Starting As We Mean to Continue – Upper Weardale Camp-Out

We were supposed to have camped out on solstice night, but the weather was wild and woolly and well windy, do we didn’t. Then Christmas happened and the weather stayed pretty breezy – up to Force 8 or 9  on the tops and last night was probably the best night for it for weeks and weeks and weeks…

Rachel dropped me and Matt at the County boundary and we walked just about a mile. The intended camping spot was liberally decorated with quite a lot of sheep-poo so we prospected a bit further and found some flat bits quite close to the head of Sedling Burn where, just before the sun set, we pitched our shelters.

The night that followed was perishingly cold but after some initial breeziness, quite calm and after dinner, when it got too cold to be sitting about, we retired to our respective tents and I shut up mine and dozed off. It must have been at least half seven.

Later, having recovered from the brief alcoholic coma, I opened up the tent to a bright, moonlit and starry night and left the door open till dawn so that I could doze, brew, watch the sky and doze and sip scotch and watch the sky and doze….

I awoke to a beautiful orange and blue pre-dawn and breakfasted. The countryside and my tent were heavy with frost but eventually the sun popped over the horizon and whereas I’d like to say that this warmed things up a bit, actually, it didn’t and the pic I took (below) is quite fuzzy for some reason…

We packed up and left and descended to Cowshill where we were collected by Rachel and whisked off to the Chatterbox cafe for sausage butties to meet Mrs Pieman and Lucky The Dog. I didn’t take Lucky, judging that it would be far too cold for him – and it probably was. He’s currently having some woolly winter jim-jams made and, hopefully, these will make an appearance very shortly for we have more winter camping planned in the not too distant future.