by Ronald Turnbull

Rating: 3 star

Editors Forward:
A guide to bivvy bag skills and expeditions, The Book of The Bivvy is a half-and-half mix of how to do it and why to do it (or how not to do it, and why not to do it). Accounts of expeditions, both nice and nasty, alternate with practical chapters about the technicalities of the breathable membrane, how little kit you really can get away with and the secrets of lightweight long distance. The book closes with a selection of bivvybag expeditions to initiate the unwary into the secrets. Ronald’s informed, humorous, instructive, wry look at the world of the bivouac is certainly the first, and perhaps the last, word on this unexplored territory. Along the way Ronald shows that 1900 to 1969 was the dark age of the bivouac, how Diogenes (the Cynic) bivvied under timber, and that the Eiger was climbed only through improved bivvying technique.

The book, whilst over viewing some epic trips across the Scotish highlands ,does give great instructions for anyone wanting to camp in a bivvy.

At one point he Ronald explains that there are five rules for covering country:

1 Travel light
A sack below 14kg/30lb is the one luxury that matters.

2 Start early
Why waste batteries at night, then spend good morning daylight lying in bed? Shift to Central European time: get up at dawn and fall asleep at what we call 8pm but the Ukrainians call bedtime.

3 Start slowly
When I set out over all the hills of Southern Scotland, I was chasing a record of Colin Donnelly. Donnelly is one of the fastest hill men in Scotland and roughly twice as fast as me. Each day he ran – very fast – from 9am till 5pm. Each day I ran – rather slowly – from 5am till 9pm; and I ended up two days ahead. You don’t go far by going fast. Going fast just gets you tired. You go far by going for a long time.

4 Finish late
Which also solves the problem of how to pass the evening in the con- fines of the bivvybag. Don’t get into the bivvy till the evening’s already over.

5 Eat, drink and be considerably less miserable
Travelling a long distance fairly quickly is as much a matter of eating as of the feet. The section below suggests 1kg/2lb of food a day, which is rather a lot. Don’t wait till you feel hungry. Tell yourself that if you don’t eat this food you’ll have to carry it even further. Have muesli and Mars bars in the pockets to nibble as you go along. Slow down, and put more effort into the eating.

Slimmers pinch flesh at the side of the waist to see how fat they are. This also works in reverse. About 2cm of pinchable body is a healthy minimum. When, after five days, you find nothing between skin and ribs, you’re about to flake out. You may have walked far and fast but you’ve failed at the eating, and the rest of the journey is going to be less fun-filled.

Other lessons which stood out for me were that:

1 The view Hilltop or clifftop is best.
Thats except if the hilltop’s a flat plateau, when it’s better to be a little way down the side. But the sunset side, or the one facing the sunrise? Either way, you want a lake for the reflections.

2 Shelter Wind comes suddenly in the night.
The bag isn’t going to blow down, of course, but when wind moulds it against the body it gets very cold. So it’s good to have a hollow below a rock or a clump of trees close enough to roll into.

3 Warmth
The clear starry nights are the really cold ones. Anything at all between the sleeper and the night sky helps here – even the leafless twigs of a thorn.

4 Softness Dry dead grasses and heather.
they don’t just add to the comfort but also to the warmth, as most heat is lost into the ground. Really tufty heather is luxury enough to sacrifice even a hilltop view for. Ground can deceive. Really soft-looking moss can have rocks under. Lie on the ground before deciding to make a bed of it. Once you’ve changed into the dry socks it’s a bit late to discover you should be lying in a larchwood rather than poplar.(Twisty roots and lack of leafmould is why poplar should really be renamed as ‘un-poplar’. ) Backpacking rucksacks are well padded, and an empty one makes a partial mattress. This means taking a large plastic bag or sack-liner for all the stuff that would otherwise be in the rucksack.

5 Flatness
You’re not pegged down, and bag fabric is slippery. So if there’s a slope you may well end up at the bottom.

6 Privacy
‘Those who go to sleep in a field’, says the Chinese proverb, ‘will be found in a field, asleep. ’ But nobody notices a bivvybag.

Quotes and Personal Highlights :

‘It’s not what you eat. It’s where you eat it.

Any sport requires rules so here are a few for the bivvybagging of the Wainwrights. 1 You must be on the actual summit for sunset, or sunrise, or both. 2 You must bivvy close to the summit, but a reasonable descent of say 30m/100ft vertical (three contours) is allowed. 3 You must actually fall asleep. 4 Tents don’t count. 5 Barmeal beforehand is a sign of sophistication

Dr Hans Blodig of Switzerland studied the calorific figures given above and came to a starkly simple conclusion. A kilogram of butter has 50 per cent more calories than a kilogram of sandwiches. Dr Blodig was the first person to ascend every one of the Alpine 4000m/13,000ft peaks, and he washed down his all-butter diet with neat alcohol (at 7cal/g)

Finish late Which also solves the problem of how to pass the evening in the confines of the bivvybag. Don’t get into the bivvy till the evening’s already over. 5 Eat, drink and be considerably less miserable Travelling a long distance fairly quickly is as much a matter of eating as of the feet. The section below suggests 1kg/2lb of food a day, which is rather a lot. Don’t wait till you feel hungry. Tell yourself that if you don’t eat this food you’ll have to carry it even further. Have muesli and Mars bars in the pockets to nibble as you go along. Slow down, and put more effort into the eating. Slimmers pinch flesh at the side of the waist to see how fat they are. This also works in reverse. About 2cm of pinchable body is a healthy minimum.When, after five days, you find nothing between skin and ribs, you’re about to flake out. You may have walked far and fast but you’ve failed at the eating, and the rest of the journey is going to be less fun-filled.

Understand the moon. The full moon rises at sunset and is in the sky all night. In the week before the full moon, it’s usefully bright, and is in the sky during the first part of the night. In the week after the full moon, it doesn’t rise till part way through the night. During the week either side of New Moon it’s either unhelpfully dim or not there at all.