STW forum bivvy ride Dec 4th / 5th from Machynlleth.

Hope you guys are still alive. 😀

You know the scene in Star Wars where the snowbound hero shelters inside the body cavity of the dead craeture….

Hmm pretty cold last night, ice all over the place (just out of Aberystwyth). Hyddgen sheds would of been cold, but bearable with a controlled fire underneath, but I bet the corrugated sheets would of dripped all over the place.

The Derby shandy drinkers had a nice night out,was -2 this morning. Tissington trail was quite hard work in the snow really.

We only got to Tissington and ended up in The Bluebell for food and beer, not very rad really, and then headed back to Thorpe where Markenduro had spotted a nice building just the right size. I bagsied to be the ‘meat in the sandwich’ for the night and we settled down with Jura and Sainsbury’s own Irish malt.

Took a while to get out of the sleeping bags this morning and headed down to the Tara Buddhist centre for a late breakfast and home. Pics here for anybody interested:

Hope the Welsh contingent survived and had a good time.

OMG scariest weekend ever – so glad to get back to Mach in one piece how lucky were we???

Can’t believe flatfish forgot to bring his bear bell…

OMG scariest weekend ever

So there was mantwig action then. 😯

Too cold for that Stu, they’d have snapped off 😉

however I lost a pair of socks – damn bears 😯

The fantastic, brave and heroic six (one of whom had to take the photo):
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P1030403[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

Was barmy warm on saturday:
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P1030414[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

Pseudo middle-class party food:
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P1030436[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

There was a frost overnight:
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P1030456[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

A home from home in them there trees:
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P1030465[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

Bear tracks:
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P1030481[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

Long descent through the forest:
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P1030490[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

Valleydaddy riding out of the forest:
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P1030506[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

The End:
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P1030514[/url] by ianbarrington[/url], on Flickr

The rest of the pics are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15512491@N08/sets/72157625544015990/

And let there be no mention of all we encountered snow, ice, subsub-zero temperatures, land slides, glacial ice crossings, water boarding, diesel helicopter attack, small razor toothed chickens, and of cause those pesky BEARS!!!

And the ultimate test Pseudo middle-class party food!!

Damn flatfish and his solo Christmas dinner – our boil in the bag curry was soooooo much nicer – not 🙁

Some great pictures there IanB.

Looks like you guys had a great time.

I’m really regretting not making it. It looks like you all had such a good time, the pics paint a series of really evocative scenes. I will now have to work extra hard to arrange a bothy/ bivvy trip some time in 2011.

Excellent bivvi spot btw- was it close to the Afon Hengwm and Afon Hyddgen confluence?

Spot on Ambrose but don’t tell anybody. 😉

I think that’s exactly where it was Ambrose:

In sunnier times:

My old stamping ground. Many happy tales about the area to be told. The trees were mere saplings then though 🙁

Some great pictures there IanB.

Looks like you guys had a great time.

Thanks Stu. It was one of the best weekends on the bike I’ve had in ages. Great company and a good laugh too. Everyone turned out very well prepared and no-one was cold overnight either. Whilst it probably seems like a mad thing to have done, the cold focuses the mind a bit and you gear up accordingly. There was nothing in the gear that I carried that I would change, and I still had a spare warm layer I didn’t use that would have allowed me to cope with it being a bit colder still.

Ian

Some more photos

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Winter Welsh Bivvy Trip[/url] by fantasticmrmatt[/url], on Flickr
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Winter Welsh Bivvy Trip[/url] by fantasticmrmatt[/url], on Flickr
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Winter Welsh Bivvy Trip[/url] by fantasticmrmatt[/url], on Flickr
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Winter Welsh Bivvy Trip[/url] by fantasticmrmatt[/url], on Flickr
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Winter Welsh Bivvy Trip[/url] by fantasticmrmatt[/url], on Flickr
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Winter Welsh Bivvy Trip[/url] by fantasticmrmatt[/url], on Flickr
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Winter Welsh Bivvy Trip[/url] by fantasticmrmatt[/url], on Flickr

Looks fantastic… Gutted I couldn’t make it.. 🙁

Oh, and am still after one of those frame bags Ian… 🙂

Oh just found this on the camera, whose that chap peeking out of the trees on the left

If i’d remembered my bear bell we wouldn’t have seen him. The bear that is, not Stu.

that explains those mahoosive footprints we kept seeing 😯

Looks like a fantastic weekend. Time for me to start planning adventures.

Aye shame you had to miss it … are you any better?

I just tracked down your “write-up” – looks like a great trip! I am really jealous. I want to take my teenage cousins for a bike/bothy trip in the summer, I’ll have to show them the photos if they start complaining.

Anyway, well done!

Oh yes, back out on the bike loads. Feeling unfit but otherwise fine.

Unfit but otherwise fine, sounds just like a normal day round here 😉