Not So Wild Camping

Although I love travelling on foot, long distance walking, short distance walking, linear walks, circular walks, discovering new places (the countryside and wilderness for sure, but sometimes towns and cities too), camping and experiencing the great outdoors whatever the weather, although I love all of these things I'm not really a backpacker-wildcamper. Or not yet, that is. Lately I've been following with great interest many of the lightweight backpacking and wildcamping blogs and websites such as Backpacking In Britain. For years I've been reading other people's personal accounts such as John Hillaby's Journey Through Britain or more practical guides such as Chris Townsend's Backpacker's Handbook. And dreaming.

The self-sufficiency of backpacking-wildcamping is, I suppose, the hiker's ultimate freedom. You're not tied down to the strictures of a B & B, a hostel or an official campsite. You can make camp for the night in a beautiful and remote location of your own choosing (within reason). You can come and go as you please. You have the immense satisfaction of knowing that everything you need you're carrying with you. However a successful trip like this (compared with car camping) does require some experience and a certain amount of forward planning, a degree of imagination and a smidgen of practicality, an ability to improvise and some careful research into the right lightweight equipment to buy.

You could say wildcamping is more purist - the ultimate in wilderness connection. If car camping is the regular army, then wildcamping is the SAS. With wildcamping you can be truly eco-friendly by leaving the car behind and reducing your carbon footprint. I look forward to doing it myself before very much longer - when I can afford the initial outlay on the right gear. But car camping does have some plus points. Weight is not an issue so you can bring what food you want - and books, a radio, lots of spare clothing etc. And on campsites it is nice to have hot water, showers, toilets, a place to wash socks and cooking pots etc. But you have to be very careful about which campsites to choose and when to go there. I've learnt from experience to avoid weekends, and school and public holiday times.

I like small, obscure, simple sites. Often these are attached to farms. Their facilities are often basic but that's fine by me. Of course they're cheaper (I don't like paying more than £5) and, generally speaking, quieter than the bigger, more commercial sites. Though there are always exceptions. I've been family camping in Brittany on a big, popular site where you couldn't hear a pin drop after 11 pm. Yet on the other hand I've been on small farm sites in Shropshire and the Lake District where noise (I won't go into detail!) from a few isolated tents lasted most of the night... On another occasion I went to the Literary Festival at Hay-on-Wye and camped on a small pub campsite. I was kept awake the whole night long by mind-numbing high-volume trance music pounding out from a rave taking place miles away. So it can all be a bit of a gamble.

The photos show my tent in peaceful (except for the peacocks - see yesterday's post!) Cwm Bychan - views of it, in it and from it.

Pyrenean Longing

The Pyrenean mountain range stretches for about 270 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, separating France from the Iberian Peninsula. It's a stunning area, largely unspoilt, and wonderful for hiking.

Reading yesterday about Andy Howell's trips to the Pyrenees made me long to go there again. I've been twice before, both times flying from Stansted to Carcassonne and hiring a car at Carcassonne airport. I mixed in some walking with car touring. Next time I'd like to use the car as little as possible - and just walk.

The part I know best is the eastern end: the Couserans, the Ariège (read about a walk I did here) and the Pays de Sault; the valleys of the Tet and the Tech which border the Canigou massif north and south; the Castellane valley which was described so beautifully in Rosemary Bailey's book Life in a Postcard: Escape to the French Pyrenees; the gentler wine-growing hills of the French Albères; the strange volcanic region of the Spanish Garrotxa; and the Mediterranean coast from charming, artistic Collioure in France down to the Aiguamolls nature reserve just east of Castello in northern Catalonia.

I've always yearned to trek one of the Pyrenean long distance trails ever since I read Chris Townsend's account of doing this in his book The Great Backpacking Adventure. There are 3 waymarked end-to-end footpaths: the GR10 on the French side, the GR11 on the Spanish side and the HRP (Pyrenean High Level Route) which sticks as closely as possible to the frontier. (The HRP shares some sections of both the GR10 and the GR11.) Logistically and technically I suppose the HRP is the most demanding; but the GR10 and the GR11 are no pushovers as there are lots of steep-sided valleys to negotiate.

3 books on the Pyrenees I own and would recommend are: Walks and Climbs in the Pyrenees written by Kev Reynolds and published by Cicerone; Pyrenees: Car Tours and Walks in the Sunflower Landscapes series; and the excellent Rough Guide to the Pyrenees by Marc Dubin.

My first photo shows the village church of Castillon-en-Couserans; the second is a view from the castle at Foix in the Ariège valley; and the third is of Collioure on the Mediterranean coast.

More Stoat Stories

The mustelidae family has been getting a big blogpress lately.You know how you wait ages for a bus and then 3 come all at once? Well, first there was Annie Dillard's epiphanic weasel; then there were my own running stoats; and now comes Chris Townsend's dramatic stoat event in his garden (Stoat Encounters of the Third Kind?) involving 2 stoats, 3 pheasants, a coal tit and a sparrow hawk. A word about Chris Townsend, a member of the UK hiking community's blogerati. An outdoors enthusiast, he's been gear guru for tgo magazine since 1991. He's also a photographer, and author of 16 walking-related books. Chris has trekked many trails and long-distance paths including the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail and the Arizona Trail in the USA; and he's walked from the toe to the tip of Britain, from Land's End to John O'Groats. I remember reading what I think was his first book, The Great Backpacking Adventure (Oxford Illustrated Press, 1987), which I enjoyed very much at the time. But his writing style and ability have improved by leaps and bounds since then. A book of his that's become a bit of a classic is The Backpacker's Handbook published by Ragged Mountain Press, one of the McGraw-Hill group of companies. As I write I'm looking up at my own copy on the shelf above my desk. It's a 440 page practical guide to backpacking equipment and technique. Indispensable. This sentence comes from the chapter On the Move: Skills and Hazards: One bear-country saying is that the way to tell the difference between black bears and grizzly bears is to climb a tree - black bears will climb up after you, grizzlies will knock the tree down!