• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 345 0

treadmill, for I was heading instead for a night’s wild kip in the woods. My next-door neighbours had lent me their ancient bivvy bag, which I’d tried out one warm night in my garden a week earlier, and had found to be fine for the job. Not for a moment did I consider that a dry night in a lowland garden might be inadequate preparation for wild bivvying in the fells, and not for a moment did I think that it would be – could be, even – anything other than a lovely evening. To that end, I hadn’t even gone so far as to check the weather forecast, but, as I’d left my Egremont B&B that Thursday morning, the landlord’s last words were, ‘Forecast looks good for the weekend.’ At the time, that had seemed enough.

At about five o’clock, I breezed past the Ennerdale youth hostel and camping barn, feeling terrifically smug that I was saving myself six or seven quid by going to camp for free in the woods. I say camp: I mean, of course, lie in a large plastic sheath, like some kind of jumbo boil-in-the-bag snack. About two miles further on, I suddenly spied a track that looked interesting, and just up there was a lovely hollow centred on a graceful beech tree in her first flush of the year’s leaves. I find that most years, a particular species of tree seems to present itself for my especial consideration, something to sit under, ponder by and read up on. This year’s tree, particularly since my Ridgeway walk through ‘Beechy Bucks’, was unquestionably the magnificent beech. I’d mistimed the Ridgeway trek: in any normal year, my walk in mid-April would have coincided perfectly with the first fluttering of lime-green leaves amongst the legendary beeches of the Chiltern Hills, but this was a year when everything was two or three weeks late, thanks to a sharp winter. Consequently, I’d walked for days through the massive beech woods still in their skeletal winter state: impressive, for sure, but not the breathtaking display I’d been expecting. Since then, I’d seized every chance to hang out with the beech trees and couldn’t get enough of their first week or two in leaf. The chance of a night beneath just such a tree seemed like a present from the gods.

Like a little Walt Disney critter, I made camp under that spreading tree, building a fire pit, collecting wood, getting the fire going, even carefully stripping logs in order to build myself a bed of moss. I ignored the ever-greyer clouds whipping in from the west and the freezing – and strengthening – winds. What could possibly hurt you when you’re lying on a mossy bed under a quivering beech?

Dinner was a Cup-a-Soup and a few pawfuls of some berry/ seed/nut combo from the health-food shop in Barrow. I was still starving, and getting really quite cold, even if the sleeping bag was doing its best. It wasn’t dark much before ten; the rain started minutes later. At first, the noise on the bivvy bag was strangely charming, a pitter-patter reminder that I was keeping dry and mainly warm, particularly if I curled up. I imagined drifting off to sleep to its comforting rhythm and waking to a brilliant dawn.

Before long, the pitter-patter went up a few notches and began to physically hurt as the raindrops pelted my head and body. One move – to try and get some air into the bivvy bag – resulted in rivulets of rainwater surging in and drenching me and the sleeping bag. Of all the trees to be sheltered under, a beech in its first few weeks of delicate, feathery leaf, is not high on the list for protection. Despite the fact that I’d had a good four hours of daylight in my little camp, I’d never once thought to go and scan the surroundings for the best places to go in the event of an emergency – I was just too busy being Bambi the forest fawn. There were, I remembered, many conifers and firs in the vicinity, but I had no idea where they were or how much protection they might give.

Whenever you’re tempted to think that summer nights are over in a twinkle, think again. This mid-May night went on for bloody ever. I staggered around with a fading headtorch illuminating the branches and rain slicing through