Mountain Bivi

Conditions were looking good for a night out under the stars, so after the morning of snorkelling at the beach, we packed one lot of kit away and re-loaded rucksacks with camping gear, setting off in to the mountains at around 7pm.

There was a good sunset in progress and we made our way uphill.

We had planned to have dinner on top of the peak, but half way up decided that we could do with the rest and energy, so stopped and ate some of the food I’d brought home from Fort Martin that Clare had pre-prepared for us.

This gave us the boost we needed to continue upwards…

We arrived at the top of Filiast at sunset. It’s a rocky summit so no good for camping, but I hoped to find a spot nearby. I fortunately the wind was blowing hard and all the best areas were exposed to the buffeting wind.

We descended slightly until we got back to the very first ‘potential’ place we’d spotted. It was just about sheltered enough, which was lucky as neither of us fancied walking back down in the dark! We lay out our sleeping bags and got straight in as the stars came out. Satellites tracked non-stop across the sky all night and we saw a good amount of shooting stars before the moon rose over the horizon. The best moment as when we both saw a massive shooting star that seemed to go almost right across the sky from horizon to horizon. Incredible to see!

We slept pretty well, waking occasionally when a big gust blew and often not going straight back to sleep as I wanted to watch the stars. The sun came over the horizon at 6am, but we pulled down an eye mask and slept for a further hour before getting up.

It was a fabulous place to wake up…

There was a slight cloud inversion below us and the warm wind meant there was no dew so nothing was even damp. Perfect camp conditions!

We had only hot water with us to drink, but within the hour we were back home at The Cottage, tucking into a delicious omelette breakfast, felling like champions.