repiV
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Never been camping before, so camping wild in the inhospitable and harsh landscape of Dartmoor in early April probably wasn't the most sensible idea in the world, but it was a lot of fun!
Cool thing is that the vast majority of it is free access land - even if it's privately owned, you can walk through and camp on it at any time. We left the car in a layby near where we wanted to go (there's only really one road through Dartmoor, and it's absolutely massive...about the size of London, and once you're off the road it's just miles of wilderness), and from then it was an arduous climb uphill all the way to our intended site, carrying far too much stuff.
The terrain is really hard work, a smooth piece of ground is pretty rare, it's always mounds of these weird moor plants and to make matters interesting there are areas which require some precarious climbs and if you're not careful you can get stuck in a bog. The ground never really dries out, as most of it is peat and just absorbs water like a sponge. Ended up being about a mile and a half, but it seems so much further when so loaded down on such terrain!
Due to bad planning we only ended up with about half an hour of light to set up the tents etc, we got it all sorted but unfortunately we managed to set my tent up on a slope, with a rock and a hole underneath it, and I had to sleep parallel to the slope. Sitting round the tents with Guiness and whisky was great though. The temperature really drops at night - obvious, but you just don't realise it until you don't have a house to get into. I had five layers, a sleeping bag, on a rollmat in the tent and I was still a little chilly. In the morning I opened the tent to see absolutely everything caked with ice. Stayed really cold until about 10am, but it had the makings of a beautiful day.
We spent the first couple of hours of the morning collecting reeds and sticks for the fire we intended to start in the evening, and then just chilled out drinking various things. Doing absolutely nothing has never been so much fun! For about 20 minutes it was warm enough to just sit around in a t-shirt, but the clouds conspired to keep the sun away from us and it remained pretty chilly for most of the day.
After several failed attempts to get the fire going (it's a lot harder than it looks), we eventually managed to create the mother of all fires, which kept burning for about seven hours. Toasty warm and awesome.
Unfortunately, after conspiring to deprive us of any sunshine all day, the clouds decided to retreat just as it was getting dark. Then the mist began to close in. Dartmoor is often covered in very thick mist, it's really quite eerie. I assume it's because it's so high up - we were around 1500ft above sea level. It started by the village in the distance disappearing from sight, and then areas of the horizon, and even the near-full moon vanished. Then it gradually ate up all of our surroundings until we could only vaguely see the trees we were next to, and there was maybe 10m of visibility in any direction. Very freaky, but utterly awesome. Have pics of the mist, but they really don't do it any justice.
It was a difficult night, as it got bitterly, ferociously windy to the point where the front of one of the tents came away and needed to be repegged. The weather changes so quickly up there...apparently people frequently need to be rescued from Dartmoor because of unexpected freak turns in the weather.
Getting up this morning was quite unpleasant, as the wind persisted and it was really, really cold outside the shelter of the tents. My hands went numb inside a couple of minutes. We just huddled down and waited it out for a couple of hours (with a cup of tea, although the shitty gas stove took about an hour and a half to boil the water), until it got a little warmer to take the edge off a bit.
Then we packed up sharpish and left, as the weather was horrible and the rainclouds were closing in. Just as we were getting to the car, the heavens opened...
It was an amazing weekend, enjoyed it a lot more than I expected despite the hardships. The most incredible thing was being so far away from anybody. We had no other human contact at all the entire time we were there, and only saw the odd person in the far distance. Such a vast area of pure untamed wilderness, it's brilliant. And the pure freedom to just do whatever you feel like and not worry about anything except what's going on immediately around you.
It really brings it home also how easy life is nowadays, but also how unncessarily complicated. Living in the wild, weather and circumstance rule your life. For example, who really notices the difference between night and day? It's more of a preference for light or dark than anything else. But without a warm house, central heating and street lights, night is dangerous. It gets incredibly cold and you can't see shit. You have to prepare for night, and then all you can do is hunker down until morning.
And people had to do this day in, day out, without the benefit of tents, sleeping bags or mineral water. Lord knows, I couldn't imagine being there in the middle of January. You don't realise how inhospitable our "mild" climate is until you really throw yourself into it. One of the warmer months of the year, and the weather would easily kill you without the right preparation. And dealing with rainfall would be an absolute nightmare.
A brilliant experience, and I thoroughly recommend it. I'm not sure I see the point in campsites, that seems to take all the fun out of it? I feel very privileged to live so close to Dartmoor also, people come from all over the world to experience it...
Cool thing is that the vast majority of it is free access land - even if it's privately owned, you can walk through and camp on it at any time. We left the car in a layby near where we wanted to go (there's only really one road through Dartmoor, and it's absolutely massive...about the size of London, and once you're off the road it's just miles of wilderness), and from then it was an arduous climb uphill all the way to our intended site, carrying far too much stuff.
The terrain is really hard work, a smooth piece of ground is pretty rare, it's always mounds of these weird moor plants and to make matters interesting there are areas which require some precarious climbs and if you're not careful you can get stuck in a bog. The ground never really dries out, as most of it is peat and just absorbs water like a sponge. Ended up being about a mile and a half, but it seems so much further when so loaded down on such terrain!
Due to bad planning we only ended up with about half an hour of light to set up the tents etc, we got it all sorted but unfortunately we managed to set my tent up on a slope, with a rock and a hole underneath it, and I had to sleep parallel to the slope. Sitting round the tents with Guiness and whisky was great though. The temperature really drops at night - obvious, but you just don't realise it until you don't have a house to get into. I had five layers, a sleeping bag, on a rollmat in the tent and I was still a little chilly. In the morning I opened the tent to see absolutely everything caked with ice. Stayed really cold until about 10am, but it had the makings of a beautiful day.
We spent the first couple of hours of the morning collecting reeds and sticks for the fire we intended to start in the evening, and then just chilled out drinking various things. Doing absolutely nothing has never been so much fun! For about 20 minutes it was warm enough to just sit around in a t-shirt, but the clouds conspired to keep the sun away from us and it remained pretty chilly for most of the day.
After several failed attempts to get the fire going (it's a lot harder than it looks), we eventually managed to create the mother of all fires, which kept burning for about seven hours. Toasty warm and awesome.
Unfortunately, after conspiring to deprive us of any sunshine all day, the clouds decided to retreat just as it was getting dark. Then the mist began to close in. Dartmoor is often covered in very thick mist, it's really quite eerie. I assume it's because it's so high up - we were around 1500ft above sea level. It started by the village in the distance disappearing from sight, and then areas of the horizon, and even the near-full moon vanished. Then it gradually ate up all of our surroundings until we could only vaguely see the trees we were next to, and there was maybe 10m of visibility in any direction. Very freaky, but utterly awesome. Have pics of the mist, but they really don't do it any justice.
It was a difficult night, as it got bitterly, ferociously windy to the point where the front of one of the tents came away and needed to be repegged. The weather changes so quickly up there...apparently people frequently need to be rescued from Dartmoor because of unexpected freak turns in the weather.
Getting up this morning was quite unpleasant, as the wind persisted and it was really, really cold outside the shelter of the tents. My hands went numb inside a couple of minutes. We just huddled down and waited it out for a couple of hours (with a cup of tea, although the shitty gas stove took about an hour and a half to boil the water), until it got a little warmer to take the edge off a bit.
Then we packed up sharpish and left, as the weather was horrible and the rainclouds were closing in. Just as we were getting to the car, the heavens opened...
It was an amazing weekend, enjoyed it a lot more than I expected despite the hardships. The most incredible thing was being so far away from anybody. We had no other human contact at all the entire time we were there, and only saw the odd person in the far distance. Such a vast area of pure untamed wilderness, it's brilliant. And the pure freedom to just do whatever you feel like and not worry about anything except what's going on immediately around you.
It really brings it home also how easy life is nowadays, but also how unncessarily complicated. Living in the wild, weather and circumstance rule your life. For example, who really notices the difference between night and day? It's more of a preference for light or dark than anything else. But without a warm house, central heating and street lights, night is dangerous. It gets incredibly cold and you can't see shit. You have to prepare for night, and then all you can do is hunker down until morning.
And people had to do this day in, day out, without the benefit of tents, sleeping bags or mineral water. Lord knows, I couldn't imagine being there in the middle of January. You don't realise how inhospitable our "mild" climate is until you really throw yourself into it. One of the warmer months of the year, and the weather would easily kill you without the right preparation. And dealing with rainfall would be an absolute nightmare.
A brilliant experience, and I thoroughly recommend it. I'm not sure I see the point in campsites, that seems to take all the fun out of it? I feel very privileged to live so close to Dartmoor also, people come from all over the world to experience it...
