Tag: camping

Hilleberg Akto

Checking out another tiny tent.

Yesterday we called in at one of the big camping shops in Heilbronn. I’d wanted to see a Hilleberg Akto when I was looking for my new lightweight tent recently. All the reviews I’d read rated it highly. It’s large enough to fit one person comfortably and someone my height can easily sit up in it. The porch area is large which is great for cooking or storing a backpack or muddy boots. It has a single pole and can be erected inner and outer simultaneously in less than five minutes. It’s made of a very thin lighweight material that is also extremely weather resistant meaning it should stand up to quite ferocious storms.

When I decided to buy the Vango Helium 100 instead there were two things that swung me: the price and the weight. At around #400 it’s really expensive – in the shop yesterday it was priced at just under €500. As they are made by a small company and don’t change much from year to year they are not like other tents which can easily be picked up for half price or less at the end of each season. The plus side to this (the man in the shop explained) is that you can always buy spare parts if the need arises. Even if you have one of the earliest tents from circa 1971 you can still get parts. The other downside to the Akto however, is the weight. Although it’s sold as a lightweight tent it weighs in a 1.6kg. A few years ago this would have been considered extremely lightweight, but not anymore. My new Vango is around 1.2kg and the Laser Comp is lighter still. They are both reputed to be as sturdy in bad weather.

The man in the shop was extremely helpful and although he knew I wasn’t about to buy one he still erected one for me so I could have a proper look. It was even better than I’d expected. The single pole erection is similar to the Vango. It felt really spacious when I sat inside and I was impressed by the porch size. I really like the idea of having one but I wouldn’t use it for walking with because of the weight and my other Vango is fine for when I’m travelling with the car and don’t need to worry about the weight.If I did happen to have a spare 400 quid though, it would be a nice luxury addition to my growing collection of outdoor sleeping options.

Below is a picture of an Akto from the Hilleberg website.

tent

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).

Papa Stour

Arriving in Papa Stour and discovering its Viking past and the best waiting room EVER!

Friday 5th August, 2011

harbourThe night before getting the ferry to Papa Stour I drove down to the small harbour intending to camp there. I didn’t want to be too far away as there’s just one narrow, winding road to get to the harbour and if I got stuck behind a tractor or something I could easily miss the ferry. For the first time I struggled to find somewhere to pitch my tent. There was virtually no flat ground apart from a tiny patch near the toilet block which was so hard I’d never have got my tent pegs in. I thought about sleeping in the little waiting room, but it had a light on a timer or sensor that seemed as though it would be on all night, and there were fishermen coming and going all night. So I ended up piling everything from the back of my car on to the front seats and sleeping on the back seat. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as I’d imagined it to be and I did get quite a bit of sleep. But it’s reinforced my idea of buying some kind of van that I can easily sleep in the back of when the need arises. I can’t afford a proper campervan, but I’m sure I can find something that I can adapt.

Below is the extract from my diary of arrival and first day on Papa Stour.

I woke up and had time for a shower (£1) before getting the ferry over to Papa Stour. There is a shower in with the disabled toilet. It got very hot and I had to keep adjusting it, but it lasted ages. It was drizzling a bit as I waited for the ferry. I spoke to an older woman who was also waiting with her car. Her name was Jane and she was going over for the day as she has land on the island. She told me about camping by the waiting room near the pier. It has a heater which she said I was free to use, just remember to turn it off afterwards. She also asked me not to have a campfire. She said that a few weeks ago a group of people had dug up a patch of grass by the waiting room so they could have a fire. They hadn’t replaced it. The islanders have since replaced it, but it’s quite obvious where it was. As this area of grass is more like a lawn and is well maintained this didn’t go down well. She said another group had removed stones from an old wall to put round their fire. The wall was broken anyway, but is still part of the ‘look’ of the island. I assured her that I’d only be using my camp stove and wouldn’t light any fires.
waiting room
The best waiting room EVER!
camping
camping by the waiting room

The ferry journey took about forty minutes and it was raining more heavily when we arrived. Jane pointed out the waiting room to me which is slightly up the road from the pier. It has a great view of the bay and some sea stacks. There was a lot of information on the walls – both community and tourist information. Lots about the history and nature of the island. There were plenty of chairs and a proper kitchen sink. Also a table with a kettle, proper cups and takeaway ones, teabags, coffee, coffee creamer powder,  sugar, hot chocolate sachets and little individual cartons of milk for the tea. This was free with a sign saying to help yourself, but donations to the local history society would be appreciated. Jane came in to top up the supplies. The following morning a couple came in to do the same and said that someone always comes down when the ferry comes in to make sure everything is topped up.

Next to the waiting room was a toilet block, but no shower. The only thing it was lacking. There was enough room for a shower though so who knows in the future. Outside there was the nice lawn perfect for pitching a tent on and a picnic bench.
As it was raining quite heavily by this time I sat in the waiting room and had a coffee. I used my own supplies as I thought I wouldn’t deplete theirs. I did leave a donation though before I left for the use of the facilities. I finished reading ‘Shetland Black’, a slim novel I’d started the night before. The speech parts are written in dialect but it was understandable if  I read it ‘out loud’ in my mind. It was quite a dark novel about a small community in the north of mainland imploding. But did cheer up a bit at the end.

stofa stofa

As it was still raining I had a second cup of coffee and read through some of the National Geographic magazines that were in the waiting room along with the island’s library book box. After that I decided I had to brave it and put my tent up. Then I had lunch. By this time it was about 2pm and the rain had eased off a lot. I walked up the road to the church, past a few houses, one of which had a beautifully laid out garden. I stopped at the Stofa. Jane had mentioned this and told me that I could find out what it was when I got there. It turned out to be a rebuilding of a traditional Norwegian house. The community had got together with a group from Norway to rebuild it. There had been three houses on the site and two are marked out on the ground. The main house, the Stofa, is the one they’ve partially rebuilt. Dry stone walls surround two sides of it to protect it from the harshest Atlantic weather. The building itself is made from logs; huge logs that have been planed and carved in Norway using traditional techniques. Norway funded part of the project and the Papa Stour community raised the funding for the rest. Part of the agreement was that some young Shetlanders would go to Norway to work with the Norwegians and learn the techniques. Three young men were chosen. One was unable to take up the opportunity as it clashed with his exams. One was a local boy (I think he was from Papa Stour) of sixteen who got permission to take a few weeks out of school to go. The third was from the (Shetland) Mainland, in his early 20s and already working as a cabinet maker (or carpenter?). The project was a success and on the information boards are photographs of the logs being worked on out in the open in a town square in Norway and then the challenge of getting them loaded on to ferries and delivered to Papa Stour. Once on the island the house was reconstructed. There’s no roof and the whole thing is not a finished house, but this is intentional and shows the technique quite clearly.
Stofa Reconstruction (from the information boards)

information board information board

This partial reconstruction was a partnership project between Papa Stour History Group, Norwegian Crafts Development and other Norwegian groups. Craftsmen and students took part in an exchange, passing on traditional skills.
The large logs were worked in Borgen, Norway, using tools and methods typical of the medieval period. They were then shipped to Shetland, before being reconstructed on site.

stofa

The original drystone walls were designed to protect the Stofa’s timbers from the prevailing winds and weather. These have been rebuilt on the original foundations with stones from the site.
The Walls
Drystone dykers from Shetland and Norway rebuilt the walls (‘vernemurer’) during the summer of 2007. A protective membrane was used to separate the old masonry from the new.
The long wall is thicker than the gable, to enable it to withstand Atlantic winds. Both walls are wider at the base, and taper slightly towards the top.
The gable is slightly stepped due to the uneven ground surface.
The Timbers
The lowest logs (‘sills’ or ‘svill’) were cut from pine trees growing in Romsdal, and the remaining logs from trees in Granvin.
Trees more than 150 years old were felled from Norwegian forests for the rebuilding of the stofa.
The logs were worked on in Norway, then transported to Shetland by the sailing ship, STATSRAAD LEHMKUHL. The joints for each log were carefully protected for the journey.
The construction was assembled on site in June 2008 by carpenters from Norway and Shetland students. The building measure 7.75 metres by 5.75 metres, with some of the sills (lowest logs) weighing over 500kg.
Da Biggins
Excavations at Da Biggins revealed the remains of a 13th century house. The building found is a stofa (a timber building made from notched logs), and dates to the time when Shetland was part of Norway.

stofa

The stofa belonged to Duke Hakon Hakonsson of Norway, and was part of his farm at Da Biggins.
Stofas were smaller, more comfortable buildings than the older Viking longhouses, but bigger than the homes of most Shetlanders.

stofa hearth

Dispute at Da Biggins
Some dramatic events took place here at Da Biggins in 1299, when Shetland was part of Norway. At Easter that year a woman called Ragnhild Simunsdatter confronted Thorvald Thoresson, Duke Hakon Hakonsson’s representative in Shetland, the lord of Papa Stour.
She accused him of betraying Duke Hakon by taking higher rents from the farm of Brekasaetr (Bragaster) than was due. Ragnhild accused Thorvald of cheating Hakon. The case came to the Lawthing, Shetland’s parliament, at Tingwall. The lawmen rejected Ragnhild’s allegations, and the court drew up a document giving details of the quarrel. It is Shetland’s earliest surviving written record.
The document tells us that one of the incidents took place in the stofa, which you now see partially reconstructed today.
The Stofa
The building had just one room, with a hearth in the centre, and a door in the middle of the west gable. To the right of it a small extension was built, which archaeologists think may have been an outside toilet. The roof may have come down over the top of the wall, as shown in the reconstruction drawing above.
The wooden floor of the stofa was discovered by a team of archaeologists, led by Dr Barbara Crawford of St Andrew’s University, during excavations from 1977 to 1990.
The log timbers of the stofa must have rotted away and had been removed, but the wooden floor was left in situ and partially survived. It was carbon-dated to between 1200 and 1400.
The team also found the foundations of outer protective walls. Their purpose was to protect the wooden timbers from bad weather.
sheepI then walked up to the church and saw Jane outside tending her sheep so I chatted to her for a while. She’d been the primary school teacher on the island before she retired and had also spent two winters working at the school in Foula. She had handed over five years ago to the teacher who has just left. She had sheep when she was teaching and this got me thinking that I could also have sheep if I was a teacher in Skerries (there is a job going there which I’m seriously tempted by). I could add ‘shepherdess’ to my list of the many jobs I’ve done!
She has about seventy sheep including lambs and has names for at least some of them. I might want to give mine names too, but that might make them seem like pets and be difficult when it comes time to send them to slaughter. Jane has one small, mostly dark brown lamb called Jacobina – she was the runt of a litter of three and was born late, hence the name. She seemed more like a pet and was fussing around Jane and me wanting her head stroked and presumably after food as well.
Jane seemed a really involved member of the community – important in an island of only twenty. Not only did she have her croft and had been the teacher, but she was involved in the local history group and had done most of the fundraising and liaising for the Stofa project.
The island community apparently was in crisis a few years ago when there was a lot of infighting. At the time Ron McMillan wrote ‘Between Weathers’ it almost seemed as if the community wouldn’t survive. But a few families have left (have others moved in?) and things presumably have settled down. I didn’t bring up the topic as I think in the past it had been a sore point and got bad press in the national papers. From the efforts the islanders are going to, to show they are a community and to make visitors feel welcome, I wondered if this was a deliberate thing to move them away from the fragmented recent past and show the outside world that their reputation doesn’t deserve the tarnish.

church church

The church is a small, calm building surrounded by its graveyard. There is more information on the community and for visitors in a small room to the right of the entrance. There were slim books on sale for £5 each by a local author, George P. S. Peterson. They had some history and a lot of poems in dialect in them. I would have bought one as a souvenir and as a contribution (profits go to the history group) but only had a £20 note.

The Stacks

As it was starting to rain again I walked back to the waiting room. I spent the rest of the evening in there reading. Jane popped in on her way back to the last ferry and changed my £20 note so I could buy one of the books tomorrow. The evening cleared and as it got dark I sat in the waiting room until late with the lights off, just gazing at the wonderful view. The stacks (geological features – big stacks of rock standing just off the coast) look stunning in the diminishing light.

Great Glen Way

I’m planning to walk the Great Glen Way and wild camp along the way.

For my long distance walk I’ve decided to walk the Great Glen Way. For it to count as the challenge on my list I have to complete it in one go and not just as a series of individual day walks. I also want to do it whilst carrying all my own gear. As I’ll be camping each night I’ll need to carry a tent, Thermarest, sleeping bag, stove, pans, etc as well as few toiletries and a couple of changes of clothes.

My walking in Exmoor last week was the start of my training towards this. I’ve been worried about my knees and whether or not they’ll hold up to walking consecutively over a week. I’m also not sure if I’m fit enough and strong enough to carry all my gear. I tried to carry a fairly heavy bag each day I walked in Exmoor and after a while I did ‘forget’ I was wearing it. My bag on the GGW will be a lot heavier though and more bulky, so I’ll have to do some training with this too.

My knees are going to be the biggest problem. I had to take two rest days in Exmoor. Each time was after a 15 mile walk with a lot of descent. I’m not too bad on the uphills – I can take short breather breaks if I need them – but the downhills are real killers. I walked slowly and used two poles but still had a lot of pain and swelling and later on stiffness in my knee joints.

One of the reasons I’ve chosen the GGW is because it’s only 73 miles so I should be able to keep most of my walks along it to a 10 mile maximum. Also, the first few days walking will be fairly flat. By the time I hit the descents I should have a lighter pack (I will have eaten away at the weight) and be more than half way there. I’ll take my poles and a stash of ibuprofen and will hopefully be able to complete it.

I’d like to combine my wild camping task with the long distance walking task. There are actual ‘official’ wild camps at some places along the route. Do they still count if they’re official? On some nights I will have to find my own wild camp though, so whether or not the official ones count, I’ll still be completing this task.

I’ve been googling the GGW to try to get as much information on it as possible. I’ve found a detailed blog from a few years ago, some general information sites and a very good photo diary on flikr. The photo diary in particular is good because it means I can see what the various bits of the route look like and how feasible it will be to camp along the way.

Now I just have to do more training, get a map and a guidebook, sort out train tickets and arrange to leave my car with a friend in Glasgow.

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!

Update

Getting ideas for working towards a few items on my list.

Web Design
As I didn’t do the Duke of Edinburgh camping weekend, I’ve spent today sorting out plants, making up hanging baskets and planting vegetables. I’ve also got loads of laundry and ironing done. These are all things that needed doing, but I’ve run out of time to do the other things I was hoping to do, like my homework for the web design course. So I’ll have to do that tomorrow evening instead. The teaching part of the course has almost finished and soon we’ll be starting on creating our own websites for the assessment. I’m going to work on the actual website I want to have so at least I’ll be well on the way with it when the course finishes in July.

Exmoor
I rang the campsite in Exmoor this afternoon to try to book for next week. As it’s half term and the bank holiday I thought it might get busy. I spoke to owner who doesn’t take bookings in advance, but advised me to try to get there before lunch as it is likely to be busy. He said they shouldn’t have too much trouble fitting just me and my small tent in though. I’ve checked out a route online and it’s about a 4hr drive. To allow for a stop on the way and any delays, I think I’ll leave home at 6am next Saturday. That should give me plenty of time to explore the area once I’ve got my tent up, and then I can start my walks first thing on the Sunday morning.


I read a bit of the April edition of Country Walking magazine whilst I was having my lunch. It’s got a special feature on the national parks and yes, there was an article on Exmoor. So I’ve cut it out and will take it with me. I’ve already got the OS map which I bought a few weeks ago and lots of printed out walks from the internet.

Ballooning
I spoke to a friend at work during the week about ballooning. If I can get a good price she is willing to do it with me. So now I just have to wait for the special offer to come up again on Groupon. When it does I’ll buy a couple of vouchers and then we can sort out a day to do it.

Diving
The Groupon voucher that arrived today was for a PADI diving course. Although I have no time to do anything about this at the moment I had a quick look at what the requirements are for the course. I need to be able to swim 200m. I can swim 200m, but only with lots of breaks, and I somehow don’t think they’ll count this. At least I have an idea now of what I need to aim for when I start swimming again.

Exmoor

I’m planning a half-term trip to Exmoor and want to start walking the South West Coast Path from the beginning.

The weekend after next is the start of half term. I’m planning to drive down to Exmoor to spend the week walking. Usually when I go to the south west I feel as though I have to go as far as possible and always end up down near Land’s End. But this time I thought I’d stop and see some of the places I usually speed past.

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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!) …

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