This book provides an informed, instructive, and wry insight into the world of the bivouac, drawing upon the author's wealth of personal experience. It is a celebration of bivvying - back-to-basics camping with just a lightweight bag between you and the elements. Honest and entertaining, there is every chance it will inspire you to find a remote hilltop, roll out your bag, and watch the sunset.

• Practical tips about different types of membranes, sites, techniques and minimalist kit
• A half-and-half mix of how to do it and why to do it (or how not to do it and why not to do it)
• Accounts of bivvybag nights and expeditions, both nice and nasty
• The rich and colourful history of the bivvy, including references from Classical Greece and the role of the bivvy in the first successful ascent of the Eigerwand
• Six routes for the aspiring bivouacker, in the Lake District, Scotland and the Spanish Sierra Nevada

Map key

1 Introduction

Bag for life

Bivvy night 1: Snowdon

2 Primitive bivvy

Bivvy night 2: Peigne and suffering

Problems of the polybag

Plastic bag for pleasure purposes

Polybag facts

3 Bivvy history

Rude people enquire into futurity

Nights on the Eiger

Bivvy night 3: A walk on the Wye side

Mr Brown’s little green bag

4 Midlevel baggery

Bivvy night 4: Fast asleep on the Berwickshire coast

Cave behaviour

Bivvy night 5: A bedroom in Borrowdale

Fallback bag

Bag and camera

Bivvy night 6: Man management

Bag shopping

Poncho, basha, tarp – and the groovy group shelter

5 Time, things and Miguel

Time

Things

Miguel

6 Sleeping on summits

Bivvy night 7: Great Gable

Walking on the wet side

7 The comfort zone

Bivvy night 8: Up Base Brown in down

Sleeping mats

Dew process

Route 1: Merrick two-day trip

8 But what if it rains?

Bivvy night 9: Wet under thorns in Belfast

Further suffering

What if it rains?

Look after your bivvy and your bivvy will look after you

9 Across Scotland by bag

Wetness and weight: cross-Scotland constraints

Route 2: Acharacle to Aberdeenshire

10 The art of lightweight long-distance

Bag and baggage

The fuel on the hill

Fast food

High cuisine

Bivvy night 10: A peat-hole on Bowland

The importance of water

11 Mountains under the moon

Route 3: Coleridge’s Helvellyn overnight crossing

12 Bivvybag routes

Route 4 Lakeland all the way

Route 5: Rannoch Moor: the beauty and the bog

Bivvy night 11: Helm Crag

13 But that was in another country

Foreign parts

Route 6: Sierra Nevada: the Spanish 3000s

Bivvy night 12: Cima Cadin

14 And in the end

Sheltered housing for the elderly

Appendix A Suppliers

Seasons

Spring to autumn, plus (for tough types) winter

Centres

Hillsides, hilltops and valleys throughout the UK, including islands; warmer climes Abroad

Difficulty

Bivvybag sleeping asks for some physical and mental resilience - but the rewards are out of proportion.

Must See

The definitive account of bivvybag sleeping in the UK; bivvybag nights, both nice and nasty; bivvy history - how improved bivouac technique enabled the first successful ascent of the Eigerwand

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