Had another lovely wild camp last night, this time with some slight kit modifications.
I borrowed a small thermarest from a friend to try it out, and used this instead of the roll mat (inside the bivvy bag rather than underneath)... it was amazing! I don't think I've ever had such a comfortable night outdoors. Just like with mountain biking, it seems that pressure is critical - too much and it felt like a trampoline, but just enough to keep you off the ground and it was smashing.
This one was very small so I did find myself falling off a few times in the night, but on the flip side it packs down into next to nothing. I can imagine it would also make a big difference to comfort against the cold in the winter. I'll persevere with the old roll mat for now, but I can't see myself holding out forever on this - just need a good excuse to buy one!
It's also worth mentioning that having the bivvy bag directly on the floor rather than on a roll mat was fine on the grass, but I wouldn't want to do it too often on rougher ground as I imagine it would wear pretty quickly. So long term plan is keep the roll mat under the bivy and splash out on a thermarest or cheaper copy when I'm feeling rich (feeling very very very unrich right now after just pranging the car and talking to the insurance people
)
After quite a few nights out, I've got the tarp rigging down to fifteen minutes or so including getting everything I need out the bag and in place. Had some rain overnight and once again it performed perfectly. I vastly prefer it to the (weeks and weeks of) camping I've done in tents... you can probably tell why by the third pic below
It might also be worth mentioning that all the overnight camps I've done in this thread have been based around very short rides. The longest has probably been seven or eight miles out to the campsite, while yesterday's outward trip was only a couple of miles*... and it's still great fun!
Might be food for thought for anyone who's worried about carrying heavy kit (especially if they're using a backpack like me) on a long/tough ride. I know I'm spoilt for choice being close to Dartmoor and working on Exmoor, but if you can see a likely looking wood near you on the OS map it might be worth a quick reccy!
*actually I went quite a bit further, out to the top of the local biggest hill, but the woodland was very dense and the only clearings were covered in bracken, which with all the deer around equals crawling with ticks. So I backtracked and ended up quite close to where I set out from.
