The Book of the Bivvy

A guidebook on bivvybag skills and expeditions. Accounts of bivvybag nights and expeditions, both nice and nasty, alternate with practical chapters on lightweight kit. Finally a selection of bivvybag expeditions. Hilarious (and informative) reading! An updated second edition.

A guide to bivvybag skills and expeditions, The Book of The Bivvy is a half-and-half mix of how to do it and why to do it (or how not to do it, and why not to do it). Accounts of expeditions, both nice and nasty, alternate with practical chapters about the technicalities of the breathable membrane, how little kit you really can get away with and the secrets of lightweight long distance. The book closes with a selection of bivvybag expeditions to initiate the unwary into the secrets. Ronald's informed, humorous, instructive, wry look at the world of the bivouac is certainly the first, and perhaps the last, word on this unexplored territory. Along the way Ronald shows that 1900 to 1969 was the dark age of the bivouac, how Diogenes (the Cynic) bivvied under timber, and that the Eiger was climbed only through improved bivvying technique.

FOREWORD by Julian MilesINTRODUCTION
1 BASIC BIVVY
Peigne and suffering
Problems of the polybag
Plastic bag for pleasure purposes
Polybag facts

2 BIVVY HISTORY

3 THE BREATHABLE BAG
Five nights in green plastic
1 Overnight Ochils
2 Wet Wooler in November
3 Hoover bag
4 Man management
5 Saddle bag
Time, things and Miguel

4 MIDLEVEL BAGGERY
Cave behaviour
Fallback bag
Shopping for bags

5 BUT WHAT IF IT RAINS?
Wet under thorns in Belfast
Further suffering
What if it rains?
Look after your bivvy and your bivvy will look after you
The ideal site

6 ACROSS SCOTLAND BY BAG
Wetness and weight
Acharacle to Aberdeenshire

7 THE ART OF LIGHTWEIGHT LONG-DISTANCE
Bag and baggage
Comparative luxury
The fuel on the hill
Mountains under the moon

8 BAG PLANS
1 Bivvybagging the Wainwrights
2 Bag and camera
3 Corbett bagging

9 BIVVYBAG ROUTES
1 Sleeping on Skiddaw
2 Bruce's Crown

10 ANOTHER PENNINE JOURNEY
Re-enacting Wainwright on a walk to the Roman Wall

11 SUDDEN DEATH AND SHEEP-STEALING
A crossing of Pumlumon Fawr
AFTERWORD: SHELTERED HOUSING FOR THE ELDERLYMANUFACTURERS AND SUPPLIERS



INDEX