Hello from the Mournes

[Corfe]

I've lurked here for a while, but then I got hooked on the Fear in the Dark thread and the gripping story of the subterranean pistachio eater, and decided the whole community was such a bunch of right-minded blokes that I might as well pitch in. I'm over the hill, age-wise, and a much bigger shadow of the whippet fit little smartarse I used to be.

Did nine years in the TA, and a few tours with the regulars. From my teens to my thirties, camped and climbed on a regular basis, all over the world. Then there was a hiatus of about a decade which is currently being remedied. From childhood my brothers and I camped out in a patch of thick forest near our home, and so I've been very much at home in the woods all my life.

We spread the good news and many of our friends and cousins joined us over the years, so that there is a group of us who still, in our thirties and forties, get together every year or twice a year in the forest to camp out, stare into the fire, tell tall tales, show off our new knives, and kit, and savour a few nips of malt.

Lately it's gotten a little out of hand - last time one of us brought a folding chair - so I've started going alone again, as I used to in my youth. It never gets old, and there are few better antidotes to the travails of the middle-aged male than sitting before a campfire in the pouring rain, whittling on a stick.

Well, all right - a twenty year old supermodel would probably help too

 

[spandit]

Welcome. There's a few on here, myself included, that joined because of that thread!

 

[Toddy]

I need to go find a thread

Welcome to the virtual campfire that is BcUK



cheers,
Toddy

 

[Corfe]

It's a nail-biter all right - I'm sure there's a movie in there somewhere. Btw, I'd dead impressed with your backpacking stove!

 

[Corfe]

Thanks guys. By the way, my last solo experience (Ho ho) was last week, on one of the worst nights of the year over here. I live right on the sea in a little hamlet in the shadow of the Mourne Mountains..

I've got this new ultra lightweight tent, which just arrived, and I've been itching to try it out. So... Went to the pub up the road and had three pints (as you do) - beautiful night, calm, clear, cold, a skyfull of stars. Left about 6pm and hiked 2km to a neighbouring plateau above a beautiful beach, without incident. Got the tent up in the dark with a certain amount of buggering about (never put up a new tent first time in the pitch dark when you've had a few pints)

All went tickety-boo until about midnight, when the storm hit. It was genuinely the worst I've seen in this country in at least five years. The tent stood to it manfully until 5am, when it collapsed; the pegs had been torn out of the ground. I lay inside the collapsed tent (my sleeping bag was superb - wet but warm, as the actress said to the bishop) until 6, when I thought the hell with it, and began packing up. By that time I'd say the winds were maybe seventy miles an hour - i.e. they had moderated! I packed up my gear while still inside the collapsed tent, and then fought my way outside. After a titanic struggle with armfuls of billowing nylon I set down my rolled up karrimat for one second, and it took off like a bird - lost - disappeared. With it went the stuff-sack of my new sleeping bag - they went up like rockets and just soared away.

I got myself packed and began walking home. It was a three-quarter moon and a high tide, plus the waves were gigantic. There was no beach left. I had to walk all the way home through the water, mostly knee deep but sometimes in it to my waist, a white mass of foam that nearly had me down and out on several occasions. Made it home - still in pitch dark - by 7.30am, completely destroyed, and grinning from ear to ear.

 

[Barn Owl]

Hi and welcome.

 

[pauljm116]

Hello and welcome.

Lately it's gotten a little out of hand - last time one of us brought a folding chair -

I took a folding chair on my last solo trip and loved having it there, no wet bum or backache. Now I feel slightly ashamed..........

 

[Corfe]

Hello and welcome.




I took a folding chair on my last solo trip and loved having it there, no wet bum or backache. Now I feel slightly ashamed..........

Don't be too ashamed! Every time he went off for a pee, he came back to find one of us sitting in it!

 

[udamiano]

hi and welcome

 

[John Fenna]

Hello and welcome!

 

[pauljm116]

Don't be too ashamed! Every time he went off for a pee, he came back to find one of us sitting in it!

Excellent! That makes me feel a lot better and means i wont be looking for a skip to chuck my old faithful chair in.

 

[Robbi]

greetings matey

i love the road from Newcastle to Annalong on the bike great road and stunning scenery.

stay safe

Robbi

 

[Paul72]

Welcome mate from another Mournes frequenter!

 

[Corfe]

Went out this morning along the coast, a usual moist drizzly wet and windy day here - and for the first time in this location I managed to get a fire going with just firesteel and tinder - a big yawn to all the real bushy folk here, but I hadn't managed it before. I had smeared my cotton wool with vaseline - that's what did it.