By: Blonde Two

I do like a hot water bottle. Even on some summer nights, if my toes are chilly the cosiness of warming them up will send me immediately into a deep and content slumber. I have experimented in the past with different toe-warming methods. I have had charcoal sticks in a beautiful case (warm but not recommended for inside the sleeping bag), I have ‘snap and warm’ type hand warmers which work but only for a maximum of three toes, I have a very successful USB charged hand warmer which has saved my poor shivering body many times and I have used my pink (and much loved) Sigg bottle (which is not B1’s favourite camping companion).

There is a knack to using a Sigg bottle as a hot water bottle. You have to put it into a thickish sock in order to avoid unnecessary toe-burns but the inter-sock insertion requires careful timing. If you insert it too soon you risk pouring water all over one of your precious dry socks, if you do it too late you end up with a bottle that is so hot that you can’t touch it at all, let alone dress it. The knack involves a kind of midway approach, enough coverage to give an ‘oven gloved’ area but not near enough to the top to risk spillage.

On a chilly March night my pink Sigg hot water bottle can last until the very early hours, enough to get me off to sleep but not enough to combat the invading chill of the 3 am wee call. What I needed was a bigger bottle, which is great because Sigg have been kind enough to send us Blondes a 1 litre classic blue bottle. It came with me to Norway and proved far more useful than a smaller bottle but I haven’t had a chance to try it as a tent hot water bottle yet (probably something to do with heatwaves!) We Blondes are hoping to join in with Ordnance Survey’s Wild Night Out after our navigation workshop next Saturday and find a Dartmoor camp spot. If it is chilly I might give the Sigg hot water bottle a go!