I’d tried stealth camping close to this road before, hidden in a bit of a divot in the ground, and pulled it off quite successfully, so this time I decided to try it in plain sight instead
It was all going a bit wonky from the start..

Firstly, I bought green woodland camo netting, as I was expecting the area to be full of waist-high ferns. However, the ferns were low and sparse, so the green camo was totally the wrong colour.

Secondly, there was a red ants next right under where I wanted to run my tarp from a tree in a low plough point configuration that would be easy to blend into the ground.

But, not being one to give up easily, I gave it a go anyway, placing the shelter further toward the road, away from the ants, and using a low-ish lean-to configuration, that would be just high enough for me to be able to sit behind it unnoticed, hopefully

The camo netting being the wrong colour wasn’t too much of an issue in the end, as the texture of it allowed me to weave sticks into it and hold leaves and debris in place, making it satisfactorily blend into the surrounding colours. Once finished, I felt confident that I wouldn’t be seen by any passing vehicles, but I didn’t feel confident that I would go unnoticed by anyone walking by. But this was a country road with no paths, so I wasn’t expecting people to be walking along it anyway

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And so the Cnicht saga continues, with a very wet, 3-night adventure in the Moelwyns!

I’d arrived here for a summer trip in August, in the territory of my nemesis Cnicht, with no route plan, a few days of food and a set of both wet clothes and dry clothes. Once again, I wouldn’t end up having a go at Cnicht, as the weather came in and it just didn’t feel ‘right’..
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Cnicht and I have a bit of a history you see; previous trips involving an insane tick attack, a wind-busted tent and a dislocated ankle had all created a general feel of foreboding for the area – the curse of Cnicht. But while this trip didn’t go particularly right, nothing went particularly wrong either, so maybe the curse is broken. Maybe we’re slowly warming to each other. Maybe next time he’ll invite me to stand on his shoulders, but we’re not there yet

Click on 'read more' at the bottom of this blog post to see my maps and read the trip journal..

Some of you suggested that I seam-seal my leaky, giant umbrella, so I did! ☔

Then I dragged it out to the mountains to give it a good testing in some heavy rain. It appears to have worked :D I had such a gorgeous night out in a dry lil umbrella nook, slept for 10 hours! (I had just filmed a night out in a survival shelter the night before, so was glad of the long rest) and I decided to have a dip in the river on the way out – a nice refreshing 13.7°C. Met a lovely grasshopper. It was even dry to set up, and dry to pack away, while getting to listen to the rain for hours overnight- perfection!

And now I know that it’s waterproof, I can move on to my next plans for the brolly. Just waiting for a bad enough weather forecast on one of my camping weekends. He may get destroyed, but hopefully I can stay dry for a while beforehand haha! Much Love to you Wild Ones! 

On a chilly evening in July, I headed out to the mountains with Frank to try out another survival shelter – this time it was the Lifesystems 2. I had just my day hiking stuff, so no sleeping bag etc, to see how I’d do with this shelter had I become lost or injured and had to unexpectedly spend a night in the hills

Having never had it out before, I was surprised how small it was, especially for a 2-person shelter. However, we both fit in ok squished up (although I have to say, if Frank were bigger and had his own rucksack, this would have been quite a challenge haha!)

However, due to the small size and sturdy construction, this thing held in an unbelievable amount of heat. I tested the inside/outside temperatures twice, and both times got a difference of 6 to 7°C, which I think is the biggest temperature difference I’ve ever recorded so far

This is a well-made shelter, which is not prone to ripping or tearing unlike the last survival shelter I tried, but it remains light enough to chuck in a day bag at 345g. Frank and I got to try it out in the rain, got eaten alive by midges and had a pretty cosy (ok, cramped) night in this lil thing. Condensation will always be an issue of course, so you’ll still need waterproofs, and no sleep was had due to the uncomfortable conditions, but it kept me perfectly warm with no sleeping bag (very rare for a coldy like me!) and could have saved my life in an actual emergency

There’s a window, an air vent, reflective strips, and 2 lil bum-seat areas so that you don’t have to park your rear directly onto wet ground (yay). The bright orange colour is great for attracting attention from bugs mountain rescue. It’s also real simple, not requiring any hanging-from-trees or creating ridgelines; you simply put it over your head and wait out the weather. I imagine it would also be handy for sandwich stops on wet days. It’s deffo my new fav shelter to carry in my day hiking bag

I was pretty close to my car for this in case it went wrong – not a good idea to do silly stuff in the mountains without a solid back up plan :)

It was a warm and humid afternoon in late June and I was missing my English Adventure, Stranded.

So, I decided to jump in the car and take a drive up to Northamptonshire, to one of the footpaths that I had walked on that long journey. I had no plan, a small tarp and a bivi bag, and my map showed that there was an open access woodland not too far away, so I headed for that, passing by a big muddy puddle teeming with bugs, but not thinking much of it

The woods were beautiful, quiet, all long grass and wildflowers. I’d forgotten my trekking poles so I fashioned a walking stick from a fallen branch and found a lil nook to pop my tarp up and settle down for the night

I heated up a home-made chicken curry as the bugs came out. Mozzies and glow worms buzzed about, muntjac barked, pheasants squawked and crows cawed. And then it was dark.

​I had absolutely no sleep this night, due to three things;

🦉 A persistent squeaky bird that squeaked all. night. long. And I could still hear it through my ear plugs

🔦 Weird bright lights through the trees all night. At first, I thought it was other people, so I turned my own lights off and sat quietly watching, hoping to go unnoticed. But then I realised, there was no sound. Surely if it were people, I would hear them in the quiet of the woods at night, but aside from the godawful squeaky bird, all was eerily silent
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🦟 The mozzies, which had already bitten me through my clothes at dusk, and now in the early hours once in my sleeping bag, decided to start attacking my face instead, right through my lil bug net. They tormented me buzzing around my head and the itching was driving me nuts

So all in all, this was not the relaxing night out that I had in mind. I’d never experienced the mozzies going for my face so relentlessly before and it’s kinda put me off bivi camping in the summer a bit.. but, it was so lovely to go exploring a bit closer to home and get out of my usual, local woods

Hope you’re all having a lovely summer Wild Ones!

A new tarp configuration.. apparently it's a variation on a plough point, but I'm calling this one a forest tent. Isn't it the cutest!
 
This was super simple to set up - just a case of pegging in the back centre point and then lifting the front with the sticks, tensioning with a guy rope and pegging down the front corners
 
I then got to work cooking a beef curry from scratch, made with sirloin steak, and had a lovely sleep in among the trees, waking to light rain showers pitter-pattering on the tarp
 
I even caught some sweet fallow deer on one of my trail cams too!
 
This is a lovely, simple configuration that provides great coverage, and is nice and sheltered due to the back being tapered down to the ground. The spare flappage at the back gets folded under, creating a covered floor area at the rear. You could also hang the front from a ridgeline instead of using sticks. One of my new favs!

Here's a quick how-to for this config..

​I finally finished my first feature length film 🍿 of my first long distance hike!
 
On the 5th of June 2024, I was blindfolded & left stranded 100km from home, as the crow flies, at a location unknown to me that I'd picked out blindly from a hat. @AshOutdoorsUK drove me out & left me there, alone with my nerves to find out where I was, and begin the long trek home
 
I had my tent, a bivi and supplies on my back – not light gear as it was unseasonably cool. I also had 2 days of food and 2L of water to start me off
 
My map showed me that I would need to walk 124km, and cross 3 entire counties
 
Even if I could make it just a third of the way, it would be the furthest I had ever walked in my little life by far. Little did I know, this adventure along our English rights of way would basically be an obstacle course, including a cow chase, a soaked sleeping bag, an angry guard dog, bivi camping next to a road, about a million overgrown footpaths, ditch jumping, ridiculous stinging nettles, fights with hedgerows..
 
I'd anticipated the physical challenge of hauling up to 20kg of gear and water for miles & miles and I'd been training for months to prepare my body & correct a few ailments. What I didn't anticipate was how much of a mental game it would be..
 
..to be stranded so far from home, alone, with so far to go and such a weight to carry.
 
I find that the discomfort & fear are the first things to fade from memory. I already miss this adventure so much 🥲 There were no mountains, no waterfalls. Just a very real experience of England, my home country. A more understated beauty, a bit rough around the edges, with wonderful people along the way
 
This project has been a huge part of my life for months now. It's been such a thrill to bring my crazy lil idea to life and document it. I've laughed & cried. It's been created from my blood, sweat and tears, literally haha. I'm so excited to finally share it with you guys :D
 
Thank you so much to everyone I met along the way. I could not have got as far as I did without the kindness of strangers 💚

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