Just a fun little question, given the advantages of flexibility a bivi bag offers, what's the oddest, most exposed, public, or just,plain stupidest place you've kipped in a bivi?
Ive still mostly tent camped so far but I have once fallen asleep for 4 hours on top of a picnic bench up Brecon during a road ride. Climbed into the bag in just my riding clothes and helmet for a pillow, woke up at 3am freezing (obviously) to get riding again, last time I slept wearing a chamois still I can assure you!
I'm still trying to work out whom has the weirdest sleeping habits....ultralight alpinists? Or 50 year old audax racers and their bus stops?
In the (very sheltered) doorway of the Glenshee ski complex. I was originally going to bivvy nearer Braemar but figured a temperature inversion would make it a chilly night at lower levels. (I was proven right the following morning)
Not a bivvy but when we were cycling across Canada we turned up in a Quebcois town just on the day that the schools broke up for summer. Everyone was there. Seriously, absolutely everyone.
So we rocked up at the tourist info about 6pm and it's not far from closing. The guy in there gives us a look of sheer Gallic pity. We're no getting in at the municipal campsite, it's been full for hours. The next available B&B/hotel/hostel is another two hours ride away and $90. Even in Canadian, that's a bit eye watering. He says that we have two options for camping. a) go into the park and try and keep out of sight. However, it being first day of holidays, kids will be there all night partying and the police will turn up and kick everyone out at some point. b) there's a carpark we can use.
It's not a luxury by any stretch but it's mostly out of use, cars can no longer get into it and we're very unlikely to be disturbed. So we ride down this road, past the campsite and it's beyond backed. People are tripping over their neighbours guy ropes to get into their own tent. about a mile out of town we see the now blocked gateway into the carpark. It used to serve the ski slope when that was still in business but now it isn't. They raised some earth works so that travellers couldn't drive in and turn it into a squat but you can get a bike over it easy. We pitch on the least cracked bit of tarmac we can find in a far corner. Can't be seen from the road so the police can ignore us if they want. Lumps of rock and concrete are used instead of pegs. A rusty but of rebar serves to dig a toilet pit in the brush.
Our hopes of a quiet night look pretty bad when a a group of kids turn up around dusk. Early teens and already drunk. They see us but they're not bothering us to begin with but they're getting drunker and some of them are trying to start a fire. I'm not convinced they'll hassle us unless they get a lot more drunk but a fire could bring the police and leave us with a two hour ride and $90 bill for the night and possibly a fine for illegal camping. Then it begins. To start with I think they're throwing pebbles at the tent and I peek out the tent door. Not pebbles but big drops of rain. The kids look like they're trying to decide whether to take cover in the trees on the other side of the road or brass it out. They look at me and I look beyond them, up the valley. As the big drops start to get faster, I gesticulate at the rain, the other rain that's pushing fast down the valley. As Mrs. Tiger and me stick the bikes under the bare shelter of a couple of bushes and pack into the tent the kids start running for town. A few minutes later two weather systems collide over town. I don't reckon the kids made it back dry.
We nearly didn't either. Thunder and lightening aren't so bad but the rain was biblical. The carpark started flooding and for an hour from inside we watched the water as it started to climb up the groundsheet. About 1/4 inch from the tent getting flooded and we're seconds away from giving up and making a run for the hotel.
And then suddenly it stops.
The waters slowly recede and we get an uneasy night's sleep, praying it doesn't rain again. It doesn't. But in the morning, we promise to never camp in a carpark again.
Heavy rain all day, and we arrived at a campground in the dark, soaked through. Only one other camper on site, and they had a toilet block to themselves. Three of us kipped in a well appointed public toilet - aside from the smell and the dirt, this was luxurious glamping. Hot showers, a dryer that the other guys must have run for at least an hour to dry their shorts, and a power point for charging gadgets.
Absolute bliss, and it was sandwiched right between an ace technical descent the night before and then many miles of rolling forest singletrack in the morning.
Recently on here someone used the phrase "audax hotel" to describe a bus shelter and that's one of my new favourite phrases
In my back garden. Was locked out, as i had left my keys inside. Parents were out and due to return the next morning( pre mobile phone era). Broke into the garage. Rolled my sisters Duke of ed mat and sleeping bag out. Went to sleep. Got into loads of trouble the next day, as the dogs had not been let out by me and one had crapped in the hall.
Last edited by Justchris on Tue Jun 14, 2016 11:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
On a brevet on Vancouver Island in 2009, we got into Campbell River (biggest of the small towns on that end of the island) around 2 in the morning. Needed to be up at around 6 to make it back to the finish with time. Too cheap to get a hotel, although there was a couple there. So we found a bank with an ATM area. Frosted glass up to about shoulder height, heated (thank goodness) and big enough for my ride buddy and I and our two bikes to stretch out.
Slept until around 5:30 at which point an older lady came in to use the ATM,and found us just getting ready to leave. She kinda looked at us funny while we walked out the door. Didn't ask us any questions :)
Under the veranda at Llanwrtyd Wells school, after the appalling weather on a coast to coast attempt with Gian, Neil and Andy.
Bivvied up at the Halfway Cafe on the Great Irme in Feb. Nice peaceful spot, I thought. Turns out the Great Orme Marine Drive is a race track at night. Who knew?
Firstly after a VERY wet day a few years ago we stopped in a bus stop, it was a luxury 4* hotel
This year we had a very cheeky bivy in the campsite of the Dyfi Enduro... we didn't pay but got free water, toilets and even DJ and party tent with a bar!
JohnClimber wrote:And next to the cafe on the top of Snowdon, woken every 20 to 30 minutes with walkers celebrating when completing the 3 peaks (never again)
And they leave the lights on in the cafe doors, so it's too bright to get to sleep
Inside a 24hrs Mcdonalds so that I didn't breach the compulsory 6 hour stoppage rule on the Tour Aotearoa. I'd stopped to eat some food, it was late so to maximise the use of the stoppage rule and prevent my movement registering on the GPS I blagged, by giving a charitable donation, use of the locked children's play area to sleep in for about 4hrs. Pretty sure that counted as commercial services available to all entrants so it was legit. They closed the building with only use of the drive through after around midnight so my bike was safe inside with me.
Justchris wrote:In my back garden. Was locked out, as i had left my keys inside. Parents were out and due to return the next morning( pre mobile phone era). Broke into the garage. Rolled my sisters Duke of ed mat and sleeping bag out. Went to sleep. Got into loads of trouble the next day, as the dogs had not been let out by me and one had crapped in the hall.
Ha Ha, when I got my new Bivi bag I slept outside on my balcony, 3 floors up, slap bang in the middle of a major city with a comfy bed not 5m away...
Justchris wrote:In my back garden. Was locked out, as i had left my keys inside. Parents were out and due to return the next morning( pre mobile phone era). Broke into the garage. Rolled my sisters Duke of ed mat and sleeping bag out. Went to sleep. Got into loads of trouble the next day, as the dogs had not been let out by me and one had crapped in the hall.
Reminds me of a tale from when I lived in N. Wales.
We had been in the pub in Llanberis and at about 9pm my landlord decided he was going up to the Vaynol in Nant Peris. My mate lived on the way so asked for a lift as he had promised his wife he'd be be back by nine. On passing the end of the road to his house he decided that another pint (or two) was in order. Some time later he gets home and finds that his key won't open the door. Not noticing the sleeping bag and mat laid out on the ground by the front door he pulls stuff out of the garden shed and sleeps in there for the night.
In the morning he's sober enough to "enter the house by other means" since he still can't open the front door. Once inside he discovers the reason: his wife had got so angry at him not being home on time that she had secured the door by nailing roofing battens across the inside.
The next new route we did we named it "Bed of Nails"
Better weight than wisdom, a traveller cannot carry
As a teenage backpacker in I arrived late in Cadaques, Spain (where Dali lived) and slept on the beach with a few friends. We drank vodka, lit some candles, and set an alarm. I woke up to an alarm clock that was both ringing and on fire. Dali indeed.
Don't know why, but bivving in a cave is a strange experience. Snake/spider fear maybe,
Not sure if it counts as a bivvy, but when the kids were a lot younger a few mates and I went out into town, and got absolutely trashed. I was meant to sleep at the in-laws as I could get the bus back to theirs (whereas the bus only goes past our village once per week). When I got to the in-laws they were obviously in bed, and I couldn't get a response from the front door, so I thought it would be a good idea to sleep on their front garden. In November. In a tee-shirt. I was woken around 5am by the MIL, and was clearly hypothermic, very drunk, and unable to function. I was put to bed, missed my daughters first ever rugby match, and was firmly in the dog house for about a week. I think that was the coldest I have ever been, and probably the longest time I have spent in the dog house! Was a good night though!
In my yoof...in the roof space of a half built house in the suburbs of Melbourne. Very wet outside, and the roof space was insulated, so a toasty, dry night was welcome. Disappeared before the builders returned to site next morning.
Once climbed Mt Warning on the east coast of Australia in the dark with a mate and pitched up on top. Woke up at sparrow fart to learn I'd pitched maybe 4' from the edge of a very, very long drop.
