I know it’s not been very long, but I was so relieved to be camping and sleeping in the outdoors again this weekend. Although I have slept in my hammock on a couple of occasions it has been exclusively indoors and haven’t actually slept outside once since I returned from my Europe trip almost two months ago. Which is quite sometime when you consider I slept exclusively outside for about 60/70 % of the time over the same length of time earlier this year.
I had the usual “it’s dark” and “what was that noise” scared feeling.
It was all prompted over the weekend when my cousin and Iustina arranged a cycle ride and camping evening on Saturday down in Swansea while I was visiting my mum and while Hannah is back in the UK for a while. The cycle ride didn’t happen but the three of us headed into the Gower and camped next to a fire pit that we found (and never lit). This gave me a little chance to try the hammock I have on loan outside as well as my new sleeping pad. I have been having problems with the hammock with it not “scooping me up” (as I put it) in the same way as my previous and the sleeping pad was brand new. As far as the testing goes, it was kind of unsuccessful. I woke up uncomfortable, cold and still felt like I was falling out. The sleeping pad is amazing because of how small it packs down to and its genuine 10 (maybe 11) breath inflation, I couldn’t get comfortable on it. That being said, even with these problems, I was so happy to have such a pleasant evening catching up with each other after such a long time and to be sleeping outside. In the morning I really didn’t want to pack down and leave. The sun was shining, my hammock was up, and I could have easily grabbed some supplies and just relaxed there all day.
The following day I had a light-bulb moment as to why my hammock might not be feeling right and, keen to simply be camping again, decided I would camp again on Sunday to test out my theory and break up the drive back home. It was late when I arrived and having not solo-camped in so long had the usual “it’s dark” and “what was that noise” scared feeling, but I went and I am so happy I did. I made some further adjustments to the hammock and was correct so don’t have that ‘falling out’ feeling and the following morning woke up early because I couldn’t be bothered putting up my tarp even though I had checked and the forecast was to rain at 6am. But it wasn’t due to rain much and was only 20% likely.. but it did, but even that was nice because through the shelter of the trees it was a gentle few refreshing drops and meant I was up early and gave me extra time to finish my journey home instead of driving straight to work so I could still cycle to work and back today 🙂
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