Easter 2023

For this Easter weekend, I got pretty enthused about the concept of stage-walking the coast of the uk with the dog. I made vague plans to start locally with the ugly stuff then progress from there. I studied trains & almost booked hotels or an air BnB. I even fully packed for 4 days then chickened out (completely/de-rated it to a Peak bivi). There were too many unknowns: bank holiday trains, how the dog word do, how I would do, whether the dog will camp.

We ate at the Sportsman with TSK then walked into the night. My wisdom to wear lightweight shoes was tested when I got adventurous, crossing White Stones edge and bog hopping with Lena but at least the grass was dry. The dog scanned back and forth across the hillside chasing rabbits in the darkness and I got a little grumpy as she pulled me off balance while I tried to balance on stones and tussocks.  Still, I reminded us both, out loud, that at least we weren't at Immingham Docks.

We ran out of energy in an unfamiliar place as the breeze picked up so l emergency pitched a shelter. I was panicking so much it was a case of third time lucky.

First we found a spot that was completely out of the wind behind a big boulder but very lumpy. I realised how tired I was that, having sat down to assess the situation. I immediately started to think that I could (or would) just sleep sitting up for a few hours. As soon as I started to unpack a few things I realised that was a fucking ridiculous idea. Surely there was a better spot? 

The problem was, every time we moved I risked one of us breaking a leg as the moss between boulders would suddenly slip or give way exposing the chasm beneath. More than once I got a shoe temporarily stuck between 2 rocks. 

My second attempt had a slightly flatter area and my main challenge now was trying to persuade the dog to move from the bed she had very effectively hewn from the bracken and peat. Again, I got out my human bed and very quickly concluded that although the space was possible the really sensible thing was to head to the bottom of the edge where sheep trots created plenty of flat places to sleep. The only challenge then was finding a suitable wind block. Really, I failed in this respect and the dog knew I had failed her and wanted to go back to her first spot. That was a major challenge as my kit was still spread all over the hillside since scrambling over the boulder field with a 14kg rucsac on my back was too dangerous. Thanks to her desire to get back to her own bed, I was able to find all my kit (I hope) and relocate it to our new spot while the dog sulked that I had moved her to a less-convenient location. With the bivi fixed I braved a breezy tarp pitch to keep off the residual wind that was shedding off the tiny rock I was claiming for my home.

The tarp pitch was sound, but unfortunately my bivi bag kept sliding out from underneath it! Eventually we had a home. Thank god it wasn't raining. Once pitched the dog settled down to sleep in the hood of the bivi with her head on my mattress. She shunned her mat and blanket all night + slept soundly. It was me who had issues - with my bladder, the bright moon, the flapping tarp noises, cold legs. At one point I heard a noise which sounded like one of my bags blowing away. There was the scratching of bracken and doggy snoring. 

I'd closed the mesh so Lena couldn't escape in the night but it wasn't enough to keep out the full moonlight and I couldn't close the solid door or we'd both suffocate. Eventually, after my second pee, hitching up the biv bag so it couldn't slip, adding goretex trousers, finding my earplugs, I got comfortable and cosy around 2:30am. The dog mostly stayed where she was put and rolled her eyes at me faffing. I think she got up and shuffled her position once in the night. 

After getting to sleep at 2:30am we had a lie in the morning. Whether anyone saw us (dark green amongst the bracken) I do not know because I was unconscious till 8:30am.  

I packed everything away rather than brew up. I lost the inflation bag for my mattress, assuming that was what I heard blowing away in the middle of the night, so the first thing we did was wander up or down looking for it, to no avail. 

I stopped to brew up some food at 9am before we joined the hoardes of people walking over Stanage Causeway. There was a nice big flat slab of warm rock so it would have been rude not to.  Lena was good apart from attempting to drink my Coffee water - merely reflecting my incompetence as a dog-mum. Fortunately I still had enough water for me to donate my mug of water to her and pour myself a fresh one without dog slobber in it.  

We looped over to Stanage, had a pee at the toilets then walked down past North Lees to Hathersage for lunch and to see if anyone sold exped inflators.  Outside did not so instead I settled for new insoles to stop my feet hurting so much and a peaked cap to keep the pesky sun out of my eyes. I couldn't decide what to do next as this plan was a bit last-minute.  We started heading for Grindleford then changed my mind to go back home over Bamford Edge with the option of getting the train home from there. My mattress was still playing on my mind and the thought of another chilly, even-less-comfortable night filled me with dread. We found somewhere to sit down for a paddle by the river and Lena slept next to my rucsac while I soaked in the atmosphere. I was almost sleeping & the dog was tired so getting the train home looked like a tasty prospect. I could have emptied out all my bags on the beach to look for my rucsac inflator again, but I didn't.

It had been drifting in and out of my conscious for the last few hours that the only remaining place I'd not really looked for my mat inflator - I mean *really* looked - was inside my bivi bag. While I had shaken it out, I'd not looked for a floaty lightweight polyester bag of air.

I got to the end of the path before sitting on the rucsac to get my phone out and see if there were trains - of course it was just about to arrive. As we walked under the railway line, it reassuringly rumbled past overhead. I almost hoped it was the last train so we had an excuse to head out for one last bivi. The evening was just getting more and more pleasant as the bright sun started to show signs of setting. 

The cricket club in Bamford was hosting a motorbike a sidecar rally and we almost begged to camp on the fringes but if we were going to get another bad nights sleep we were going to do it somewhere lovely, not Sandwiched between a railway, an A-road and a children's playground. At the end of the lane my brain just crashed, caught between the route to the station or backtracking to the path to Bamford to head back up to the edges & sleep amongst the bracken.

My responsibilities as a dog owner kicked in though and by the time we got to the station and bought a ticket, 35 minutes had passed and there were only 25 minutes to wait. When the dog duly celebrated me taking off my pack by curling up right next to it to sleep, I took it as a sign I'd done the right thing and duly joined her on the floor.

I've learned that getting her up and mobile can take a couple of minutes so at 1840 I got her up on her feet and she happily watched the train roll in. She usually loves an automated door. We have trouble keeping her out of shops and banks. I got on the train with my rucsac carefully balanced on one arm and dumped it next to the nearest folding seat only to find resistance on the lead and the dog wide-eyed in full-on STOP! mode with the door beepers on the train sounding.There was no patient waiting for the obedience training to work.  I yanked just hard enough that it didn't pull her harness off right over her head. Thankfully she made it into the same space as me and my kit before the train doors closed. She spent the rest of the journey calmly sat between my legs watch­ing the countryside, then city, roll past the window.

We got TSK to drive us home because when you can't walk another step, you can't walk another step and we were starving hungry by 1906 when the train got into Sheffield.  The homeless guy in the station got short shrift for not getting his words out fast enough as we strode past in search of TSK and the van.

Back at home we all ate Chinese food (just scraps for the dog) and fell into bed to sleep away the miles and catch up from getting to sleep at 2:30am on Friday morning. We'd packed in 24 heavily weighted Kms and 4 hours sleep into 26 hours.

Saturday was for sorting out the kit. Getting to the bottom of that nagging feeling that if I just looked hard enough I'd find my mattress inflator and if that failed, I'd go back in daylight, un-laden and hunt amongst the rocks and if *that* failed, I'd buy a new one. I carefully unpacked every dry bag but then yes, there it was, at the very bottom of my bivi bag - squished but perfectly accessible as it had been swinging on the outside of my pack all day. A tiny bit of me kicked myself for not finding it yesterday and spending another wonderful night under stars. My back and ankles were perfectly happy to be back home, sat on the sofa, drinking in the cafe and pottering around the house ticking off improvements for the next trip. I went pet food shopping then took Lena for a spin in Greno woods in the sun and we couldn't have been happier, unloaded and free and able to go back to bed when we needed to.

We have an order in for doggy saddle bags for her to take a little of the load and I've started paring down the size of her kit after I discovered her sleeping bag (home made from off-cuts) is 750g and she didn't use her sleeping pad at all, or need any food supplemental "special sprinkles" because she just wolfed down the dry food I gave her without question. 

There's a way to go.  When I add back in my stove, fuel, mug, my emergency food, we still come in at more than I'd like to carry long distances so I have to rethink my priorities and either get fitter or downscale my ambitions to walk 20km every day - though as with all these things, you might as well start and train into it. 

 Maybe we'll not start off at Immingham docks though.