So for my March microadventure, fellow Clapham Chaser Sophie Kelk and I decided to venture out of London on a dark drizzly Tuesday night and sleep in a field near the North Downs Way on the Kent/Surrey borders. I should probably add that wild camping in England is illegal (it's legal in Scotland) but as long as you're discreet you should be ok. I've heard of people bivvying in Richmond Park, but given the number of deer and Royal Parks patrol vehicles we decided it probably wasn't a very good idea.
Even my commute IN to work felt like an adventure. Switching a handbag for a rucksack, I felt like a kid going on holiday. Except nothing about my day was changing, just the promise of not knowing where I was going to sleep that night.
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| Getting the bus into work (bag too big to survive the northern line scrum!) |
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| Leaving the office |
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| The Shard |
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| London Bridge Station |
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| Sophie and me with matching Chaser bobble hats at East Croydon |
Sophie and I met up at East Croydon to pick up our connecting train. I'm familiar with the north Kent/Surery hills from cycling so we'd decided to go to Woldingham and picked out a pub not far from our rough camping spot of Botley Hill. But we were running late so, knowing that the pub stopped serving food at 8:30pm, we made a snap decision to jump off the train 2 stops earlier after a friendly commuter overheard us discussing alternative and suggested that the pubs in Oxted (our plan B) weren't that great. So we found ourselves at Upper Warlingham station based purely on a pub recommendation for The White Lion from a complete stranger. We even managed to get a lift to the pub in the village with said stranger. The microadventure had truly begun...
We totally lucked out at The White Lion. Not only was it a ye olde little gem of a building on the outsides, it was warm and cozy inside, and they did great wine and food with friendly service. We shared a baked camembert, bottle of red wine and each had a steak and ale pie, with the promise that the more you eat, the warmer you'll stay because your body will be burning energy. That's our story and we're sticking to it.
Best of all, they agreed to fill up my hot water bottle before we headed out into the night (virtually glamping, right?!)
It was already quite late so we only walked about 30 minutes before picking a field away from the road, and finding a corner next to a wooded area to pitch our tent. We'd wanted to wild camp the whole night but knew rain was forecast so decided to start out in the bivvy bags and have the tent as a back up. But what's a bivvy bag I hear you cry? It's basically a waterproof bag that you put on the outside of your sleeping bag, a one man cocoon that I'm sure is a lot more pleasant in the summer nights. We did manage 2 hours sleeping out but crawled into the tent at about 1am when the rain got heavier.
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| The road out of Warlingham |
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| Setting up 'Plan A' bivvy bags |
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| And 'Plan B' tent |
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| Hip flask night cap |
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| Sooo grateful for 'Plan B' tent option in the night |
We both slept ok, but were so grateful for the tent. It was still drizzling when we got up and packed up around 6am. We then headed to (our originally planned) Woldingham station to get the train back into London.
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| Good Morning! |
Re-joining a train of commuters felt very strange, especially in our soggy outdoor gear alongside the office-wear majority. But it was exciting to think about what we'd crammed into the time that it had taken most of the train to get home, go to bed, get up and get back on the train. Definitely not something for every week (and we were both exhausted by the evening) but a lot of fun, and something I'd be up for trying again when the evenings start to get lighter, warmer and drier!
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| Spot the odd one out! |
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| Sophie getting back on a busy commuter train at East Croydon |
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| Back at London Bridge, re-joining the rat race |
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| Breakfast back at my desk by 8:45am |
