The Book of the Bivvy. Ronald Turnbull
longing to return, albeit temporarily, to what was before.
There are many ways of doing it. From the Mongolian nomad sheltering in the luxury of his felt-clad yurt against the gales that tear across the Steppes to the wretched tin boxes some people drag around behind their cars from one campsite to another.
In between we have the ageless 40-pounder tent that can hold a platoon of soldiers, the conviviality of the patrol tent of the scout and those metal-framed contrivances that take all evening to assemble. Then there is the greater portability of the ridge tent, and the later geodesics with their flimsy aluminium flex-poles, whose versatility allows the creation of a profusion of shapes, sizes and designs in myriad colours.
But these are, one eventually gets to realise, still structures. A compromise can be achieved by stretching a basha above a sleeping bag. But this is another structure, and a draughty one at that.
And then, needs spawning deeds, there is conceived and brought forth a home that can be taken from a rucksack, unrolled, thrown to the ground, and climbed into in an instant, in any weather, anywhere, any time.
Thus the bivvybag was born.
In this book Ronald Turnbull takes us through every aspect of bivvying, from our shepherd wrapped in his fleece, and later strange practices on mountains, through the novice with his appalling and nearly useless orange plastic bag, to the variety of cheap-to-expensive breathable bags on the market.
Within these chapters appears a strange race of people. The small, sinewy mountaineers of the 19th century, who seem to have approached their mountains with little foresight or planning and consequently suffered the death-rate of wartime pilots; and later, the hard men with frost in their eyelashes, rainwater in their underwear and tiny rucksacks on their backs, pounding the hills like demented grape-treaders determined to get it done as rapidly as possible…
Now this, dear Reader, is bivvying in extremis. It is quite possible to take your bivvybag onto the lawn on a spring evening, with a cup of cocoa and a candle, and have a wonderful time; or to escape to the hills with a 60-litre rucksack packed with wholesome food, and spare woolly socks, for a three-meals-a-day warm and dry wander with your chums. The strange thing is, however you do it, you still end up amongst the streams and the trees, the tumuli and the dolmens left by the ancient peoples, whose world you share as you walk and sleep with your bivvybag.
This is not a conventional handbook, packed with dreary facts and figures, mostly irrelevant, about bivvies. That stuff is to be found on the swing-tickets in the retailers’ shops. But it does take you through the history of, and equipment used by, people who have bivvied and who bivvy now.
Then it is up to you either to sit back and dream, or go out and do…
INTRODUCTION
‘Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.’
Samuel Butler – Erewhon
Ah, Knoydart! That remote peninsula is reached by no road, but by a long ride up the West Highland Railway and Bruce Watt’s boat out of Mallaig. Leap onto the jetty at Inverie with a real feeling of anxiety and self-reliance. The boat chugs out of sight around the headland, and it’s 30 miles to the bus stop.
And those miles aren’t easy ones. Knoydart’s rough bounds are well separated from the so-called Real World, concealed in mists and snowclouds, defended by midges and the mysteries of the ferry timetable. Here the sea creeps deep into the hills, the hills drop steep into the sea – and eight feet of water a year are transferred from the one to the other in the shape of rain.
Knoydart in the rain is where Hamish Brown came closest to abandoning his All-the-Munros walk. Get lost in the mist and it’s 600 metres down a vertical bog, and what you get at the bottom is a river in spate and no footbridge.
It’s best, here, to expect anything at all in the way of weather. And when a surprising sun beats down out of a sky of blue – as it does not infrequently at all in the month of May – we were equipped to cope. In my sack was a small green Gore-tex bag supplied by an elderly but very lively member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. In Oliver’s sack was a similar one, and in his head the route-plan for this very eventuality.
Sgurr na Ciche. It’s the hard heart of the Rough Bounds. Its rocky sides steepen as they go up, till its top contour lines crowd so close there isn’t even space for a spot height. By the side of Loch Nevis we stopped to brew a simple supper, and looked at the Ciche. Its western ridge started as a seaweedy spine rising out of the loch; indeed, its rocky outline could be seen plunging on downwards into the salt waters. Sun-heat beat back at us off the rock spine, the warm air carried the aroma of the bog myrtle, and the bees were buzzing around in the heather. Assuredly not a night for the bothy.
Knoydart’s Rough Bounds, Sgurr na Ciche on right
And so we raced the setting sun up the three miles (and one vertical kilometre) of the ridge. All the way the pointed summit stood like a beckoning finger against the sky. We scrambled on hands and knees up the final steep metres to reach the cairn in time for the last two minutes of the day. The sun went down behind the rim of Ladhar Bheinn like an egg yolk falling into the blades of a liquidiser.
At this point we may calculate the altitude of Heaven as 1042m (3418ft). For on Ciche’s summit, at sunset, it is within touching distance.
Two minutes down the eastern sides we found, among all the bare schist, a grassy shelf sheltered by lumps of crag. Twenty miles away Nevis, that urban hill, crouched under the stars. All night long our noses poked into the night and were cooled and freshened by the breezes.
But by dawn those noses were damp ones. Grey rain had rolled in off the Atlantic. Tendrils of cloud swirled around our little hollow; we were annoying damp tealeaves to be scoured out of its pristine sink. We bundled up the bags and dropped 800 feet to warm up before breakfasting huddled under a wet stonewall.
Julian Miles calculated that he’d made about 8000 bivvybags over the years, not to mention the more expensive but perfectly serviceable products of his competitors and successors. Where are they all?
Is it just that the bivvy is so discreet that we don’t see it? A gentleman who didn’t give his name spent four months in his one, watching a farmhouse in Kent where some thieves were preparing to steal the great De Beers diamond from the Millennium Dome.
But are the other half-million or so bivvybags manufactured by Britain’s lively outdoor suppliers all simply sitting in attics and their nervous owners taking them out every six months or so and saying, do I quite dare? Or don’t I? Like English lasses on a Spanish beach wondering whether or not to go topless…
Head of Loch Nevis, below the long ridge of Sgurr na Ciche
Topless – topful – topping – over the top – there’s a pun here, struggling with its zips and trying to emerge into the open air. So far the bag has mostly been taken up by serious long-distance types, and of course the Special Forces. But even on a simple tropical beach sleep-out, it does make all the difference not to have the morning dew joining you in bed. Or take a bottle of whisky to the first flat place above the youth hostel and join Prince Charlie in the heather.
They are the best of nights: they are the worst of nights. The modern lightweight tent has opened up the wilderness – but for an increasing number of people, the lightweight tent is just a bit too civilised. Can you really experience nature’s rawness from inside a zipped-up storm-flap? For those who want to bring a bit of old-fashioned pain and suffering back into the outdoor experience, the bivvybag is the place to be.
In a tent you have to unbag, boot up, and crawl all over a sleeping companion to see what the stars are up to. In a bivvy,