To celebrate/relax after the end of first semester at university I decided to take a trip up into the highlands with my hot tent for a few days before heading to my family home in dorset for Christmas.
I was looking at the woods near Aviemore north of the Cairngorm Plateau but after looking into some of the campfire regulation they have I decided to instead head up to Dunked, surrounded by the Tay Forest.
It was was about an hour and a half train ride from Edinburgh, and despite travelling in late morning, the cloud cover made it it seem to stay dusk all day, a very strange feeling!
Walking through Dunked I immediately knew I had made a good choice of location to hike in - it almost looked like scenery you would see in the smokey mountains!
Dunkeld is quite amazing, the forest that surrounds it seems to creep into the village too, every available space was wooded! After the village were a load of off roading tracks with lots of land rovers racing up and down. It was somewhere around here I seemed to have lost the only copy of my map of the area :11doh: :11doh:
After getting to the forest car park, and having no map, I took the smallest track I saw, then immediately after I took the smallest trail coming off that again.
The area wasn't really big enough to get lost in and it felt kind of liberating following tracks into the unknown. When I do have a map I tent to scrutinise over details and over check it so this was a welcome change!
I knew roughly where I was from what I saw of the hill in the distance and decided getting near the top of that seemed like a good idea.
The forest was not like anywhere I had been before, big old growth Larch trees covered in moss, with all these boulders and cliffs and rocky outcrops!
After following some more single tracks with not a footprint on them, it was getting into the afternoon and I started looking for a camp. I could hear running water in the distance, and so followed it until I found a little burn running down a small valley in the hill.
I wandered around a little further, following deer tracks until I found a flat piece of dry ish ground a little way from the paths that was close enough to the water. I set my pack down by the stream and explored the area a little, before settling on a site that wasn't too far from the paths but was quite a bit higher, so was invisible form the tacks.
I then fetched my pack and went in search of firewood.
With camp set and the stove going, I set about making some dinner. I'm vegetarian so I found myself some Quorn peppered steaks a few days before, which I cooked with pitta bread and mushrooms.
I'd like to make my own bannock instead next time, but pitta was a compact solution this time around.
I let the stove go out overnight and re lit it in the morning. Not only does this give a hot breakfast but it means getting out the sleeping bag and getting up and about is whole lot easier!
Despite only being about 1k from the car park, and only 3k from the train station, I think following what was a very small and very steep tricky trail initially had put me in a very secluded spot, I had not seen a single person since leaving the car park, and not a single footprint anywhere near my camp.
I was confident I could stray from the camp a bit and not have anyone stumble across it, so spent the second day exploring the deer trails around this part of the woods.
I found a few marks in the soil which were definitely made by deer - anyone know why? I thought either bedding or food?
I followed the deer trails further and came across another stream the other side of the ridge I was on
I spent the rest of the day collecting and processing more firewood. The woodland area was very very damp and moss was growing on everything. In my search for dead dry hardwood I came across a lot of fallen rotten birches, but noticed absolutely no live standing birches in this area - anyone know why that might be?
Because of the dampness almost all fallen hardwood trees I found were rotten at the bases where they touched the ground - and then discovered anything still off the ground hardy had a chance to season yet and was still wet and green! In the end I found a little hardwood and a few fallen larches that were nicely seasoned and used that for firewood.
all that wood cutting took its toll on my hands - but who says you cant be a little glam in the woods?!
I kept the stove smouldering away all day and blew it back into life for lunch - super noodles with pre-cooked tofu.
Because all the birch in the forest was rotten so bracken became the tinder of choice. It was damp but I collected and dried what I needed on the first day, using some tinder I bought with me to light the first fire.
Then once agin it began to get dark and it was time to return back into the tent. At this time of year it is so nice to have a large ish, heated tent.
It really didn't get that cold - not even into the minuses, so I didn't really need the stove but to have it there meant at 4:00 when it got dark I had somewhere spacious and cozy to spend my evening.
For anyone interested for my dinner the second day I baked a sweet potato in the stove and had it with a dehydrated in a pot bean chilli I got from the supermarket.
While that was cooking, I noticed my hardwood was not burning well, so spent some time splitting it with my knife and wedges I made from sticks. It worked surprisingly well!
For longer trips I would like to bring an axe but for weight saving purposes a knife and wedges does just fine on anything small enough to fit in the stove.
to light the tent in the evenings I was trying something new.
I have always been dissatisfied with the bulk and light output of traditional camping lanterns, so this time took a swing of battery powered fairy lights.
They take the same amount of batteries as my camping lantern, are about half the size and they were bright enough that I hardly used my head torch in the tipi!
My other favourite thing about the fairy lights in a bag method is that these lights are 'warm white' meaning they feel much more cosy and natural in the tent. I hate the bright white light you get from most modern camping lanterns!
It was a few degrees warmer that night and I had stupidly put a few of the larch logs on the stove before bed so I spent the first few hours of my night outside my sleeping bag!! Even with everything closed full on the stove - its design means there is by no means an airtight seal and the larch loges burned very hot for a very long time.
I have found this stove behaves very very differently with different woods, and requires different intake and damper setting for each type. Soft wood logs will quite happily burn away down to embers with both the damper and the air intake fully closed - and they will last quite a long time on these settings.
I found with hardwood however that while it does burn for longer - it needs the air intake fully open all the time to keep it from going out, and it means a slow burn with hardwood is actually much harder to achieve, though that might have just been my slightly damp wood needing to burn a little hotter than usual.
I'll need to take more trips to confirm this, but at the moment for keeping the stove going at night I definitely prefer the low maintenance option of closing everything down and burning softwood.
I woke up to a very misty morning. I was going home today but decided to take my time. I reilit the fire again with small sticks and heated some pitta and had some vegan fetta (i'm also lactose intolerant) with it for breakfast, and while that burned down I dragged myself out of my sleeping, photographed the misty woods and and packed up everything but the stove and the tent.
Once the stove had burnt down enough I disassembled it then I damped and scattered the embers, then pack dup the tent.
Someone asked about more pictures of my pack in my last trip report so here they are. I really really like this external frame pack. It does a great job of taking the weight off the shoulders and onto the hips, and makes heavier weights quite bearable. The only thing i found hurting was my legs not used to the weight, I had o complaints from my back or shoulders.
I modifie dette original pack with a molle kidney belt and some cut up molle H straps. By crossing over the shoulder straps the fit the slope of my shoulders much better, though I have still used some old socks wrapped around them for padding.
This kind of pack wast ideal for this environment. The pack sits very high on your back so it caught a lot of branches in the dense woodland, and it is not the most stable thing for the steep ascents or decent, and trickier off trail terrain. That said it coped quite well, and I don't think anything else capable of taking that much weight would be capable either.
I didn't weigh it but I think the pack was around 15kg. I know thats not too heavy but I'm small!
I was packed for much colder conditions, and could have easily weathered up to -5 with what I had with me. I could definitely have saved weight by omitting my spare jumper, my second roll mat and taking a smaller 3 season sleeping bag, instead of the enormous surplus arctic bag. I could have got away with even less in these conditions if I was more attentive on the fire, but I didn't know the area and was unsure as to what wood I would find.
If I were doing a longer trip with more hiking I would also probably take less fresh food like the steak and the potato and tick to ore of the dehydrated foods, which would save more weight and bulk.
The woods were still misty after I set off again. Not having a map I followed the same trails back to the car park.
On my way back, on a small trail cutting across the hill, something raced past my vision in front of me. At first I thought it must have been a mountain biker but quickly saw it was a fallow deer. It must have crossed my path only 3m in front of me, tearing directly down the hill.
I managed to catch a distant photo of her from across the forest when it sopped to stare me down.
Without a map I'm pretty sure I was staying on top of the hill on the right of this photo taken from the village. You can see I really wasn't too deep into the wood but I think the steep climb and bad trails meant it was very rarely visited by anyone. I'd love to come back on a longer hiking trip and explore a little deeper into this forest.
And finally, crossing the bridge over the river Tay on my way back the train station, and feeling the weight of my pack on me I was struck with the urge to find myself a canoe and explore this area that way instead!
This was a really great trip overall, and I'll definitely be returning to this part of scotland again. I'd really like to see it in January or Feburary when it's really cold and not just damp, since I haven't had a chance really put my hot tent to the test. I'll post that up wen I do too!
I was looking at the woods near Aviemore north of the Cairngorm Plateau but after looking into some of the campfire regulation they have I decided to instead head up to Dunked, surrounded by the Tay Forest.
It was was about an hour and a half train ride from Edinburgh, and despite travelling in late morning, the cloud cover made it it seem to stay dusk all day, a very strange feeling!
Walking through Dunked I immediately knew I had made a good choice of location to hike in - it almost looked like scenery you would see in the smokey mountains!
Dunkeld is quite amazing, the forest that surrounds it seems to creep into the village too, every available space was wooded! After the village were a load of off roading tracks with lots of land rovers racing up and down. It was somewhere around here I seemed to have lost the only copy of my map of the area :11doh: :11doh:
After getting to the forest car park, and having no map, I took the smallest track I saw, then immediately after I took the smallest trail coming off that again.
The area wasn't really big enough to get lost in and it felt kind of liberating following tracks into the unknown. When I do have a map I tent to scrutinise over details and over check it so this was a welcome change!
I knew roughly where I was from what I saw of the hill in the distance and decided getting near the top of that seemed like a good idea.
The forest was not like anywhere I had been before, big old growth Larch trees covered in moss, with all these boulders and cliffs and rocky outcrops!
After following some more single tracks with not a footprint on them, it was getting into the afternoon and I started looking for a camp. I could hear running water in the distance, and so followed it until I found a little burn running down a small valley in the hill.
I wandered around a little further, following deer tracks until I found a flat piece of dry ish ground a little way from the paths that was close enough to the water. I set my pack down by the stream and explored the area a little, before settling on a site that wasn't too far from the paths but was quite a bit higher, so was invisible form the tacks.
I then fetched my pack and went in search of firewood.
With camp set and the stove going, I set about making some dinner. I'm vegetarian so I found myself some Quorn peppered steaks a few days before, which I cooked with pitta bread and mushrooms.
I'd like to make my own bannock instead next time, but pitta was a compact solution this time around.
I let the stove go out overnight and re lit it in the morning. Not only does this give a hot breakfast but it means getting out the sleeping bag and getting up and about is whole lot easier!
Despite only being about 1k from the car park, and only 3k from the train station, I think following what was a very small and very steep tricky trail initially had put me in a very secluded spot, I had not seen a single person since leaving the car park, and not a single footprint anywhere near my camp.
I was confident I could stray from the camp a bit and not have anyone stumble across it, so spent the second day exploring the deer trails around this part of the woods.
I found a few marks in the soil which were definitely made by deer - anyone know why? I thought either bedding or food?
I followed the deer trails further and came across another stream the other side of the ridge I was on
I spent the rest of the day collecting and processing more firewood. The woodland area was very very damp and moss was growing on everything. In my search for dead dry hardwood I came across a lot of fallen rotten birches, but noticed absolutely no live standing birches in this area - anyone know why that might be?
Because of the dampness almost all fallen hardwood trees I found were rotten at the bases where they touched the ground - and then discovered anything still off the ground hardy had a chance to season yet and was still wet and green! In the end I found a little hardwood and a few fallen larches that were nicely seasoned and used that for firewood.
all that wood cutting took its toll on my hands - but who says you cant be a little glam in the woods?!
I kept the stove smouldering away all day and blew it back into life for lunch - super noodles with pre-cooked tofu.
Because all the birch in the forest was rotten so bracken became the tinder of choice. It was damp but I collected and dried what I needed on the first day, using some tinder I bought with me to light the first fire.
Then once agin it began to get dark and it was time to return back into the tent. At this time of year it is so nice to have a large ish, heated tent.
It really didn't get that cold - not even into the minuses, so I didn't really need the stove but to have it there meant at 4:00 when it got dark I had somewhere spacious and cozy to spend my evening.
For anyone interested for my dinner the second day I baked a sweet potato in the stove and had it with a dehydrated in a pot bean chilli I got from the supermarket.
While that was cooking, I noticed my hardwood was not burning well, so spent some time splitting it with my knife and wedges I made from sticks. It worked surprisingly well!
For longer trips I would like to bring an axe but for weight saving purposes a knife and wedges does just fine on anything small enough to fit in the stove.
to light the tent in the evenings I was trying something new.
I have always been dissatisfied with the bulk and light output of traditional camping lanterns, so this time took a swing of battery powered fairy lights.
They take the same amount of batteries as my camping lantern, are about half the size and they were bright enough that I hardly used my head torch in the tipi!
My other favourite thing about the fairy lights in a bag method is that these lights are 'warm white' meaning they feel much more cosy and natural in the tent. I hate the bright white light you get from most modern camping lanterns!
It was a few degrees warmer that night and I had stupidly put a few of the larch logs on the stove before bed so I spent the first few hours of my night outside my sleeping bag!! Even with everything closed full on the stove - its design means there is by no means an airtight seal and the larch loges burned very hot for a very long time.
I have found this stove behaves very very differently with different woods, and requires different intake and damper setting for each type. Soft wood logs will quite happily burn away down to embers with both the damper and the air intake fully closed - and they will last quite a long time on these settings.
I found with hardwood however that while it does burn for longer - it needs the air intake fully open all the time to keep it from going out, and it means a slow burn with hardwood is actually much harder to achieve, though that might have just been my slightly damp wood needing to burn a little hotter than usual.
I'll need to take more trips to confirm this, but at the moment for keeping the stove going at night I definitely prefer the low maintenance option of closing everything down and burning softwood.
I woke up to a very misty morning. I was going home today but decided to take my time. I reilit the fire again with small sticks and heated some pitta and had some vegan fetta (i'm also lactose intolerant) with it for breakfast, and while that burned down I dragged myself out of my sleeping, photographed the misty woods and and packed up everything but the stove and the tent.
Once the stove had burnt down enough I disassembled it then I damped and scattered the embers, then pack dup the tent.
Someone asked about more pictures of my pack in my last trip report so here they are. I really really like this external frame pack. It does a great job of taking the weight off the shoulders and onto the hips, and makes heavier weights quite bearable. The only thing i found hurting was my legs not used to the weight, I had o complaints from my back or shoulders.
I modifie dette original pack with a molle kidney belt and some cut up molle H straps. By crossing over the shoulder straps the fit the slope of my shoulders much better, though I have still used some old socks wrapped around them for padding.
This kind of pack wast ideal for this environment. The pack sits very high on your back so it caught a lot of branches in the dense woodland, and it is not the most stable thing for the steep ascents or decent, and trickier off trail terrain. That said it coped quite well, and I don't think anything else capable of taking that much weight would be capable either.
I didn't weigh it but I think the pack was around 15kg. I know thats not too heavy but I'm small!
I was packed for much colder conditions, and could have easily weathered up to -5 with what I had with me. I could definitely have saved weight by omitting my spare jumper, my second roll mat and taking a smaller 3 season sleeping bag, instead of the enormous surplus arctic bag. I could have got away with even less in these conditions if I was more attentive on the fire, but I didn't know the area and was unsure as to what wood I would find.
If I were doing a longer trip with more hiking I would also probably take less fresh food like the steak and the potato and tick to ore of the dehydrated foods, which would save more weight and bulk.
The woods were still misty after I set off again. Not having a map I followed the same trails back to the car park.
On my way back, on a small trail cutting across the hill, something raced past my vision in front of me. At first I thought it must have been a mountain biker but quickly saw it was a fallow deer. It must have crossed my path only 3m in front of me, tearing directly down the hill.
I managed to catch a distant photo of her from across the forest when it sopped to stare me down.
Without a map I'm pretty sure I was staying on top of the hill on the right of this photo taken from the village. You can see I really wasn't too deep into the wood but I think the steep climb and bad trails meant it was very rarely visited by anyone. I'd love to come back on a longer hiking trip and explore a little deeper into this forest.
And finally, crossing the bridge over the river Tay on my way back the train station, and feeling the weight of my pack on me I was struck with the urge to find myself a canoe and explore this area that way instead!
This was a really great trip overall, and I'll definitely be returning to this part of scotland again. I'd really like to see it in January or Feburary when it's really cold and not just damp, since I haven't had a chance really put my hot tent to the test. I'll post that up wen I do too!
