All done within the Covid Guidlines, in between the two lockdowns!

Bivvy is a slang word used by the soldiers in WW1 for the word bivouac. As suggested in the title, it’s a temporary shelter. Shelter is probably too strong a word to use as it doesn’t shelter you from the wind, it can protect you from the rain and snow as long as you don’t mind the bivvy bag that you use touching your face, leaving you in a cocoon unable to do very little. The question is why would you want to bivvy?

That’s the question I’ve asked myself a couple of times, more so since I decided to walk part of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path with a bivvy as my only means of overnight shelter. What’s wrong with a tent I hear you ask? Three reasons, one: I want to move light and fast and stop when I decide I’ve had enough, two: it gives me greater flexibility on where I can stop and three: my tent’s in Ireland! So here I am in a wonderful spot overlooking the sea, not a cloud in the sky or a care in the world.

It didn’t start like that though! The forecast was excellent for the two days, the night before, less than 5% chance of rain. In the morning whilst waiting for the taxi to pick me up from Newgale I thought I’d just double check the weather, out of boredom more than anything else. To my horror the morning forecast had changed from less than 5% chance of rain to 90% chance from 9am to 1pm and then the sun would break through. Oh no, or words to that affect, ran through my mind. I had taken out my waterproof trousers and I had only brought my lightweight waterproof coat. I believe as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, nothing, it seems, is fully waterproof for me, something to do with the amount of heat I give off…useful at night, but no good when you are walking in a very expensive item of clothing, claiming to be waterproof, that then acts like a bin liner! But my lightweight waterproof doesn’t even act as a bin liner, or it does, but one with holes in. I quickly grabbed my waterproof trousers out of the car and repacked them and very much wished that I had the very expensive ‘bin liner’ with me, without holes in!

The taxi arrived and transported me to Porthgain, a beginning, not ‘the beginning’, just ‘a beginning’. The beginning of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path is irrelevant, a beginning is where you want it to be and doesn’t have to be where conformity says it should be. Anyway twenty minutes in and out came all the waterproofs. My idyllic two days of carefree walking in glorious sunshine turned to hell, in seconds. I very rarely walk in rain, it just doesn’t appeal, I struggle to find the enjoyment in it. I’m told it will harden me up, make me more of a man, bugger it, who cares. I’m passed wanting to be more of a man. I like to think that I’m now a man at peace and content with life, with a wonderful loving wife and family, who seem to understand and tolerate my need to walk slightly off the beaten path, or as the poem says ‘the road less travelled’. I digress, back to the rain, it’s wet, it means I have to take my glasses off to see properly, the views are obscured but more than anything I find it irritating. Is there beauty in rain…yes thunderous clouds, storms in the distance can create an atmospheric view like no other, but persistent, driving, interminable rain from low grey ground hugging clouds is not atmospheric in any shape or form.

The start at Porthgain was as idyllic as any small harbour town on the South West Coast Path. A slate mining area with many of the old workings still in place. Between there and St David’s Head there could well have been many interesting coves and inlets, but in the rain they passed me by. Grey land blended into a grey sea.

At St David’s Head the clouds dispersed and the sun emerged, a little wearily I thought, poking her head out then hiding again until she gauged how annoyed I was at her, having a lie in, the one morning I needed her. The rest of the day was glorious as she brought a feeling of joy with her invigorating warmth. I walked happily and content, inwardly smiling for the rest of the day, until I found one of the most perfect places to set up my bivvy. The bivvy was in a spot 10 metres above the sea overlooking two small islands in Porthlysgi Bay. I sat dreaming the afternoon and evening away under a cloudless, still sky.

I awoke at 01:00 to a near dark sky with the Milkyway directly overhead. To wake up and open your eyes to millions of stars and the Milkyway is amazing, with Mother Nature sharing this unique moment in time with me and me alone. I wonder if this will give me a rose tinted view of sleeping out under the stars…the answer, of course, is a resounding, YES. The following day continued as yesterday ended, mostly sunny and warm and followed the same pattern as many other days that I’ve walked coastal paths, descending into steep coves only to ascend back up the coastal cliffs or to wander inland up an estuary to then return up the other side and to have only walked two or three hundred metres as the crow flies…for those of you that have walked these paths, it comes as no surprise and is what makes these paths so endearing. I wander into Newgale, the sun shining and the sea beckoning, nothing to do with swimming freely with no restrictions, but because I desperately needed to scrub and rinse…the down side about bivvying, not a problem if when you are walking solo, but to see the crowds part as you walk down the road is a little disconcerting!

I haven’t yet mentioned my first bivvy since traveling around Europe as a teenager. We were taking a family holiday in July with my Brother-in-law, Sister-in-law and Nephews in Ayrshire just as the Covid restrictions were lifting. Arran, a beautiful wild island just off the Ayrshire coast has some of the best and airy ridge walks in the UK. I decided to walk the main Goatfell, Beinn Nuis ridge. If the ferry to the mainland ran earlier or later than they did, I wouldn’t have bivvied, but the horseshoe is a 10 hour walk so I decided to start the walk late afternoon and bivvy overnight on Beinn Tarsuinn at 826 metres. The weather forecast was for a clear night the Milkyway was at its brightest and it was a New Moon…so no light pollution. Only one thing went wrong, it wasn’t a cloudless night! In fact the cloud and drizzle came down ten minutes into the walk! And didn’t clear all evening.

I awoke at 4am to the sun starting to rise and a cloud inversion, with the sun rising over Goatfell, casting a deep orange glow over the summit, whilst the cloud flowed through the col between A’ Chir and Cir Mhor magically disappearing as it hit the valley floor of Glen Rossa. It comes close to being one of the most enchanting sunrises I’ve ever witnessed. The clouds were queuing, eagerly waiting to pour through the gap, to, only then burn themselves out once they’d rushed through. I sat on the summit and watched, mesmerised.

I packed up my Bivvy at 6:30am and headed out along the ridge. I was advised by John Lyall to avoid the A’ Chir section of the horseshoe as it required a rope. After cowardly avoiding that section, as advised I scrambled up to the Rosa Pinnacles and up to Cir Mhor. The cloud rose up from the valley and engulfed the summit. Sheep tracks abounded in every direction or what looked like sheep tracks, they were, in fact, paths created by hopelessly lost walkers! After getting out my compass and eventually settled on what turned out to be the correct path, I made my way down to the Saddle. A 400 metre descent. The ridge up to Goat Fell from the Saddle became an airy scramble or would have been if the cloud had not obscured the steep drops on either side. It means I’ll have to return.

The summit of Goat Fell was crowded, I had seen only three people over the two days up until now, a fellow photographer and two fell runners on the ridge up to the Summit of Goat Fell. On the summit were 30 plus people, like Snowdon, mainly casual walkers and were rewarded with an unrivalled view as the cloud lifted from the mountains.

The walk down to the ferry was long and surprisingly hard. The two days had taken it out of me and that last couple of kilometres to the ferry across to the mainland, along the road never seemed to end. It was, however, one of the most rewarding wanderings as a photographer, because of the forever changing light and scenery. The reward of bivvying for the first time in over 35 years, sleeping Cowboy style, feeling the cloud creeping over your face and the sudden realisation that the sky had cleared to reveal a sky free of light pollution and the tranquillity of solo walking along airy ridges lost in Mother Nature’s beauty.

The third bivvy of the Covid year was back to the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, two nights this time. I drove down early morning to Haverfordwest where a taxi took me to Newgale and the start of the three day walk.

The walk from Newgale to Little Haven is easy and the scenery typical of the coastal paths that I’ve walked up to now. The weather is good and I’m good. I get to my designated bivvy site, St Brides, reasonably early. The car park is full and the crowds are out. Bivvying could be an issue, too public and a considerable risk of being moved on. So I fill my water bottles and move on…it took me another seven kilometres to find a more suitable place. I ended up on the clifftop overlooking Skomer Island, it was definitely worth the extra walk and after dusk fell I was alone, listening to the seal cubs calling their Mothers and the sea birds feeding, natures sounds, more relaxing music than even the laid back sounds of JJ Cale!

Normally I’m reasonably thorough when planning a route from an OS map, but for some unknown reason I missed two very important points in the next days walk. Ones that would dictate start times and speed. When walking any coast path the tide times tend to be reasonably important, ESPECIALLY if you have two estuary’s to cross that require you to get there at low tide, if missed an extra 10km has to be walked. I reach Dale and decide on a coffee stop, I know there’s a pandemic going on and that there are certain restrictions, but the café in Dale would have made any sanctimonious, moral high ground individual proud. I was however, in need of a caffeine fix so I suffered the frosty faced server with good grace, rather than walking away, which after listening to her speak to the customers in front of me, is what I should have done. The coffee was good and on a board in front of where I sat were the tide times for Milford Haven area…I looked at my map and then glanced at the tide times and suddenly it hit me, there were, in the next 6km two estuary crossings that required me to cross them at low tide…low tide was in half an hour! If I hadn’t walked the extra 7km the previous day I would have stopped for the night before the second estuary. Decision time, do I sit back and relax and know that if I do that I’ll have the extra 7km of the second estuary to do either later that day or in the morning, or even relax in the morning and wait until around midmorning to cross that second estuary, without having to do the extra 7km. I’m not overly competitive so I decided to…go for it.

The first low tide bridge was at Pickleridge, sounds like a battle in WW2, well the bridge on it had already been blown, fortunately the water in the missing five metres was only a few inches deep. I think the ‘Bridge over the Pickle’ needs repairing. The first one I knew I’d make, the second depended on speed. I reached the second crossing an hour and a half after low tide, I needn’t have rushed, the crossing would still have been accessible a hour later. Sandy Haven a beautiful beach with a view of some of the biggest Oil Jetty’s and Oil Storage Bonds in the UK. Is it pretty, no, but the beach is and the number of people on it proved it.

I decided to bivvy on the beach, for the first time. It’s a fairly popular beach, so I’m sitting biding my time before making myself at home. I want you to picture concrete steps that access the beach from the path above, 20 or so steps maybe. Sat on the bottom step half blocking both access and egress, is one of the fattest women I’ve ever seen. I understand that she had struggled to get to the beach, I know ‘cos I watched her and I’ve no idea why she’s as big as she is. It could have something to do with the damned great bag of alcoholic drinks that her husband, who is approximately half her size but still considerably larger than Bernard Manning, has lugged down. I’m sat about 30 metres away and I now know her full life story, that she has passed on piecemeal to all who have had to avoid her as they come down the stairs! She would only need to move 2 metres in any direction and she’d be in no ones way or more importantly, wouldn’t be bending any bodies ear…including mine, who in theory is not even privy to the conversation! I sit on the beach soaking up the sun for about four hours waiting for the daytime crowds to wander off home before setting up bed for the night and cook, when I say cook, I mean add water to, my gourmet dinner of Chicken Korma with rice and Chocolate Pudding!

The sand flies were a bit of a worry, but in the end were harmless and the beach turned out to be an extremely comfortable nights sleep. As I had done a few extra kilometres on both the first and second days, the third day was a little short, in fact I was finished by 9:00am! The scenery had changed from the rolling coastal valleys and inlets to a modern industrial landscape, with oil pipelines, jetty’s and deep water harbours. The sunrise over an oil refinery can be just as stunning as one in the mountains or over the sea.

So, by 10:00am I was heading home, planning the next instalment, starting from Porthgain and heading north towards Fishguard. Away from the industrial south.

Before the second lockdown I have managed one more trip to a mountain range I have never walked in before, The Brecon Beacons. It was one of the nurses, Sophie, at the dentist, you know, the one that always holds your hand and says ‘there, there, it won’t hurt’. So when she mentioned how wonderful the Brecon Beacons were, funnily enough I was a little dubious as her track record for telling the truth, isn’t good! But it seems that outside the surgery Sophie is no liar.

Andrew West and I walked a two day circuit, taking in some of the peaks in the central belt of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The weather on the first day was somewhat mixed, mainly wind and rain, but I think the sun did peak its head out once or twice. It did, thank goodness stop raining when we set up camp, me with my tarp and bivvy bag and Andrew with his tent. Was I jealous, no not really. The tarp kept off the heavy rain that started not long after we set up camp and as the rain and wind subsided, darkness began to fall and my mind just wandered free from all restraints.

The next day, although cloudy, was brighter and the walk along the ridges up to Pen y Fan was taken up with banter about everything, except Covid, Politicians and Journalists, so a perfect day, really. On our way up to Pen y Fan a local pointed us in the direction of a sheep track that skirted the steep grassy slope of Corn Du with stunning if somewhat airy views down the Cwm Llwch valley.

Pen y Fan was worth waiting for, a glorious summit with fantastic 360 degree views. The summit wasn’t overly crowded, but like Snowdon, it seems to be the place that the crowds heads for. I don’t mind that they are unable to see the beauty of the surrounding mountains, which for some reason don’t seem to appear in their limited vision. I say let them stay on Pen y Fan, Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis and the paths that now look like highways that take them up to these summits, selfish of me, maybe. There are mountains, hills and wild expanses that equally rival these places, which are free of these blinkered day walkers. Places where you can be alone and away from this world’s madness, while these single minded walkers are often only able to see the crowded, headline, summits!