Category: Outdoors

Vango Force 10 Helium 100

Checking out my new tent.

What gorgeous weather. It’s hard to believe it’s only March!

I made the most of it and finally got to erect my new tent on my mum and dad’s grass. I’d bought it a few weeks ago and needed to put it up to check it was ok, but the lawn has been way too soggy. It’s a Vango Helium 100 and is similar to my existing tent just a bit smaller and almost 2 kilos lighter. I’ll use it for walking as I realised on the Great Glen Way last summer that I really need to get my weight down when I want to walk for days at a time carrying all my gear. Although I loved the walk, it was much more enjoyable on the last two days when I had a base camp and didn’t have to carry everything all day.

I spent a lot of time looking for this tent and have read loads of reviews. I wanted something light, but not too low. Something easy and quick to get up when it’s chucking it down and blowing a gale. It has to be able to stand up to bad weather and not be draughty. It has to fit me and my backpack comfortably inside. And it couldn’t be too expensive. Once I’d decided on this one, it then took a long time to find one at a reasonable price.

It didn’t take me long at all this afternoon to erect it (I took longer than I usually will, with it being the first time). Once it was up, I lay in it and fitted perfectly. It would be a tight squeeze for anyone much taller than me though (I’m 5.4). It feels very flimsy but supposedly the material is made that way to be light but is still really strong and weather proof. I guess I won’t know till I get to use it in a storm.

The weight, by the way, is just under 1.25kg (slightly more than the advertised weight).

First Aid

I’m doing a basic first aid course with the Red Cross.

If I’m to do the training to become a walking group leader, I first need to have a relevant first aid qualification. The one I need is a bit different and a bit more involved than the bog standard one, as a first aid necessitating incident in the middle of nowhere, well out of mobile phone reception range, is a whole lot different to being in an a situation where you can expect an ambulance within 10 minutes.

There are weekend courses I can do for this in the Peak District and at some point I’ll get round to doing one. However, in the meantime I’m about to do a first aid course for school. This is a basic course over two evenings and will qualify me not only as a basic first aider, but will also allow me to teach first aid to some of my students. All good practice for when I come to do the big one.

The course I’m doing next month is offered by the Red Cross and is only about £37. But as an added bonus, school are paying, so it’s not costing me anything!

Zorbing

Bouncing down a hill in a giant beach ball

This isn’t on my list, but is the kind of thing that could have been if I had thought of it earlier. A friend is celebrating her 40th birthday this year and instead of a big one-off celebration she decided to have 40 ‘events’ with 40 different friends or groups of friends. My event was zorbing.

I drove down to Nottingham last night to stay with her. This morning we headed to the outskirts of Loughborough for our, courtesy of Groupon, bargain zorbing experience. I’d deliberately not googled it beforehand as I didn’t want to freak myself out. I was fine until we got there and saw the large balls bouncing down a very steep hill. Yes, bouncing. I was expecting rolling.

At the top of the hill we joined a queue and watched the people ahead of us squeeze through a very tiny hole to get into the balls. First panic, how am ever going to get through that hole? It actually wasn’t as bad as it looked, albeit it was very undignified. Second panic, how securely am I going to be strapped in? The guy doing the strapping was very reassuring and made sure everything was tight and secure. Then he strapped Al in opposite me.

See that tiny hole on the side? That’s what we had to crawl through.

We were getting all psyched up and ready to go when another guy popped his head in through the hole and said there was a problem with the harness and it would have to be changed. As we unstrapped, Al moved her (shoeless) foot and somehow managed to burst the ball. As the ball deflated we had to quickly ooze ourselves back out through the tiny hole. Third panic, is it possible to suffocate inside one of these overgrown pieces of plastic?

We were given another ball and started the strapping in procedure again. This time everything was ok and the barrier holding the ball in place was lifted. We were off. A nice slow start. But it quickly picked up speed. I was going backwards which was actually the better position as I was always feet first, whereas Al was head first. Each time the ball rolled our bodies to the bottom, the ball bounced and it hurt. I hadn’t expected that. It doesn’t hurt when you bounce on a trampoline, so why inside the ball? We also hadn’t expected the heat. Daft really, as we were inside a type of greenhouse, but we just hadn’t thought about it. Even before we set off we were already hot and sweaty.

Rolling down the hill seemed to take much longer than walking up had done. Once at the bottom we squeezed ourselves out again and decided not to have a second go. Al had pulled her shoulder and so it wouldn’t have been a good idea. I was glad I’d done it, but I think once is enough. I don’t think I’ll be in a rush to do it again.

After leaving the zorbing place we drove into Loughborough and sat in a lovely coffee shop for a while recovering. Then we had a wander round before going for a late lunch in a wonderful Turkish restaurant. All in all a good day.

A Quote

An apt quote for wild campers

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof, but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dew and perfumes … What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps in a field. All night long he can hear nature breathing deeply and freely.

Robert Louis Stevenson

To bivvy or not

The pros and cons of bivvying on the Great Glen Way.

I’m thinking about bivvies. I’d love to try sleeping in one, but as I don’t know anyone with one that I can borrow, I’ll have to buy my own before I can try it. I briefly toyed with the idea of getting one to sleep in for when I walk the Great Glen Way as it would be a lot smaller and lighter to carry than my tent. But as it’ll probably rain and could well be cold and there’s sure to be zillions of midges at some point (it is Scotland after all) I think a week in one might be too much. No matter how much I resent carrying my tent during the day, I’ll be really glad of it at night. I’ll have room to spread out and cook and sit up and read and feel protected from the weather and the midges. I’ve used it in really strong Icelandic and Shetland storms and it’s had no trouble surviving and I’ve always been warm and snug inside no matter what the weather’s doing outside. So the tent it is. 

I’d still like to get a bivvy though. A year or so ago, I read Ronald Turnbull’s The Book of the Bivvy and found it an informative and interesting read. More recently Alastair Humphreys has had a bit of debate on his website about which are the best bivvies to get. 


Once I get one, then I’ll have to think about where to take it to get the full bivvying overnight experience. 

Wild Camping

Considering the possibilities of wild camping on the South West Coast Path.

As I walked along the Exmoor stretch of the South West Coastal Path I thought about how I would do the walk if I was doing it in one go rather than as a series of day walks. Most camp sites are a bit of the way off the path so would add a few miles walking to each day. Not something I’d particularly want to do. There was actually one campsite that the path went through and it had signs up saying hikers could camp for one night only on their way through for £4. Usual price being a mind-boggling £13 a night! It did say that this was for 2 people, but as there was nothing about prices for individuals it sounded like if I’d stayed here instead of Porlock I’d have had to pay for a non-existent second person as well as myself.

But, to get back to the main point, if I was walking this section in one go I would have had to wild camp on some of the nights. Much of the walking was through wooded areas that sloped upwards and downwards either side of the path, so there was really nowhere to fit a tent. This was particularly true on the first day’s walk when the only flat, clear bit seemed to be at the section where the path crossed the path leading to County Gate. This was a bit of busy area and so not ideal.

Between Minehead and Porlock it would have been possible to camp on the moorland, but this would have meant a very short day’s walking. The other stretches of the walk were similar in not having many appropriately placed areas to wild camp in.

I’m planning to wild camp on the Great Glen Way in the summer, so I hope it’s easier to find places than this!

Peregrine falcon

Caves, cheese and a peregrine falcon

I drove home from Exmoor via Cheddar. I’d walked around here a few years ago, but hadn’t been in the caves. As I like caves I felt like I’d missed out. I spent most of the day here and bought a day ticket which gave me admission to both sets of caves, the museum and an open top bus tour through the gorge. 


First I went into Gough’s Cave which I walked through with an audio guide. Unfortunately the audio guides, which are included with the price of the ticket, are aimed at children. It would have been nice to have had an adult version giving me facts about the caves rather than telling me ‘when my parents are ready’ to do this, that and the other! The caves were well worth seeing though, with lots of interesting formations. There were racks of cheeses maturing inside too. 


Next I went down the road to Cox’s Cave and the Crystal Quest. The name itself had me a bit worried and I was right. I know I was in Cheddar, but do things really have to be this cheesy? The cave was a lot smaller than Gough’s Cave and most of it was some kind of adventure quest with dummies and voices and sound effects leading you through in search of some kind of magic crystal. 


The museum was quite interesting as was the bus tour through the gorge. The guide pointed out a layby where the RSPB had a telescope set up watching a couple of peregrine falcons who had nested at the top of the gorge. When I got back to my car I drove back to the layby and stopped for a while to chat to the RSPB people and check out the falcons. I was just too late to see the male fly off and the female was nowhere to be seen. I decided to stick around for a bit and was glad I did. After a while the male reappeared and flew round for a bit before coming in to land. Once back on top of the gorge he was very difficult to see. But patience paid off and he took off again for another fly round before settling in a much more viewable position. 


He was wonderful to see, but if I’d been there without the RSPB pointing things out and making them obvious I’d probably have never noticed him. I’ve been trying to learn about birds for a while now. It would nice to know what it is flying past me when I’m out walking and I should be learning about all things nature-ish for my walking group leader’s qualification. I find it hard to identify birds as when I look in a bird book they never quite look the same. I’ve thought about joining the RSPB on and off for a few years now, and I think I really should. Their magazines might help me with gaining knowledge and I’d be quite happy to support them. But as I’ve spent way too much money lately, it will have to wait a while. 

Duke of Edinburgh Award

Why I don’t want to go camping and walking this weekend.

The Duke of Edinburgh group from school have their camping and walking training expedition this weekend. It’s something I’ve been keen to get involved in ever since I’ve been a teacher but has never happened. As soon as the call went out for staff to help out this weekend I volunteered. Then I didn’t hear anything. I had been looking forward to it and it will be really useful for me to be involved in this as it could be relevant to my future plans (so I wasn’t volunteering just to be altruistic!) …

Continue reading “Duke of Edinburgh Award”

Cycling Japan

Why cycling round Japan might be a good idea.

I’ve wanted to go to Japan for years. I have Japanese friends who returned to live there a few years ago and visiting them gives me even more of a reason to go to Japan. Why haven’t I gone already?

  • When I’ve had time to go on holiday I’ve been busy visiting other places instead
  • I’d like to go for long(ish) time and so haven’t had long enough holidays off work
  • It’s very expensive
  • It’s difficult to get around and really do anything without knowing the language and a lot about the culture.

So, if I’m going to get around to ticking this one off my list I have to get over these four main issues.

The first one isn’t so major. I’ll make time for it at some point. I have plenty of time to get to all the main places I want to visit before I’m 60 and still have time to visit others as well.

Now I’m a teacher I have 6 weeks holiday in the summer. Spring and autumn are meant to be the nicest times to go as I’d get to see either the blossoms or the autumn leaves. But I could cope with missing out on those as long as I got to see the country. I’m not sure if even 6 weeks would be long enough, but I may get even more time in the future if my hostel and freelancing life plans work out. So issue no.2 is fast disappearing. 

The expense is a problem I still have to really deal with. Some people say it’s not as expensive as I think especially if I’m not staying in luxury hotels. Which I definitely wouldn’t be. I recently read an article in a travel magazine about cycling round part of Japan. Now that would be a really cheap way to get about. I could camp (hopefully – I don’t know much about the camping situtation in Japan), carry lots of packets of instant noodles, and get to out of the way places without it costing me anything.

The problem with the cycling solution is I’ve never ridden really long distances before and never carried all my gear on a bike. I would like to do this though, which is why doing a long distance cycle tour is also on my list of things to do. By doing my cycle tour in Japan I could tick off 2 challenges in one go. So now, I need to think about practising and training. I bought a cycle rack for my car at Christmas so I can take my bike out to the Peak District and cycle some of the converted railway track trails. I do want to cover these as they are very scenic, but they make for boring walking. They will make a good start for my cycle training though. As I’m too busy to even get out walking or go to the gym at the moment I don’t know when this will happen, but hopefully before the summer.

The fourth issue with my going to Japan is the culture and language. I have a friend who is a Japanophile (is there a proper word for that?) and has studied the language for years. Even she had lots of difficulties when she visited. The language is written in a mix of Japanese, Western and Chinese characters. Although she knew the Japanese and Western characters, all the Chinese characters made things very hard to read. Also there are so many rules for every little thing you do. Because foreigners don’t know the etiquette it makes it very difficult to achieve even half of what a Japanese person can in the time, and there are many things you miss out on completely.

Starting my visit by staying with my Japanese friends may be a good move as I can learn a lot from them. Akiko is pretty adventurous and not your typical Japanese woman so she may even be persuaded to do a bit of travelling with me. I’ll need to learn a bit of the language, though I have no plans for that just now. I’m studying a couple of other things at the moment and need to get them out of the way before I take anything else on. I can make a start on the culture though. I’m not starting from zero as I already know quite a bit (not nearly enough, but more than your average British person). I’ve just bought The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture which is a bit out of date but still a good place to start according to the reviews on Amazon. I must also read my Josie Dew books about her cycle tours of Japan. I like her books but I’ve never got round to reading these two even though I’ve owned them for years.

And still on the cycling theme – I’ve just come back from the Netherlands which is the world’s most cycle friendly country. As I go there most years, I could do a bit cycle tour training there. There are plenty of places it would be great to cycle round for a few days and I could carry all my gear to practice. I’ve done some cycling there in the past (including this visit) so I know how easy it is. A great place to start.

So these are my Japan visiting and cycle touring plans so far. When I start writing them down like this I feel like I’m actually getting somewhere. When they are just ideas swimming around in my head it doesn’t feel like I’m actually doing anything towards my goals. But actually, they are all ticking over all the time in the back of my mind.