ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Since his antique Saunders Jetpacker went porous in 1996, Ronald Turnbull has stopped bothering with a tent. He has made eight bivvybag crossings of Scotland coast to coast, and slept without tent on 37 Scottish summits, 30 in the Lake District and 26 elsewhere in the UK. He writes regularly for TGO, Lakeland Walker, Trail and Cumbria magazines and has written several guides for Cicerone: Ben Nevis and Glen Coe, Walking in the Cairngorms, Walking Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, Walking Highland Perthshire, Walking in the Southern Uplands, and Not the West Highland Way. Researching his recent Walking the Jurassic Coast involved a bivvybag trip along 110 miles of the Devon/Dorset coast path. He is seen here at Gaping Gill at the end of the Pennine Journey described in Chapter 10.
Winner of the Outdoor Writers’ Guild’s Award for Excellence – Best Outdoor Book 2001
The OWG Award judges described the book as ‘Quirky. Entertaining. Funny. Heart warming. Very well researched and stunningly presented.’
THE BOOK OF THE BIVVY
by
Turnbull Ronald
JUNIPER HOUSE, MURLEY MOSS,
OXENHOLME ROAD, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA9 7RL
©Ronald Turnbull 2001, 2007
Second edition 2007
Reprinted 2011, 2015 and 2019 (with updates)
ISBN-13: 9781849658775
First edition 2001
Reprinted 2004
ISBN-13: 9781852843427
Printed by KHL Printing, Singapore.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
DEDICATION
To the man in Ruigh-Aiteachain bothy who asked: ‘But what happens if it rains?’ I’d walked a long way that day, and it didn’t come out very lucidly. But the answer’s disarmingly simple, and he’ll find it in Chapter 5.
SAFETY NOTE
A survival bag or bivvybag, carried as an emergency shelter, is a valuable safety aid. However, when the bivvybag is used in place of a tent on trips through wild country, the margin of safety is reduced. This practice is only recommended to those with hillwalking experience, who understand the use of map and compass and how bad the weather could get. The normal precaution of leaving a timed route-plan with a responsible person is even more important for bivvybag walkers.
UPDATES TO THIS GUIDE
While every effort is made by our authors to ensure the accuracy of guidebooks as they go to print, changes can occur during the lifetime of an edition. Any updates that we know of for this guide will be on the Cicerone website (www.cicerone.co.uk/561/updates), so please check before planning your trip. We also advise that you check information about such things as transport, accommodation and shops locally. Even rights of way can be altered over time. We are always grateful for information about any discrepancies between a guidebook and the facts on the ground, sent by email to [email protected] or by post to Cicerone, Juniper House, Murley Moss, Oxenholme Road, Kendal LA9 7RL.
Register your book: To sign up to receive free updates, special offers and GPX files where available, register your book at www.cicerone.co.uk.
Front cover: Ronald Turnbull at dawn, Snowdon summit (photo: Glyn Jones)
CONTENTS
FOREWORD by Julian Miles
INTRODUCTION
1 BASIC BIVVY
Peigne and suffering
Problems of the polybag
Plastic bag for pleasure purposes
Polybag facts
2 BIVVY HISTORY
3 THE BREATHABLE BAG
Five nights in green plastic
1 Overnight Ochils
2 Wet Wooler in November
3 Hoover bag
4 Man management
5 Saddle bag
Time, things and Miguel
4 MIDLEVEL BAGGERY
Cave behaviour
Fallback bag
Shopping for bags
5 BUT WHAT IF IT RAINS?
Wet under thorns in Belfast
Further suffering
What if it rains?
Look after your bivvy and your bivvy will look after you
The ideal site
6 ACROSS SCOTLAND BY BAG
Wetness and weight
Acharacle to Aberdeenshire
7 THE ART OF LIGHTWEIGHT LONG-DISTANCE
Bag and baggage
Comparative luxury
The fuel on the hill
Mountains under the moon
8 BAG PLANS
1 Bivvybagging the Wainwrights
2 Bag and camera
3 Corbett bagging
9 BIVVYBAG ROUTES
1 Sleeping on Skiddaw
2 Bruce’s Crown
10 ANOTHER PENNINE JOURNEY
Re-enacting Wainwright on a walk to the Roman Wall
11 SUDDEN DEATH AND SHEEP STEALING
A crossing of Pumlumon Fawr
AFTERWORD: SHELTERED HOUSING FOR THE ELDERLY
MANUFACTURERS AND SUPPLIERS
AFTERWORD TO THE REPRINT
FOREWORD
by the late Julian Miles
designer and manufacturer of Kathmandu Trekking bivvybags and bashas, some of the first ever sold in the UK
When Neolithic man and Neolithic woman first slipped quietly into a cave, stopping only to build a fire at the entrance before disappearing inside for a long, long weekend, humanity gained a sense of privacy, but began to lose touch with its environment. This process has been going on ever since.
Within a few days, two pairs of eyes began to look out over the flickering flames, into the sunshine and the darkness, at the forests and the hills, as the wind blew, the snow fell and the rain lashed the rocks. Those eyes had already begun to forget what it was to be out there all the time, with the animals, at the mercy of the elements, and probably even more vulnerable than the wolves and the deer were themselves. Then one day there were three pairs of eyes looking out; woman and man had a home, a family to look to, and little time to remember what it had been like…
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, much of it very murky water indeed. But throughout the world, except in areas where shepherds still sit and watch the sheep, or the plough scrapes through the soil behind an ox, people look to the land, whether it be called heath, highland,