This is an Intervention

Too much screen time this week? The end of a difficult week?

Performance reviews are one thing. Doing other peoples' is exhausting and this year it feels really important to get right. Helping young people to continue to grow and develop when its oh-so-hard. We are a nation in mourning, denial and it feels like soon-to-be crisis.

But before it all comes crashing down I decided to go for a ride on my bike with my friend. Despite some incompetent prick driver attempting to knock L off his bike (he's made of sterner stuff), we had a grand morning out. We ate lunch together. The weather got worse in the afternoon. The wind started gusting and I got home looking more like I'd done a cyclo-cross race than a gravel ride.

Too much screen time? Well, after our last adventure into the Peak, I decided I'd quite like a new bivy bag. For now, ex-Stu's lovely Disco lite will stay with me for summer fun but it became glaringly obvious that it is not suited to winter expeditions.

Some may argue that no bivi bag truly is suited to winter adventures. I bought Stu's bivi at a reduced price to find out if I really like it. I liked the idea of it. The summer adventures helped me conclude-yes, I really do like it.

I love looking at the sky - stars, trees, clouds. I'm also quite paranoid when I sleep so I'm much happier in a bag scenario where I can just look out to see what is really going on, than in a tent where my imagination is free to wander. Is there really an armed rapist farting and eating salad outside the tent (whilst stealing my bike) or is it just a sheep? Trust me, it's always a sheep - especially the farting.

I love not needing to be fussy about my pitch.

Bus stops crag tops, heathery tussocks, river banks. The roll out - roll up convenience of a bivi is excellent for racing. Also, I was once the girl who said, it is as much about the camping as it is about the biking.

That's still true but I have found, with both the bivi and the tent, that no matter what precarious situation I find myself camped in, I'd rather pack up in the morning and get myself somewhere visibly more aesthetic and possibly sheltered than whatever hole I landed in during the small, dark hours of the morning. Brewing up at a picnic site under a tourist board shelter is infinitely easier than in an elevated layby on a fire road. Dodgy tent peg placements or no dodgy tent peg placements. Most importantly with the bivi, I have mostly marvelled at the breathability of its shell compared to my Cuban fibre tent.

In equal measure, I regret not buying the camo green tent over the bright silver colour.

The bivi's stealth green makes it the outside of Scotland favourite - though given the legality of camping in Scotland and the infrequency of bus stops, forests and other shelters in the Highlands, it is highly likely the expensive Cubann tent will remain my shelter of choice for the HT550. We have had too many amazing Scottish adventures for me to forgo the security of a tent pitch on that event.

And there's the final reason I feel I can justify yet another new solo shelter - saving things for best.

No-one wants to get to an event and find that all their gear is worn out. I know ("they" say) cuban fiber lasts but it really doesn't feel like it. So if I am to ride all these thousands of miles in training with all this stuff on my bike for practicing then I'm tempted to have a spare - a second best and save the good stuff for race day.

And this, dear reader is how I spent too many hours surfing bivi bag reviews on the internet and not getting enough sleep this week. No sooner had I made a choice, I'd read a bad review about this thing I had just decided was "the one".

Confirmation of my (and other peoples) experiences of eVent fabric from my pal, Landslide, put me firmly off my ideas on a Rab bag last weekend I decided the whole thing was a stupid idea since I have a perfectly good 1- man tunnel tent. When push came to shove on a snowy, windy moor though, I couldn't be arsed to thread TWO (yes Two!) poles and pitch it. Perhaps this bivi thing really does have something in it. After my ride yesterday I pretty much spent all afternoon trawling reviews, images and youtube - just to get the basic dimensions and descriptions. Manufacturers / retailers details are truly dreadful with descriptions going so far as, "it's a bag 2.3m long"! 

As far as reviews go, I was bombarded by videos of people in their dining room, back gardens and reviews that started with,"I've not tried it in the rain yet but on a lovely summer's evening in Devon, I didn't experience any trouble".

I finally found some real people. Apart from the Rab Ridge Raiders use of eVent fabric, I also didn't like its side entry - too much like a tent - the bivi is there for sky-gazing.

So Terra Nova came to the rescue. Aside from the fresh-out-the-box reviews, four videos stood out. Two from a chap who kindly demonstrated the dryness of the inside of the bag whilst showing the substantial dew-fall on the outside, another demonstrating the substantial foot-space compared to my existing bivi. There was a video from someone pitched atop the Mam Caraigh on the West Highland way, demonstrating the bivi happily tethered in the heather with a substantial breeze whipping up. Of course, we only have that person's word for it that they actually slept in it - right there. In fact the more I think about it, the more for superior, more sheltered locations (closer to the pub no more than 2km away)  spring to mind along the West Highland Way.

There was then an obscure video of a guy demonstrating 5 different bivi pitches to choose from, eventually (hallelujah!) demonstrating actually getting into the bloody thing. Whilst the lack of side zip had been putting me off the hard part is always going to be getting down to ground level without pulling a cramp.

• • •

It did demonstrate to me that at least with a pegged-out bivi, reversing in is an option

So the outdoors has completely and obsessively consumed me this weekend. Yesterday morning was all healthy like the vibrant marriage. Then the afternoon degenerated into the senseless consumption of online Gortex porn. Just like pornography, the perfect people looked out at me from their perfect pitches, watching the sun set into the sea whilst drinking a beer and wearing casual trousers and a thin fleece.

Even my reliable guy on the cliff face had packed himself a synthetic bag. Who the flick has space for a synthetic bag???

I bought my hooped bivi - yes I did. It was the last thing I did before going to bed having flitted my time away. I've slept on it too many times already - and I lay awake till late, both a bundle of anticipation and also conjuring up all of the reasons I had done the wrong thing.

The lack of realism to the marketing made me feel less and less like going out today as the rain streamed down the windows. Who were all the perfect people in perfect conditions? Even on the best of days I've done little more than cling to pitches on the edge of reality and shiver and pee my way through the night. What a fool to believe £200 can change that, just like a porn star boob job can't save a bad marriage. 

I took to the loft. As a substitute for real camping, I sought out the only space in the house to resolve my issues. The Disco Lite bivi review that escaped my attention when I bought it made reference to the short length of the bag I now have. 

I got in it.  Of course my feet are always cold. To get my head undercover I have to jam my feet into the low-loft base of the bag and have them compete with the mattress for space. If that doesn't work I curl up and my hips & shoulders press against the shell, sucking all of the loft out of my sleeping bag and heat out of my body. No wonder my feet or hips are always cold.

All that was left to do is consider shelter. There's the downside to a bivi, no place to make a brew, get my shit together, pack my sleeping bag away without it getting wet when it's raining.

So out comes the off-cut from the ugly Tarp - a project.  I was intending to cut it down to a manageable size and/or shape to compliment my bivi in the worst of conditions but in the end, I pitched it a variety of ways and decided I liked it just the way it is, big, flappy and adaptable.

On a day when I felt like doing nothing, I curled up in my four-season sleeping bag and played tents under along tunnel pitch and the cat came and inspected and rushed up and down on her side trying to catch the virtual monsters inside.

Bikepacking joy from the comfort of my own home.