Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Camping It Up => Topic started by: Jaded on 06 July, 2019, 10:55:18 am
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Nothing is ever where you put it.
The head torch, placed carefully so that you could find it in the dark for pee o’clock? Gone.
The clean clothes ready for tomorrow? Mixed in with the dirty.
The stuff sacs? You are sure you brought them aren’t you?
The water bottle? Follow the trickle...
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Yes the silk liner can follow you to the loo. Ensure is detached if putting on your shorts.
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The ground is never as flat as it looked when you pitched the tent.
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That quiet country lane adjacent to the site that you saw when you pitched up in the evening turns out to be a major transport artery during the early morning rush hour.
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Cows are perfectly capable of leaving that nice field way away over there and coming to see what this strange object is that has mushroomed up a couple of hundred yards away overnight.
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Earwigs. Sometimes slugs, spiders, ants, moths, midges, hedgehogs, etc. But always earwigs. If the current site doesn't have any, there's probably some lurking in the tent from last time.
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The sound of someone, who couldn't be bothered to make it as far as the toilet black, peeing uncomfortably close by.
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There will be bits of mud / sand / grass (delete as applicable) in everything. *Everything*.
The sound and world-shaking horror of someone tripping over your guy ropes, no matter where you pitched your tent.
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you shoudl be safe from earwigs and woodlouses this year, they're all in my garden
There is the same dread in a tent as a tropical hotel room, close everything up and then you hear the high-pitched bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz of a lone mossie.
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Some Bugger in a nearby tent has a squeaky air bed, and they are a very restless sleeper.
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The golden rule of tents is that manufacturers are all Lilliputian midgets and therefore their tent specifications should be viewed accordingly.
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Every tent comes with microscopic flying insects that bounce around the tent's ridge.
The tent that had plenty of length to stretch out when tested in the shop will have shrunk subtly when pitched in the wild.
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A lovely dry night. The heavy rain starts 15 minutes before you strike your tent.
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If you wild camp in a lovely spot in Scotland with fine views and a light wind. By the morning it will be completely still, your tent will be covered in dew, and a squadron of midges will be waiting outside. Your tent packing will hit new lows of quality and new highs in terms of speed.
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It’s probably better than not.
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It's both small and immense at once. You can sit in there and your whole world seems to be contained in one enclosed, shadowed space. At the same time, you can look out the door and the entire world starts at your feet. Best experienced when it's raining.
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People will never burgle a tent so it's OK to leave your valuables inside when you're over the hills & far away. Honest. At least it was in the 60s & 70s. Mostly. I think. Well we did.
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Cows are perfectly capable of leaving that nice field way away over there and coming to see what this strange object is that has mushroomed up a couple of hundred yards away overnight.
Late 80's I was backpacking the Pembrokeshire coastal path. One night I stopped at a farm on the path and he let me pitch the tent in a field overlooking a small cove. I had supper, watched the sunset, read a little, and eventually retired to bed. Before going to sleep I filled up a pan with water for the morning.
In the morning I awoke to the tent swaying violently but could not hear any wind like sounds. Unzipping the inner I came face to face with a cow who had popped it's head under the outer and was drinking from my pan of water. I'd found the cause of the violent swaying.
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My father once woke up to a terrifying wooshing noise and found a cow rubbing its nose up & down the canvas. Curious beasts.
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No matter how dehydrated you are, how recently you pee'd, the act of crawling into your tent, snuggling down into your sleeping bag, and getting comfortable, will be enough to fill the bladder, and necessitate getting out of the tent, to wander across the site to the loo block.
Every single time.
J
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The worst hangovers seem to coincide perfectly with the sunniest mornings.
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No matter how dehydrated you are, how recently you pee'd, the act of crawling into your tent, snuggling down into your sleeping bag, and getting comfortable rain starting, once you're safely in your tent, will be enough to fill the bladder, and necessitate getting out of the tent, to wander across the site to the loo block.
Every single time.
FTFY...
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If you are ever wild camping on the cliff top at Arnamurchan don't be too alarmed if in the dead of night you hear a pack of dogs barking outside your tent. They will be seals mating on the rocks below. ;)
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Ah yes. Wild camping.
No matter how far from civilisation, no matter how secluded and hidden the spot you have chosen, there will be a dog walker at 6am. The dog will shout a lot due to the strange shape that has appeared on its morning route.
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Wild - or as they say here, savage - camping is the only kind I've ever done. "Loo block" as mentioned above conjures rather images of wee purple things clipped under the rims of toilet bowls as a pretence of hygiene.
Anyway, one of the things I've noticed is that when you camp on a pleasant green sward halfway up a Welsh mountain in the gathering dark with a promising wind getting up, the tent pegs will either go all the way in with zero resistance or will go down an inch and then hit rock. We spent one entertaining night near Abergogodknowswheregogogoch in a thin cloth tent held by horizontally-driven pegs. Still don't know how the damn thing held.
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The couple in the camper van next door -watching with interest as you pitch in the rain- with hot and cold running water, gas cooker, sat TV etc will take pity on you and suggest you join them for dinner...
No it's fine we prefer it this way and we've carried our freeze dried pasta over the mountain ourselves (bike or foot) but your fresh baked bread and hearty casserole does smell rather good....
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your brand new rubber mallet, pegs for the knocking in of, decides to self destruct on first use, much to the amusement of the gathered campsite
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your brand new rubber mallet, pegs for the knocking in of, decides to self destruct on first use, much to the amusement of the gathered campsite
This can't happen, because it requires not having left it at home.
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your brand new rubber mallet, pegs for the knocking in of, decides to self destruct on first use, much to the amusement of the gathered campsite
This can't happen, because it requires not having left it at home.
Given soft enough ground, it's possible to remember the mallet.
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You may think that by going to the other end of the site and pitching in the thistles on a slope, you're far enough away from the camper with the slam shut sliding door, but all you've done is challenged them to demonstrate you haven't.
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If you cheekily wild camp on some perfectly flat, manicured lawn, you will be woken at 3 am by water shooting up into the tent from the sprinkler system.
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Before crawling out in the early morn and washing your face in the crystal stream by your door, look upstream and make sure that no luxury campers have arrived in the night and pitched not only a vast tent but also a portable outhouse which backs onto that selfsame stream.
And before you ask: yes, in Braemar, about 100 yards away. :sick:
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Or do the same from a stream, only to find a dead sheep when you climb upstream on your way up the mountain.
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Conventional wisdom has it that 40 feet over gravel cleans out any pollution. Or is it yards? Or was it 100 of them..?
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Conventional wisdom has it that 40 feet over gravel cleans out any pollution. Or is it yards? Or was it 100 of them..?
100 Dead Sheep?
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When wild camping, no matter what location you choose to bivvi down in, there is always a better location 500m along the road. You'll only discover this the next morning when you have moved on...
J
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The warmest spot when camping in snow is in the middle. This requires recruiting two others unaware of this little fact.
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If you camp on a flat spot in the boulder field near Pen-Y-Pass youth hostel. You will find out it is a helipad in the morning.
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;D ;D
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...in the summer in France is that, regardless of what was forecast, there will be a full on thunder storm resulting in a flash river running under your tent, and violent hail, and a wind fierce enough to remove some of the tent pegs however well you tried to put them in.
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So far so good.
Although, to be fair, I haven’t looked for anything yet...
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Fuckssake. Someone’s just traversed the site to trip on my guy ropes.
Oh, it’s a couple. “What kind of tent have you got?”
Hopefully when they find it it is too far away for the copulation sounds to reach here...
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The contents of your rucksack will expand to fill the available space in the tent.
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...and will then become too voluminous to fit the rucksack.
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Also true of any hotel room and suitcase, no matter how minimalist you are as a packer. I've had 15 years of "This fitted on the way here"
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You set up your tent somewhere clean and level, but shortly afterwards some people arrive a few pitches away with a small yappy dog. The small yappy dog is tethered in front of their tent or caravan on a rope at least six pitches long and it will inevitably choose to use the full extent of this to lick your pots and pans when your back is turned then shit behind your tent.
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https://youtu.be/iBw-aEixWuo?t=108
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you set you rbivvy up in a nice location away from anyone else, with a nice view and then the family from Bolton arrive in two cars, massive tent, argumentative sh!ts.
At least the midges prefer them to flying through the smoke of your campfire
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If you have been drinking late with mates. They will put bits of bread on and around your tent to ensure you wake with the dawn chorus. You will not find this amusing.
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In 1976 we1 were hitch hiking from LA to Bisbee AZ and wild camped near Flagstaff. In the morning we had disturbed something that had spent the night under our groundsheet. Not amused to see a snake track leading from the tent when I was packing up. :o
1 An earlier Mrs B.
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Pitch next to lovely Germans - they'll be equipped with everything you might conceivably need and have forgotten. Including a fire extinguisher. Don't ask :facepalm:
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Pitch next to lovely Germans - they'll be equipped with everything you might conceivably need and have forgotten. Including a fire extinguisher. Don't ask :facepalm:
Yeah, but then you have to see them exercising in their tiny trunks outside your tent before you've managed your first coffee in the morning.
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Particularly for wild camping. The presence of any one piece of equipment is inversely proportional to its necessity.
Or, if you need it for a successful trip it won't be there; if you don't, it will be deadweight in your rucsack.
And on the subject of deadweight, if you find yourself with an enthusiastic leader who sets a blistering pace it's always a good idea to put a sizeable rock in their pack at the earliest opportunity. It's also a good idea not to be around when they find it.
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Unashamed bump that this hilarious thread undoubtedly deserves.
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You pitch your tent on a nice flat bit of campsite by a fjord.
It starts to rain
You open the inner flysheet in the night to find the shoreline slowly advancing through the porch...
A lesson in glacial scour and drainage.
(moved the sleeping bags and hid in the toilets...)
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Yes, but at least you weren't pining
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In Norway many years ago I had visions of using the "allemansreet" (sp?) Which allows you to camp in the wild. The only place that was flat enough had two beehives on it. Even the proper campsites were on a slope. Saw a traffic roundabout once by a landing stage but decided to cross a cattle grid and camp in the wild. Later that night I found out what the cattle grid was for: the bloody cattle were interested in the tent and the bike.
Before I went I popped into my LBS and ordered brake pads to work well in the wet. Owner came to me and said when he was a lad he'd gone cycling in Norway and had to camp in s traffic Island as it was they only flattish place. It also trained every day for a fortnight so they decided then that all their cycling trips would be somewhere sunny with cheap beer.
Also, having spent every Monday night for three years trying to learn Norwegian I found that every single person there speaks good English.
Funny old world....
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You need this phrase:
To øl takk min venn vil betale
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Don't know if this has come up, always buy a +1 tent. The extra space makes life bearable if the weather goes downhill.
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You need this phrase:
To øl takk min venn vil betale
ha! While in Norway I forgo all alcohol Tim.
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Norway 🇳🇴 is expensive, met 2 german cyclists with a trailer 1/2 full of food and a few beers. Said they stocked up in Denmark 😄
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Do not leave your stinky shoes to air outside the tent, particularly on a Portuguese beach. A fox will pinch them and throw up in them.