then came the Old Coach Road – considered as the challenging option, but what hadn’t been considered was ice in the puddles and snow over the top. March sun shone on the high face of Blencathra, sky was blue as lark’s eggs, and cycling was exciting through puddles well over the pedals.
Whereupon, at five in the evening, it all suddenly stopped being difficult. A downhill swoop, and a short climb to warm up with, and another downhill swoop. Air like iced vodka, and a sort of drunken vigour that just wanted to keep pedalling rather quickly on and on into the night. Which I could, as I hadn’t booked. And I didn’t have to book, as I had a bag to fall back into.
Just as well I did have the bag. The first wayside inn was sorry but it had no spaces left tonight. Maybe if I’d had a respectable VW Passat purring in the car park, maybe if I’d had mud-free legs and something on those legs that wasn’t pale blue Lycra… The second wayside inn had no spaces left tonight, sorry.
But in the little pinewood near Penrith there was plenty of space. I leant the bike against a fallen tree, and shone the front lamp around to find if there was anything in the wood I wouldn’t want to lie down on. The pine branches shut out the glimmer of the stars, but even so there was a suspicious crispness about the pine-needles. The motorway sounded a lullaby rumble and beamed night-lights between the tree-trunks. I wriggled under the fallen tree to save some of my night heat from the emptiness of the night sky.
It may have helped a little. My trainers, well wetted along the Coach Road, froze stiff during the night. I had to wear them on my hands for 10 shivering minutes before they would yield and let my feet in. Four miles downhill into the town was a bitter bit of riding, but 120m/400ft of climb let me re-establish communication with my toes. Next night, halfway down the long downhill to Sunderland, I swung off early to a bed and breakfast.
They gave me some sheets of newspaper to undress on.
A bivvybag in some modern breathable fabric keeps away the rain but lets out most, or even all, of the condensation. It costs between £50 and £300 – later I’ll discuss whether you want to spend the smaller or the greater sum. Fifty pounds is the price of two nights in a hillwalker’s hotel, or five in a bunkhouse. For £200 you could join the Hostelling Scotland for about 50 years.
Alternatively, your £300 could get you a little tent. In your little tent you could cook suppers, undress indoors, and lie till 9am reading this book.
A bivvybag may not be all that expensive, but it’s not a way of saving money. It is, rather, a new way of having fun. A bivvybag isn’t simply an extra bit of kit that has the backwards effect of making the rucksack lighter. It’s a new attitude, a new way of being in the hills. It rearranges the co-ordinates of space and time and allows us to wriggle through the wormholes into a different universe.
TIME, THINGS AND MIGUEL
Time
Time is a tyrant. How often in a day do you look at your watch or the clock on the wall or the clock on the town hall? Ten minutes to catch the bus, two hours to knocking-off time…
Even on the hill, there’s the four hours until it gets dark and the three hills we want to get over before. There’s the bed and breakfast that expects us at seven, and the train we’re wanting to get at Achnashellach next Tuesday. A timepiece is as essential to safety as – say – the mobile phone and the GPS gadget (however much we may have managed without them in the days before they were invented).
Time may be a benevolent despot – as when you’ve started at six instead of nine, walked into the evening, and got yourself half a day ahead. Pleasant and lazy are the days that are half a day ahead, but then you spoil it all by deciding you could actually catch that train on Monday rather than Tuesday. And there you are again, half a day behind, pressing forward up every hill, irritable at every shut shop or unnecessary cup of tea, cross because the sun has come out on the summit you left 10 minutes ago but you’re certainly not going to go back for that photo…
A bivvybag is the thing that lets you do without things, and one of the things that you could do without is a watch. Dispense with the timepiece and get – paradoxically – more time.
Wander watchless until the sun sets, find another sleepy hollow and go to sleep in it. Will tonight be the one that rains and sends you back down into the real world where they wear watches? You can cross the whole of Wales this way if the sun shines. For me the wet night came on the Fforest Fawr; next morning I dropped off the ridge to the roadside wondering what day of the week it was.
On ordinary hill days you need to know when you’re going to get benighted. With bag that doesn’t matter. Walking watchless is one of those simple pleasures whose appeal is – obviously – timeless. It’s also one of those pleasures (like bivvybagging itself) that’s not altogether pleasant. For the first day you keep glancing at your wrist and worrying. Not knowing what time it is is a new level of insecurity and freedom. There’s no day’s target to achieve or fall behind when you don’t know when you are at the moment. There are more interesting things to think about than whether you can grab back five minutes on the ascent of Waun Fach.
But time doesn’t give in so easily. Can you keep right on to St David’s without ever knowing how late it is? Or will you fall back into the valleys and have to stop at a clock?
Things
You can spend many interesting hours deciding what items to buy, and many slightly less interesting ones earning the money. But, disappointingly, your fellow walkers aren’t going to go Gore-tex green with envy at your cool new bivvybag.
This is because the bivvybag is the item that encourages you to get rid of other items. You’ve saved 2kg/4½lb on the tent; why not save a bit more by not taking the cooker? The bivvybag attitude tends to disobey the Consumer Imperative. It doesn’t bother to shave, and keeps warm under many thin layers of worn-out stuff it should have thrown away four years ago. As you get further and further from the car park, the breathable jackets get shabbier, the hats are bobble instead of fleece, the boots are scratched and old. Four hours out you meet the breeches. Eight hours out it’s the rucksack fixed with string. And on the furthest, loneliest hilltop, as the stars come out, is the chap or lassie in the bag.
For this is the thingless thing, the genuinely money-saving purchase. By its aid you climb the Hill Difficulty into the Cloud of Unknowing.
Also, by the time you unroll the nice new bag, everyone who could have admired it has cleared off down to the pub.
Diogenes the Dog
A bivouac is defined as any form of shelter less than a tent. It could be breathable Sympatex, it could be sheepskin, or it could be a woollen plaid. The only timber bivvybag on record was inhabited by Diogenes the Cynic in the third century BC. He had to, as he was 2400 years before Gore-tex.
The timber bivvybag hasn’t ever caught on, but Diogenes is still the founder of bivvybag philosophy. The treasures of this world – flashy jackets, walking poles, the satellite GPS navigator – cause only grief and envy. The absence of a marble palace or a flexible-pole domeline tent may be more enjoyable than the proud possession of it. Sadly only two lines of dialogue from this original master have come down through the ages. Alexander the Great came to visit the barrel. ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘I’m Alexander the Great.’
‘And I am Diogenes the Cynic.’
A nasty smell came from inside the barrel. The bed appeared to be a pile of old rope. ‘Ah – ahem. As the greatest emperor in the world so far, is there anything I can do for you?’
‘Yes
