Hmm.. a night in the wild with a busted ankle.. this was not what I had in mind.
 
I twist and turn my right ankle multiple times, every time I go out. Usually escaping injury by bracing onto my trekking pole, although I have torn a ligament in this ankle twice previously. However, this time, I had just left my car and hadn't yet retrieved the pole from the side pocket of my rucksack (where it's no use to anyone, I might add!) The twist was so painful that I initially wondered if I'd broken it. I wailed like a wounded animal and breathed, and waited. And then something strange happened. It was only a few minutes later when the pain faded away. I tried putting weight on the ankle, and it was fine. I tentatively tried walking on it, and it was fine. I was a little baffled by it all, and was aware that the ankle felt a little.. weird I guess? But it didn't hurt at all now, so I decided I must just be having a low-pain-threshold kinda day, I had clearly over-reacted to a twisted ankle, and so I decided to carry on - this time with my pole in hand.
 
I arrived at the most beautiful spot by a lake, only 1km up into the mountains at 280m elevation. The water was still and mirror-like and the sky and the surrounding ridges & peaks shone in it's surface. The day was getting on - it was 7pm in mid September and the sun had already dipped below the hills. I popped up my tent, had a quick dip in the water and settled down for the night, warming my tea and hoping to see stars - it was a new moon, and I was excited to see the milky way before the summer was out. The night sky was entirely covered with cloud though, and outside the tent was black as ink. I love it when it's like that - it's a proper, deep darkness that I never experience at home near the cities
 
A few sheep-friends skittered about on the rocks behind, and hoard of Whirly-Giggs (crane flies) descended on me in the tent, dive-bombing my face (they were loving the red light on my head torch haha) and resulting in some fairly unhinged screeching before they were promptly evicted (cue more unhinged screeching). Only then did it occur to me.. my ankle was starting to throb. I had a look at it, and it looked fine. I'd planned for this to be a 2-night trip. So I thought maybe I'd just have an easy day tomorrow and not go as far as I'd planned.
 
I lay and listened and dozed to light rain on the tent, and then the clouds parted - just a little! But enough for a blanket of bright stars to come sparkling through ✨ and I fell into a lovely sleep in my lil tent next to the lake
 
When I woke up in the morning, my ankle was clearly quite angry with me. It hurt pretty bad and had a lovely swelling sticking out of the side of it. I tried standing, and struggled to weight bear, and I knew it was injured. I cursed my stupidity at coming up here on an injury, hopping and jumping over streams with 17kg on my back on a torn ligament, because the injury was initially so painful, that my body had flooded itself with endorphins to kill the pain. Well, it worked pretty effectively, but now I was up in the mountains with a busted ankle, which was less than ideal
 
Thankfully, I was only 1km up. I took painkillers & anti-inflammatories with my coffee and bandaged the offending ankle up while I waited for them to start working. Slightly heartbroken at having to leave already and dreading the hobble back down, I packed my things. Then I put away the tent like a wonky donkey.
 
Unable to jump over the boggy end of the lake as I had done on the way up, I carefully traversed the drystone dam instead, and then slowly descended. So that was that, not only was there no night 2, but they'll be no multi-night trips for a while.
 
I have a connective tissue disorder called Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder which makes me injury-prone (among many other things haha), and it turns out that I've now developed a chronic instability in my right ankle due to too many injuries. It just can't hold itself up any more. It's 3 weeks later now and I'm getting around fine, it doesn't hurt to walk on it but it's not completely healed yet. It's also very weak. So I'm back in physio again, starting next week. The swelling has nearly gone, but I've no other option but to brace the ankle with splints for hiking going forward. I've tried this on a couple of short walks and it's been fine so far. I'll find out through physio if it's gonna be possible to get a suitable amount of strength back in the ankle or not. So that is the plan

I was so excited to head out in what I assumed was just going to be a standard rainy night, and make a cosy nook under my giant umbrella. This is a 2.2m wide fishing umbrella, but I thought it might make a perfect camping shelter

Initial findings were that the plastic D-loop attachment points on the brolly were rubbish, and one of them fell off as soon as I tried the umbrella at home. So, I set about making new attachment points, with metal D-loops and webbing, and sewing them on securely. I replaced the two at the back of the brolly, and the 2 on the flappy side panel bits. And I added x4 new ones across the front of the brolly, in case it needed to be anchored from the front too

Now this of course isn’t something you would want to use on a windy night – I’d assume that it would just get smashed to bits, but I figured it would be ok on a fairly still night in sheltered woods. I took a small tarp with me, just in case I needed it

I loved setting up my sleep system under the brolly, it felt like being in a cave – nice and sheltered but with gorgeous views out too. However, as the rain started again at night and passing thunderstorms rumbled about, it soon started to leak. Water was coming through all the seams. I chucked my lil tarp over the brolly, which did the trick, but did kind of defeat the object of using the brolly

Regardless, I loved this setup. It was one of my favourites. It was heavy to carry in (the brolly alone weighing about 2.6kg, and that’s without the groundsheet and spare tarp that I needed to carry in too. So not overly practical, and I possibly looked a bit of a lunatic walking in with it haha, but there was something about it that I really loved. It was cosy and fun, and it gave me playing-dens-vibes
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I absolutely loved my first experience of sleeping wild during a thunderstorm. I was camped at low elevation, and the storms were always a few miles away, which is still never entirely safe but considerably safer than being directly under one. I got to relax under my massive brolly and watch the sky light up, and wait for the rumbles while the rain poured. It was just perfection and I feel very lucky to have experienced it