By: Blonde Two
When I first mooted the question of a 3 night visit to the most lovely National Trust Peppercombe Bothy to Mr B2 he appeared a bit dubious. Not, I hasten to add, because he is any more adverse than I am to slightly uncomfortable nights in odd places; Mr B2 can regularly be found bivvying under a tarp with his bike in the wilds of Mid Wales. I hate to admit it but I think we both wondered what on earth we would do for four days and three nights with no internet access, phone signal or even electricity.
In the end we ran out of time, not things to do. We had forgotten that simple pleasures such as building fires and cooking meals on them take a long (and very enjoyable) time and that when it is dark and cold by 20:00 the only sensible thing to do is to get into your sleeping bag and go to sleep!
One thing that we did every day (and really enjoyed) was walking down to the beach and gathering driftwood for our fire. I had spotted the driftwood on my previous visit (for driftwood read drift-trees!) and thought it might prove more burnable than the wood that was lying on the rather soggy woodland floor all around the bothy.
I came up with a great system (for me) I lined my big rucksack with a rubble sack and I carried it down to the beach (so I did do my bit) then Mr B2 and his man-skills took over and he sawed whilst I packed (woman-skills also available).
Needless to say the rucksack was pretty heavy by the time we had filled it and although I could have hefted it back up the hill myself, it would have taken me a long time and I was glad of Mr B2’s Sherpa-like tendencies.
The wood was a tad damp after the previous night’s rain so we stacked it Jenga (or tent peg if you were a Girl Guide) style to dry out for the next day. In true bothy style someone had kindly left dry firewood for us so we left a stack for the next visitors when we left.
