Easedale Tarn WildCamp

Easedale Tarn Wild Camp

Sunday 3rd May 2015

Today's Wild camp takes us up to Grasmere in the central Lakes District.

Despite living in the lakes all my life, i'm non too familiar with this part of the Lakes, I always prefer my "back yard" when it comes to wild camping and walking, that back yard being the western lakes and in particular the Ennerdale / buttermere valleys.

Since I live in the small village of Frizington just on the outskirts of the parks western fringe these are the valleys closest to me and a half hour walk or a 5 minute drive see's me in Ennerdale.

Despite being obviously biased, I  honestly believe these local valleys offer up some of the lakes best views and most diverse terrain in such a small area, from the gentle rolling hills of Dent, Blakley raise and Lank Rigg, to the Craggy outcrops of Pillar, Haystacks and fleetwith Pike and the mini mountain ranges of melbrake and Grasmoor, there's been little reason for me to venture much further afield all these years.

Perhaps its a tad unadventurous of me I suppose you could say, but I know what I like and I like it here.

I guess I always think of the more central and eastern areas of the lakes as the tourist hotspots of the park and so have always avoid them, especially in the summer months where you'll find hoards of tourist walkers grouping en masse tramping around the same old deeply worn paths.

And being the sort of person that avoids people as much as possible...if possible.....I like to stick to the areas less frequented.

Not that im totally anti social, I believe in live and let live, each to their own and all that and ill give a friendly hello to anyone I pass and give assistance when and if requested.....its just I will avoid groups of people whenever possible......

......And of course the previously mentioned varied terrain and relatively quiet solace of my backyard valleys does nothing to help me change my opinion, especially the Ennerdale valley where only the locals and the odd coast to coaster is occasionally seen and gives off an air of serenity in comparison.

Ennerdale

Anyways, I was once again Joined by Mr Tear and he really wanted to do a "proper" wild camp up on a hill.

I suggested a few places including Blea tarn near the Eskdale Fisher grounds campsite we previously stayed at and Fleetwith Pike near Honister, both being fairly short but still quite substantial hills with good views.

I didnt choose anything too long or big since my fitness isnt quite back to 100% yet and Mr Tear was still nursing an football ankle injury which had been playing up of late.

Mr Tear however did suggest Easedale tarn and he seemed confident his ankle would hold up to the walk so I said why not, since I haven't been to visit that particular tarn myself anyways so it would be a new experience for us both.

We set off around 1:30pm and headed towards Keswick, Unsure of the grasmere area Mr Tear had been in contact with Mr Andy Wardle.

 (Another wild camper who makes good Youtube videos, his YouTube page is here Andy Wardle's Youtube Page and his videos are well worth a watch for any of you wild camping fanatics out there.) 

Anyways Andy had suggested parking overnight at a layby near the travellers rest inn, and walking from there rather than look for a parking place in Grasmere itself, the advice was heeded and were glad to report that the car remained in one piece and untouched all nigh so cheers for that Mr Wardle (thumbs up).

After a wrong turn at Keswick and managing to find ourselves in Stonethwaite (school boy error especially for locals like us hah!) we arrived at the aforementioned  parking spot around 3pm and after checking our maps for a route we set off.

The route (same both ways)

The weather was overcast but mild, not warm exactly but not too cool either and there wasn't much wind at this point despite the forecast predicting gusts of 40 mph in the afternoon easing to 20 mph through the night.

The walk started by taking us away from our objective to a small farm road accessed at Mill Bridge, taking us westerly to Low Mill Bridge then south to Goody Bridge, there are some nice private lodgings here where I'm guessing the local deer are a problem as a few of the cottages had signs on them asking for visitors to please keep the gates shut so the deer wouldn't get in, I'm guessing they make a menace of themselves by eating peoples flowerbeds.

And it wasn't long before we saw a few of these menaces up close and personal like....in someones garden no less..

Oh Deer!

After about 20 minutes of casual walking we reached the bend in easedale road where it meets with the track that leads us up to the tarn, the track crosses several small bridges over the beck and off shooting streams in the lowland area and these streams seemed to be somewhat overflowing, most likely due to the previous nights heavy rainfall, this meant that part of the track adjacent to the streams were submerged at points, not too badly, but it meant picking out a way around the banks at times else our feet risked getting wet before we even really started.

The path up to Easdale Tarn

Soon enough the short but sure climb to our destination started and the path became a bit rougher, in total it took us around an hour and a half to get to the tarn from the layby where we left the car, we did stop a couple of times to let our rather unfit bulks have a bit of a rest, of course to passersby we were just stopping to take photos ;)  

Waterfalls at the foot of SourMilk Gill on our rest...er...photo stop.

The waterfalls half way up the walk, a popular spot to stop, especially in the summer no doubt.

Once past the Waterfalls which marks about the halfway mark of this little walk, its another little push up alongside SourMilk Gill before you finally reach Easdale Tarn itself, by this time it was nearing 5pm and most of the elderly walkers that passed us on the way up (Im not kidding!) were now passing us on their way back down, we timed it just nice so that only a couple of walkers were left at the tarn leaving us to pitch camp undisturbed and more importantly not disturbing others.

SourMilk Gill

We pitched on the far side of a little outcrop which pushed into the tarn, trying to make ourselves as hidden as possible incase other walkers were still to visit the tarn, as I said most of the walkers had left by now and only a couple were seen heading back down after we had struck camp.

At this time there wasn't much to see since the cloud had dropped around us and the weather had gone from pleasantly mild to quite cold and the cloud around us started to strip the heat from us and made everything damp and reduced visibility somewhat, so the full grandeur of our location was literally lost in the fog.

Camp struck alongside the tarn, notice the low cloud reducing visibility

We chatted a little while we made a brew, the low cloud now surrounding us forced us into our shelters, and not long after we had some tea on, nothing fancy for me this time, just a tin of Boston style beans and a couple of beef burgers and bread, followed up with a marsbar.

We listened to Mr tears radio for a little while before I retired to my sleeping bag as the suns dim light eventually set behind the mountainside.

For once I actually felt pretty tired and was fighting off falling asleep since we arrived, fearful I wouldn't sleep through the night if I had a catnap I settled down and watched a couple of episodes of the walking dead (Not the best thing to watch as you're camped out on a mountainside), I eventually drifted off into a light sleep around 11pm.

Of course, as usual it wasn't long before I was awake again around 1am to the sound of howling winds around the nearby crags and the tent flapping about around me, I could hear Mr Tear cursing at something, I shouted out "You okay marra?"......

"Yeah...this f**£ing wind, think my tents gonna blow down haha" he replied..

"Yeah welcome to my world pal" I snorted back..."this is getting to familiar a thing for us" I said.

The wind was perhaps 25 mph with gusts hitting 45+ and rocking our world, this carried on through the nigh interspersed with rainfall....well i say rainfall, I think it was just the rain filled clouds hitting us as it hurtled past giving the impression of rain.

Mr tear did have an Anemometer with him but neither of us chanced opening our shelters to take a reading the sleeping bags were far to warm and snug for that kinda thing.

And so we were both mostly awake the rest of the night with the odd whoop and holler coming from us as the winds gave our shelters a good buffeting at random intervals, the time was spent reading ebooks on my phone and trying to listen to some music to put me back to sleep which I did at around 3am.

Easedale tarn panorama

I awoke around 5am, I felt wide awake instantly and also like I had slept all night when in reality it had been a couple of hours at best, but it was light and although the wind was still pretty brisk it was quite clear.

I quickly got on my waterproofs and gloves and jumped outside to see the now cloud free crags that surrounded us.

I took a few photos before jumping back in my tent, packed most of my gear away and set about making breakfast.

Breakfast in the hills always tastes great!

It wasn't long before Mr Tear awoke (Me shouting 'Robbie! you up yit marra?' about 5 times probably did it ;) ) and before long we were packed and on our way back down the hill heading for the car and it wasn't even 6am yet!

Once again heading home all too soon

I must admit, although we now have our packing away down to an effortless 'T' its still the worst part of the trip, its that feeling that the trip is ending, and its always the last time your pack away, you don't feel it when on a multi nighter and you're packing camp and then moving to another camp spot its always that last morning of a trip when you get an almost foreboding dread that comes over you.

A kind of melancholy sadness if you will.

The boulder which marks the end or in this case start of the path to and from the tarn

The view back down the path towards Grasmere

We reached the car around 7am, another trip in the bag and another spot visited.

Overall it was a great little trip and we plan on coming again in the summer when the weather is a bit better with hopes of getting some nice Astrophotography shots.

And of course as soon as we got back down to the valley floor the sun came out over the tarn.....typical.  :D

The sun did finally come out....as we headed home.

Thanks for reading,

Until next time.....

Have fun and be safe!

Ennerdale Wild Camp

Friday 10th April 2015

Ennerdale Wild Camp


The Weather forecast wasn't great for the weekend So me and Mr Tear decided to do a low level camp locally, Ennerdale water is only a stones throw away from where we live so we decided to do a quick overnighter somewhere along the shoreline.

We parked up at Bowness Knott carpark around 4pm, secured the car and then set off down along the lake at a leisurely pace.

Our route and Camping spot

As I said although the weather forecast wasn't great at the moment the sun was shining and there wasn't much in the way of wind, it felt like a proper spring day.....for the moment.

As we arrived at our spot we saw what looked like the remains of a campfire, Im not against campfires but the rule of the wildcamper is "leave no trace" or similar sayings anyways....you get the jist, so it always irks me to see signs of others that haven't followed this simple rule.
The fire was piled high with wood and only half burnt so I guess whoever it was that had the fire couldn't keep it going, and then couldn't be bothered to take away or clean up what was left.
Anyways we kicked down the remains and threw the half burnt wood onto the shore and kicked away what ashes remain as we cursed the unknown person/s, the unsightly scar that was left behind can be seen in the image below.

Fire scar

I think the thing that confused us the most was that the shore is literally 6 foot away and with the water being fairly low at the moment theres lots of shoreline to place a fire on which would leave no trace.

Standing on the shore we could now feel the strengthening wind coming across the water towards us, the clouds started rolling in and so we decided to pitch despite it still being quite early around 5pm.

Not only was our pitch open to the elements but it was also very close to the coast to coast path that runs along Ennerdale waters southern shore, we had already seen a local dog walker and a guy from...(I forgets but think* it was Devon area) who was visiting a friend in Seascale and was heading over to Honister despite the weather closing in and it being around 5pm and he was still several miles off his target, after a few minutes exchanging pleasantries we wished him well and set about pitching camp.

Camp set up on the shore of Ennerdale water

I was again in my Zephyros 1, Its a very small tent but still spacious enough to store all my gear and just large enough for me to sit up in while weighing only around 1.4Kg although I have replaced the pegs and bags that came with the tent saving 100g or so on the normal weight.

I should say at this point that i'm not a super lightweight fanatic, the main reason for the weight saving on the tent is that I wanted to replace the poor standard pegs and bags the tent came with, the side effect of this was the newer pegs and bags just happened to weigh less. 








It wasnt long after we pitched when the rain started, only fine spits at first, but soon it turned to drizzle and we quickly retired into our tents.
I put the jetboil on made a brew and some food......packet mash and pepperoni mixed in IIRC.....and after a craic we settled down and I watched a movie on my phone.

I drifted off to sleep around 10pm and then awoke around 1am to my tent mashing me in the face.
The wind had picked up something fiercely heading from east to west and hitting the tent from the rear, Apparantly this is how you are supposed to pitch these tents for the best stability but I wasnt convinced as the ridge pole was buckling and I could see the Fly lifting.

For the next 5 hours I lay with my back bracing the inner (and fly) as the winds tore around us, I must have eventually dropped off again as I awoke around 6am to the wind still blowing along with heavy sounding rain, but now it was coming across the water from the west to the east right and lashing into my porch.
The door and the porch either side of the tents ridge pole was now nearly touching the inner door.

'Weather' heading up the valley

I shouted of Mr Tear to see if he was awake but there was no response, or I just couldn't hear him, so I got out of my bag, Put on my waterproofs and started packing my gear away, I was nearly packed when the weather suddenly calmed and I heard Mr Tear mumbling something, I got out the tent while it was still fairly calm and declared I was packing while it held off.

Within 20 minutes we both had shelters down and packed and we laughed about the nights weather, we guessed 40 mph winds with gusts of 50, but we later found out that it was nearer 50mph with gusts up to 70 

We also noticed it was considerably colder this morning and the local hills were covered in a topping of snow, though we didn't feel cold during the night.

Looking upto Haycick with its head in the cloud covered in snow

Quite an experience and tbh quite glad we decided to do a low level camp rather than risk the intended Crag fell we were originally going to camp on. 

Heading home

Thanks for reading,
Until next time....
Have fun and stay safe.

The perfect storm

Tuesday 17th March 2015

An alarm rang out this afternoon, I knew it was my phone, but it was a sound I haven't heard in a while,
I checked my device to see what it was and found it was an alert from an app, the Aurora UK alerts app to be exact.

The app itself is connected to AuroraWatch UK - http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ which is an space weather site and part of Lancashire University which specialises in Aurora alerts and sends out alerts to the phone app when an Aurora is going to be visible in my area.

The corresponding app which I use on my Android device can be found here AuroraWatch UK Alerts

AuroraWatch UK app

The App was warning me of a rare extremely powerful solar storm that was heading to earth with a rating of Kp9




The Kp-index is a global geomagnetic storm index with a scale of 0 to 9. Based on the Kp-index, you can immediately know if there is a chance to see aurora or not.
With a Kp rating of 9 it meant that the Arora should be visible from most of the UK, which it indeed was as many people flooded social media with pictures of the sky from as far south as Manchester and wales.



Anyways I decided to get the camera out and go see what I could see....Around 8 pm saw a huge spike of Kp8, at this time I was unable to get out of my village as the missus was at work and had the car, she wouldn't finish until around 10pm so it was a bit of a waiting (and hoping) game.
I looked out at the sky from my back yard but saw nothing other than the soft orange glow of local street lamps, I'm in a fairly dark area and on clear nights the milky way is clearly visible from my yard despite the local street lamps, but tonight held nothing so far not even a single star......only mist.


The next hour or so was spent with me furiously watching several weather websites and arora alert pages on both my TV android box, my tablet and laptop, my front room was starting to resemble an amature space / terrestrial weather center as I scanned pages of data....and the signs weren't good.
All the reports said that the best of the Solar storm had hit around 8pm with a maximum Kp8 storm peak, the charts were now in decline and worst of all the terrestrial weather indicated a huge mist and fog bank approaching from the west which threatened and hopes of a clear sky.

Around 9:30 pm the terrestrial weather updated to show a nice hole in the clouds above my location in the western coast area of the lakes district, and although the Aurora service indicated a steady decline in the storm I had a glimmer of hope at least of possibly seeing something.

So I decided to take the plunge and got my kit ready.

As well as My camera and tripod I also made up a flask of coffee and took some chocolate biscuits and then waited for my missus to arrive.

At around 10:15pm my missus arrived home and I dove into the car and we set off in search of a suitable spot to take some shots, it needed to be unobstructed and facing north, preferably across the sea as thats the best bet of it being the darkest.

The nearest coastal town to me is my old hometown of Whitehaven and there are several popular spots there for taking photos which overlook the towns historic harbour, but I guessed this would cause a couple of problems.

Firstly those popular spots are indeed just that....popular....if anyone else was on the ball thats the most likely spot they would choose to take photos from and my hunch was right as I found out later their were several people at that location.

Secondly the town and harbour have several brightly lit structures or art installations if you will that although are nice to otherwise photograph at night, weren't really going to be favorable to the misty conditions that we were currently encountering as it magnified the local light pollution and would more than likely drown out any faintly visible Aurora...or so I figured.

On the other hand an image of the Aurora above the town would be spectacular....choices, choices...

I quickly decided against going into town and instead knew of a nice dark place overlooking the sea just on the outskirts of town which had a rough track leading up to it which we could drive right up.

The journey only took about 10 minutes and so we were at the location and getting the camera setup by around 10:30 pm....but alas the weather wasn't looking great, we were encountering freezing mist so as the sky was clearing and the temps were dropping rapidly now, the 1 degree C temps meant after the past few wet days of milder weather the atmosphere wasn't playing ball.

I took a few test snaps and although I was excited to see some signs of the Aurora through the camera the combined effect of the declining storm and the mist was obvious.

Declining storm and low mist gave poor results

I was a little disheartened but at the same time this was my first time seeing the Aurora 'live' so also felt quite excited and I continued to snap away regardless.

Soon there was another alert from my phone, I looked at it and saw that the storm was beginning to ramp up again...

Aurora forecast for March 17th 2015

At this time I had been snapping away for some 20 minutes and noticed that the mist had almost now fully dissapated and the aforementioned terrstrial forecast had come true and the skies cleared beuitifully.

Soon we could see colums of faint light rising up from the horizon and into the sky and I again began to snap away with the camera....

Over the next 25 minutes we were treat to the most spectacular sight I have ever witnessed, the sky at the storms peak at around 11:15pm was lit up with huge columns of light that danced around each other, before it gave a huge majestic finale in the form of massive pulses and shockwaves of light that resembled something from a science fiction movie like huge shockwaves on a spaceships shields or massive ripples on a pond but these were ripple of light that danced across the sky.

And then almost as soon as it had arrived, it stopped...we waited for around 10 minutes to see if it would escalate again but then we began to see the cloud cover approach and knew that the show was over.

It seems that at that moment we had encountered the storms highest point where it reached Kp9, the mist had settled and that hole in the cloud cover had all come together at just the right time to make this a perfect storm of conditions to see this spectacular light show, its definitely something both me and my missus will remember for the rest of our days.

Kp reading charts for 17th March 2015

Until next time...


Stay safe and have fun!

Friday nights alright....

Saturday 14th March 2015


Its been a little while since the last blog update, but to be honest I haven't had much to write about really.
I've done a few camps since the last update,  all at campsites..

The first was in Keswick, nothing really notable about that camp, just out to test some gear, the second camp was in Wasdale and again nothing much of note happened as we were just scoping out
some sites for the warmer weather.

The Wasdale camp was at the National Trust campsite, a nice enough place that sits at the head of Wast Water.

Wasdale National Trust Campsite

We set off mid afternoon from home and arrived around 3pm at the site,
I love the trip to Wasdale by car, once past Gosforth the scenery changes so abruptly and dramatically as you come past Greendale, it quickly turns from typical english villages and farmers fields into an almost fantasy landscape like something from a dark ages sword and sorcery....if I dare say it....Lord of the rings Fantasy world.
Moorland grasses peppered by huge rocky outcrops, like tiny micro mountains in their own right, just walking a hundred yards or so from the road here makes you feel like your in a distant lonely land.

The winding twisting road that snakes through this epic valley is flanked on either side by mighty mountain ranges, Middle fell and Yewbarrow and their collective range on the western side, and the mighty Wasdale Screes and Scafells to the east which tower so high that you have to crane your neck uncomfortably to see their summits.

A truly fantastic place to behold.



Once at the site we had a look around, the place seems well kept, there isn't much here really, just a shower block and toilets and a small overpriced camp shop (aren't they all), we paid our dues and looked for a nice place to settle.

Most of the site is nicely flat so we picked a place with unobstructed views of Scafell pike and setup our shelters.

Great Gable

The weather forecast said that heavy rain and winds of around 40 mph were due at low level and 40-60 mph gusts were expected higher up, so we decided on a campsite before we even set off.
The main aim of the trip was to test some bit of kit, nothing of note just a new mat and sleeping bag to see how it would handle near 0 temps.



Once settled I cracked open the old Trangia storm cooker and made a brew, I'm a big fan of Trangias, although they (the storm cooker variant) seem to be a bit Marmite in the wild camping community with some disliking them saying they are too heavy and bulky and others like myself that swear by them and are happy to forego their 'IMO' minor quibbles.
I think as an all in one system they are hard to beat, sure they are a little on the heavy side depending on which model you choose or which accessories you take, but the upside is a well rounded complete cooking system that can handle anything from boiling water to cooking steaks.

Speaking of which it wasn't long before I set about making some supper, Tonight I decided on making something a little more adventurous than the norm.... mexican style beef wraps....

Heres the recipe.

CragScramblers Mild* Mexican Style Wasdale Wraps
(*Only as mild as you want them to be)

Ingredients 

400g cheapo thin frying steak
1 bell pepper (up to you what colour you want)
60ml dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon garlic granules
½ teaspoon of fresh ground black pepper
½ teaspoon of chilli flakes (add more if you like it hot)
dash of worcestershire sauce
2 Ziplock bags

Soft tortilla wraps

To prepare

Simply slice the beef into strips (I slice against its grain to help it become more tender during cooking and give a softer bite) and place into a ziplock bag.
Add in the other ingredients into the beef bag and mix thoroughly and then seal the bag.
Slice pepper into strips and place into a ziplock bag.

Store in fridge overnight to marinade and let the flavours combine.

You can if you wish freeze the beef and marinade after a couple of hours in the fridge if you wish, I find this helps break down the beef somewhat and makes it a little more tender when cooked.
I also like to make multiple batches in ziplock bags and freeze them ready to take them out when needed.

To cook

Place a little oil into a pan over your favorite stove and add the peppers and fry until soft and they gain a little colour.
The peppers will release a lot of liquid this is normal and adds greatly to the flavours, so once the peppers are nicely softened add the beef and marinade.
Give it a good mix and place a lid / plate on top and reduce the heat and carry on simmering for another 10-15 mins.

After 15 or so minutes you'll end up with some nicely lightly spiced tender beef strips in a savory dark sauce,
Now simply scoop some of the meat and peppers into a soft tortilla wrap and enjoy!

If you wish you can add cheese, tomatoes ect which will store nicely for a day or 2 in a ziplock bag wrapped in foil.

CragScamblers Mild Mexican Style Wasdale Wraps

After supper we had a talk for a while about various inconsequential things and then it was soon time to retire.
The wind at this time was quite random, varying strengths and direction but the rain was holding off....just.

Mr Tear 'Chillin'

I cant remember the Movie I tried to watch as I slipped into my sleeping bag because before long the whole tent began to violently shake and what started as a tiny pitter patter of rain drops suddenly sounded like high volume static lashing away at the canvas around me.
This buffeting and rain carried on until the wee small hours were it eventually subsided around 4am.

It was soon 6am and time to pack away, were getting this down to a T now, most everything is packed while in the tent into the backpack and then the tent itself is the last thing to take down and stuffed into a dry bag usually when the wind / rain has calmed down a little.

The new mat and sleeping bag coped admirably and kept me warm, though to be perfectly honest I dont think the tamps dropped much below 1-2 degrees that night.

As usual a good night was had, so until net time.....

Have fun and be safe.

Gavel fell wild camp

Gavel fell wild camp

Saturday 14th February 2015

This week we decided to camp on Gavel fell,

Gavel fell is part of a group of smaller fells on the western edge of the lakes district, its sited between Ennerdale and Loweswater and although these fells are far from the biggest, they do still give spectacular sights.

A panorama looking west from Gavel fell its cairne to the right above the tent

Gavel itself sits between Blake fell and Hen Comb, it offers clear surrounding views, to the west the comparatively flat land of the west coast, to the east a commanding view of grasmoor and the peaks of Melbrake, to the north lay Blake fell and Carling knott and to the south gives an alternate views of many greats including, Starling Dodd, Great Borne the High Stile range and in the distance even steeple and Pillar.

For such a short walk from civilization it feels as though you are far deeper into the lakes.

I was once again joined on this trip by Mr Tear who had some new kit to test out, a new inflatable mattress by Multimat and a new tent from a relatively new company named OEX, who are based in the UK.

I picked Mr Tear up at around 12pm and we drove the couple of miles to our start point near the foot of Knock Murton just outside of Kirkland village.

We took the route shown on the map below, the red line being our accent and the green line being our descent.

Route taken

The way up was a lot harder than the way down (as it usually is) but there are 2 paths upto Fothergill head.

Fothergill head is the small ridge which joins several of the small fells in this area, its the place most people will reach first whether its to ascend the popular Blake fell which overlooks Cogra Moss, or to reach any of the others nearby, including Gavel.

The gate to Cogra Moss

The 'hard' way is to follow the fence up as we (and most others do) this takes you over low and high pen little mini mountains in their own right, infact Low pen has its own little mini cairn as its such a steep little hill that obviously many others have also felt it should be awarded one....I wholeheartedly  agree.

The crossing point (gate) at the foot of the climb to Low Pen (pictured center right)

The easy way is to bear right at the foot of Low Pen and head towards gavel fell itself after a couple of hundred yards you see a farmers track, this track winds itself around the edge of High Pen and up towards Fothergill Head taking a much more friendly gradual ascent.

I decided to take Mr Tear up and over the Pens as both a test to my rather (still lacking) fitness and...well....everyone should do it at least once, Sorry Mr Tear, you know for next time. ;)

Mr Tear making the accent of Low Pen

Once we reached Fothergill head we then turned right and made our accent of Gavel, see the video below of the surrounding views (sorry for the wind noise...its not all from my heavy breathing honest!).

After a short breather we scouted the vicinity for a place to pitch, it was around 2pm by this time and we soon found a couple of half descent plots so we pitched camp.

We decided on a spot just below the summit of Gavel behind a little rocky outcrop that sheltered us from the easterly winds.

Camp struck and brews on

As I said earlier Mr Tear had a new tent by the company OEX, the tent in question is the Cougar 2 which i've done a little mini review on further down the page.

I was again using the Wild Country Zephyros 1.

By 3pm we had struck camp and had our stoves on for a brew, the sun was starting to set so I setup my new phone for a time lapse shot.

My old Samsung Galaxy s2 which I use while camping was beginning to look a little old in the tooth so I treat myself to a new Samsung Galaxy s4 zoom, which is basically a small 10x optical zoom pocket camera with an android phone attached, its a little bulky and heavy and reminds most people i've shown it to of a early 2000's device.

I'll perhaps do a mini review on it soon but I was quite impressed with it none the less and all the photos and videos on this post are taken with it so you can judge for yourself if its any good at its target niche (please disregard any operator error).

Sunset looking west from camp

The weather was pretty nice, the sun was out, it was relatively cloud free and the wind was low at around 6 mph with only the odd gust.

The views from here are as great as any within the lakes, all of them are different of course but each as spectacular as each other,

looking south towards Pillar

We has a good crack as we made some food, the sun eventually set around 7:30 pm so i took a few more shots of the now lit up coastline and then we retired to our respective shelters.

The view of the west coast lit up at night

It was still quite early and thusly some entertainment in movie form was needed (as usual), I watched one called "Her" its about a man who falls in love with his computers operating system, and, yes it was as odd as it sounds, still it did help me along to sleep....for a while at least.

I awoke around 3 am to my tent slapping me in the face, the wind had picked up considerably and was around  (im guessing) 20 mph with gusts of 40 (later confirmed winds were reaching 45 mph gusts).

The little Zephyros was holding fast, but because we pitched just off the summit just to the west behind an outcrop we should have been protected from the prevailing easterly winds, however the wind had changed direction and was now blowing from the south which meant it was hitting my tent head on along its long axis, oddly enough these single hooped tents prefer to be pitched side on to the winds with the 'front' door facing away from the source of the winds.

due to my pitching place it meant the end where my head was, was getting a battering and hence so was my face.

this continued for around 2 hours before it finally subsided around 5am and I manged another hour of broken sleep.

I awoke at 6am and heard Mr Tear was up (going to the loo) I asked him if he heard the hoolie earlier on but he said no, as he was fast asleep (a testament to his sleeping skills or his new tent I'm unsure) he then declared he wanted another hour to sleep, fair enough I wasn't going to argue with that as at that point I felt I could have slept on a clothes line.

I got up around 7am, started packing and put on a brew, the tents were covered in frost but were otherwise in excellent condition, the ground was only a little frosty in places, the forecast temps were around 4c when we set off on the trip, the post trip temps actually recorded 0c and -10c wind chill.

Morning frost on the tent, notice the sun on the left side melting it.

Let me tell you it definitely felt like it was hovering around 0c that morning.

As we began packing away the shelters the wind picked up again, a nice steady 20 mph  not much gusting but the wind was bitingly cold, putting away the last few bits of kit required gloves and out came my Haglofs hard shell to help cut out much of the wind.

After making sure there wasn't any sign of us left behind we started our descent, it only took around an hour to make it back down to the foot of Knock murton and the mini car park.

Heading home

All in all a very good little overnighter.

The OEX Cougar 2 tent

The Cougar 2 is one of several new shelters by the company OEX Outdoors, a link to their website is here http://www.oexoutdoors.com, they also seem to be bringing various other types of outdoors gear including sleep mats and sleeping bags.

The tent is an 2 person semi geodesic design that has 2 cross poles that run in an offset configuration almost parallel to each other and a central cross pole that combines to create a sturdy freestanding dome shape.

The cougar 2 Pitched in the wild (albeit on uneven ground)

Heres the tents specs 

OEX Cougar 2

Berth: 2

Bedrooms: 1

Doors: 1

Height (cm): 105.00

Length (cm): 310.00

Width (cm): 230.00

Flysheet Hydrostatic Head (mm): 5000

Groundsheet Hydrostatic Head (mm): 6000

Weight (kg): 3.65

Pack Size (cm): 44 x 18 x 18

Pole Style: Aluminium 7075

Number of Poles: 3

Fire Retardant: Fire Retardant

Flysheet Fabric: 68D 185T PU Coated Polyester Shell

Inner fabric: 68D 185T Breathable Polyester

Groundsheet Fabric: 210D Oxford Polyester

Vents: 2

It seems OEX are aiming for the upper mid range of the market with these tents, as they are going up against the likes of Vango and Wild Country in terms of specs, price and weight of their products.

Its far too early to tell you anything of their resilience but we were both impressed with the quality of materials and ease of pitching.

The weight is perhaps a bit on the heavy side if its to be used by one person alone, but this is a 2 person shelter and a little weight is to be expected at this price point, but considering the added extras such as built in porch ground sheet and separate 'roll top dry bag' style carry bags for both the inner and outer (effectively halving the weight if carried by 2 people as per its design), the added heft is to be expected, and to be honest it isn't out of line with the competitions weight for similar style tents, the Vango Halo for example has a weight 3.52Kg but foregoes the built in porch groundsheet and uses the arguably less durable 7001 t6 alloy poles.

Pitching was pretty painless, the poles went in with out snagging inside their pole sleeves and they went into their seating eyelets without too much of a wrestle, although attaching the inner to the outer was a little frustrating for Mr Tear as there was so many of them, "Thats a good thing though isn't it, nice and solid?" I asked, I didn't hear his mumbled reply but it sounded a bit like whinging, anyways it didn't take long for him to complete this task and it seems the tent can be pitched "all in one" if desired and lets face it, it was his first time pitching it.

The Cougar 2 has a large porch and roomy interior

The Cougar 2  has bags of space and great ventilation having vents at the front and back which can be propped open with the built in 'props', this is a proper 2 man tent with more than enough room inside for 2 plus gear and a porch which could easily handle a couple of packs and boots and yet still have room to cook in with the door open Mr Tear had lots of room to sit up straight in the tent and cook in the porch with his Trangia 25 while being sheltered from the wind.

The tent also features a nice bathtub groundsheet and a couple of internal pockets for storage, the tent also held up to some blustery winds of around 40-45 mph without fault, it was that stable in fact that while I was woken up by my Wild country Zephyros slapping me in the face due to the wind, Mr Tear slept soundly in the Cougar 2, surely a good sign of its ability to handle the weather in its stride.

Packing away was simple too, we left the Inner attached, took out all the pegs apart from a couple on the prevailing wind side, removed the poles and then folded the whole lot in half and rolled it up, we then removed the remaining pegs and it went into its larger carrying bag all in one with minimal fuss.

Packing away, a perspective size of the generous porch

All in all, it seems that OEX are bringing some nice high quality shelters to the market and at very reasonable prices too, at the time of writing the Cougar 2 is available for £129, a bargain!

So there you have it, a nice start from a new outdoors company which well be keeping a close eye on as it seems so far their products are great value for money.

Until next time,

Happy trails and kindest regards, CragScrambler