There are definitely only a handful of times that I’ve been nervous about camping: There was the first time I ventured into the Arctic in 2001 when I was eighteen, then there was my solo expedition climbing a 5700m mountain in the Peruvian Andes in 2006 (which was also the first time I’d been that high or climbed a high altitude mountain). This was quickly followed by my solo attempt on Aconcagua a couple of months later which is a little short of 7000m. In 2008 when my colleague and I made our first attempt at a spring crossing of the remote Penny ice cap on Baffin Island (it was really cold and my feet froze) and finally our return trip in 2011 (for which I was nervous about my feet freezing again). I make that five times with the last one a full decade ago. Last week I added to that count.
Last week wasn’t some trek into the unknowns of a Jaguar infested rainforest, or into the depths of a live volcano crater with hungry crocodiles, but a gentle jaunt up in the Brecon Beacons and just for a single night. The difference was though, that this was the first time I was taking my little baby wild camping, alone.
The reason why that made me nervous was that for the first time in my life I will be fully responsible for someone else’s life and wellbeing that had to capacity to do so for themselves and without the safety net of civilisation underneath me.
In the lead up to this trip, there was plenty that filled me with the utmost dread of making such a solo trip. So much so that I made a list of all that could go wrong:
Trying to contain a stubborn not-quite-two-year-old from falling off things/ falling into lakes and rivers/ falling over things/ burning himself.
Camp set up/packing up whilst trying to contain said stubborn-and-mobile-toddler from hurting/killing himself.
Generally stopping a toddler from hurting/killing themselves.
Carrying everything on a post-pandemic body: Food, water, tent, sleeping x2, clothes x2 and an 11kg toddler.
Sleep? Not a chance.
Bizarrely that list was actually what excited me about this trip. It really was a test of planning and logistics and all my skillsets in campcraft to minimise the chance of harm.
I did also question whether this trip was selfishly just for me. Was I putting my baby in harm’s way to scratch an itch that I had or prove a point? Truthfully there was a ‘yes but’ answer to that question. It is true that going on such a trip is infinitely more dangerous than sitting at home and also orders of magnitude more difficult/dangerous than if there were more adults going. But to do anything interesting there is always an element of danger and let’s be honest, whenever parents are deciding on where to go on holiday it always includes a few things the parents want to do too.
“We always have wanted to introduce our child to the things we love. To see the raw beauty of the natural world involves getting out there and there aren’t any shortcuts for that. ”
I have some daydreams about when he’s older we will go on long multi day trips and it’ll be totally awesome with every moment perfectly instagrammable. I have no illusions that every moment will be picture-perfect but to have any chance of getting there we have to build up to that, that applies to both of us. Parenting has taught me that no matter how good I at something it’s a whole different thing going as a parent. So my plan was as risk free as I could make it with it being an almost carbon replica of his first wild camp almost a year ago.
One thing I was absolutely sure on from two decades of expeditioning - nothing ever quite goes to plan.
“One thing I was absolutely sure on from two decades of expeditioning - nothing ever quite goes to plan.”
The first thing I got wrong was leaving too late for his afternoon nap and not having a sun shade meant that for the planned two and a half hour trip he was pummeled by the sun (I fashioned something after an hour and a half), not sleeping and generally not happy. Traffic meant that it took me over three hours to get to the Black Mountain leading to arriving at the car park with a very irritable little boy who hadn’t slept and had been in the sun far too long.
Get one thing wrong with a toddler and that’ll lead to another. His irritability about that car journey meant that he decided (with reason) that I wasn’t someone he should listen to and would do his own thing - in this case, chasing sheep.
I eventually wrestled him into the backpack and literally ran the entire way uphill to the lake and our end goal to gain as much ground before he decided that he wanted to come down and throw a million stones/tantrums and stop all progress.
Unbelievably, the rest of the evening went really smoothly. I made it to the lake within an hour and he was ecstatic to see such a large lake and a massive beach of stones that he forgave me for that horrendous car journey and settled in to throw stones to his heart’s content. After the thousandth stone that he threw and ten thousandth stone he had made me throw he was happy to eat his dinner as I quickly erected the tent. Being inside a tent was so exciting for him that he stayed inside and didn’t try to drown himself in the lake which was really helpful.
The weirdest thing of all though, was that by 9pm and despite the sun still being high in the sky and as light as day, he fell asleep. I felt like a parenting god. This was going far better than I could ever have imagined. Then it went wrong.
The winds began. Completely unforecasted but gaining in strength to the point that they were pummelling the tent. After a couple of hours I snuck out of the tent to get more pegs down and tie the guideropes down. Yet still we were buffeted with gusts of wind that threatened to flatten the tent. The poles bent under the pressure and every few minutes I had a mouthful of fabric as the tent took on ever more grotesque shapes in the face of the wind. The noise though was the worst, like living inside a packet of crisps, it was so loud that I didn’t sleep a wink. The boy, though, somehow slept through like the metaphorical baby he never was, only shifting himself to the centre of the tent to stop himself being smacked by the walls of the tent as they buckled under the wind.
I watched the clock as the hours slowly ticked by willing myself to sleep amidst the wind and noise. Failing, I studied the weather forecast intently on my phone and by 5am I had had enough and got up. By 6am, bored, exhausted and expecting the winds to pick up strength I woke up my boy and instead of staying for a leisurely morning at this beautiful location as was the original plan I decided that we should pack up and go and at least try and get home as quickly as possible.
He was completely confused by the winds, the noise and the movement of the tent when he awoke. Despite this not being what I planned, seeing his reactions to these fundamental forces of nature was exactly the reason I wanted to be here. We were truly immersed in nature, separated by only a thin sheet of nylon. For one of the first times in his life he was experiencing nature in it’s true form, the pleasant and the unpleasant.
“...seeing his reactions to these fundamental forces of nature was exactly the reason I wanted to be here. ”
These winds had a quite useful side effect: All night long I was rueing the moment I would have to take down the tent in the wind. I clearly pictured a scene with my arms stretched out holding onto a tent intent on blowing away whilst trying to contain a toddler intent on running away. The winds made him nervous about straying too far away from me and he clung to my legs for safety whilst I put away the tent.
Within an hour from getting him up we were on our way back. He happily sat in the carrier rather than trying to walk against gusts that were capable of blowing him over. We would be back home well before midday and although the trip would’ve been a lot shorter, it was the right call for the circumstances. But then our plans suddenly changed again - this time for the better.
As soon as we descended into the valley we were suddenly shielded from the winds. It was as if these ferocious winds that were swirling around the bowl were barred from entering. Suddenly we could feel the heat of the rising sun and we could hear the gurgling of the stream that we were following downhill. That was reason enough for him and he kicked and squirmed until I got him down so that he could explore the stream as it twisted and turned its way downhill, over little waterfalls and rock pools. Stones were thrown in, getting increasingly bigger until I drew the line at boulders. We stopped a number of times, a half hour stone throwing session followed by a five to ten minutes moving downhill. Progress was slow but this was beautiful and this is why I came. It was just us two, a few sheep and a beautiful section of the Welsh countryside.
Epilogue: We spent much of the morning ambling our way down to the car and this time I got the car journey back spot on, with a good sun shade and planned stops to break up the monotony and the chance of long naps. Arriving home I found several straps of the tent had been torn off by the wind. It took me a few days to get over the lack of sleep but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.