, 5' deep ruts, stupidly steep bedrock descents and lots questions about how far was it

[Chew]

10/10 with the BB200. December gala in the planning and just November to sort out.

[Taylor]

Nearly forgot to log this month's!

As you'll all know a small select few slackers went to Claerddu bothy for the night where we met some student's(nearly) and some BB200 slackers.
It would appear we had a toasty warm night in the hills, something a lot of the others on this forum didn't. :D
With lot's of wine, cheese, cooked meats, whiskey, etc.
It did, however, resemble a laundry a some points during the evening.



Photo shamelessly stolen from Zippy

10/10

[Cheeky Monkey]

Cor those rules are playing a g sharp they're so stretched. Next thing we know caravaning will count

However, at 2/10 I'm not one to talk!

[gairym]

right, i'm back on track!

obviously not to manage 12/12 for 2012 as that's now a physical impossibility but.....i did manage to get out for a night in the wild a few days ago meaning that i'm 9/10 which (under the circumstances) is acceptable.

i was right down in the bottom corner of France visiting my sister-in-law and so i took the opportunity to sneak over the border and spent the night in sunny Spain!

i'd never been to Spain before and being so close it seemed silly not to make the most of it.

here are a few shots:





it was the first time i'd used my new borah gear bivi bag and it worked a treat!

all-in-all a lovely little excursion.

bring on November!

cheers, gairy.