Winter Touring

[Shanecycles]

I'm sure there are people on this forum who do enjoy a wintery tour...?! I would love to hear any thoughts/experiences.

If you can wait until mid feb, I'll have lots of things to share, I just happen to know two nutters that are going to Lapland for a short tour

 

[Crankarm]

I think I'm going to take away the 'tour' label, and just string together a few days of cycling between places... (Sound silly, I know...)

So starting here in the Scottish Borders, I'll pedal up to Edinburgh. I'll stay at my cousin's, then go on to Glasgow to stay at my brother's. I'll then probably pedal back, but always have the option of hopping on a train.
This way I don't have to haul masses of equipment around.

But yes, scaling at 1 to 10, it doesn't exactly sell itself as an idea!

This is probably a better idea. If you were to camp how would you get your clothing dry at the end of the day especially if it had been p155ing with rain? Wet and frozen to the bone is a great way to catch flu, pneumonia or double pneumonia.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

We are currently planning something similar but starting out around Pitlochrey area (we have friends who lives on the shores of Loch Rannoch) and setting out North from there - the alternative is to drive up to Cape Wrath area where we know we can leave the car safely and then tour from there (but that has more issues with access if it does snow), camping wild - primarily because most of the campsites are closed in the winter as it is, but also becuase it gives us greater freedom.
Kit wise - more food, more clothing, winter hiking kit for evenings, something to do in the evenings - for us it is often just read a book and then sleep, touring in winter, just like winter mountaineering (something we have both done extensively in the UK & Eire and always camping) is more exhausting and things just take longer, we also find we need more sleep and that warm sleeping bag after a day in the saddle quickly sorts out any ideas of anything else. A pack of playing cards comes in useful and you will need some additional supply of lighting - batteries expire more quickly in the cold. You need to consider where you leave metal pans quite carefully - if it freezes overnight they can 'stick' to things you don't want them sticking to like your tent floor/footprint. Also filling the pan/kettle with water the night before is a useful trick - if it is frozen into the water bottle you will not get it out again, but if it is in the pan/kettle already... A flask is also exceptionally useful - if not essential in really cold conditions. Keep it filled with boiling water at all times, espcially overnight when you are likely to get the coldest. - sleeping with it in can also help!
Also to think about is fuel for stove - in lower temps -5C or so we have had issues with lighting meths, down below -10C for a few days and even winter gas can struggle to warm frozen water, let alone boil it, so ideally you need a pressurized fuel stove. We have camped in Scotland in -15C for over a week before now and run into issues with fuel and have also camped -18C in England as well.
Otherwise you need more clothes - obvious but the reason is not always, unless you can get indoors or to a laundrette you will have to deal with damp clothes & possibly a damp sleepingbag, both if it rains and if it gets well below freezing.
Another issue can be no. 2s. You can't dig a hole in frozen ground, so you are going to have to take it away with you - plastic bags are useful and forget soap, go with the hand sanitizers if it is freezing weather - your water supply could be more important if you have had to defrost water to obtain it. We find visiting swimming pools is quite useful for hygenie - just shower before you swim and then again afterwards!
What else - well everything just takes longer, it is as simply as that and you get to sit outside the tent whilst you cook becuases the last thing you want is to fill the tent with condensation which freezes at night and drops on to you and your sleeping bag...
Oh and don't expect to be able to do the distances or speed you normally could do in warm summer months with less kit. Keep your goals realistic and leave yourself time in camp to sort yourself out.

However - all that said, prepare for lots of rain and if it freezes and goes well below zero for any length of time, you will be in the right place at the right time when others can not get there, and the photos/views are always stunning.

 

[steveindenmark]

Ryanair does cheap flights abroad

Steve

 

[Crankarm]

We are currently planning something similar but starting out around Pitlochrey area (we have friends who lives on the shores of Loch Rannoch) and setting out North from there - the alternative is to drive up to Cape Wrath area where we know we can leave the car safely and then tour from there (but that has more issues with access if it does snow), camping wild - primarily because most of the campsites are closed in the winter as it is, but also becuase it gives us greater freedom.
Kit wise - more food, more clothing, winter hiking kit for evenings, something to do in the evenings - for us it is often just read a book and then sleep, touring in winter, just like winter mountaineering (something we have both done extensively in the UK & Eire and always camping) is more exhausting and things just take longer, we also find we need more sleep and that warm sleeping bag after a day in the saddle quickly sorts out any ideas of anything else. A pack of playing cards comes in useful and you will need some additional supply of lighting - batteries expire more quickly in the cold. You need to consider where you leave metal pans quite carefully - if it freezes overnight they can 'stick' to things you don't want them sticking to like your tent floor/footprint. Also filling the pan/kettle with water the night before is a useful trick - if it is frozen into the water bottle you will not get it out again, but if it is in the pan/kettle already... A flask is also exceptionally useful - if not essential in really cold conditions. Keep it filled with boiling water at all times, espcially overnight when you are likely to get the coldest. - sleeping with it in can also help!
Also to think about is fuel for stove - in lower temps -5C or so we have had issues with lighting meths, down below -10C for a few days and even winter gas can struggle to warm frozen water, let alone boil it, so ideally you need a pressurized fuel stove. We have camped in Scotland in -15C for over a week before now and run into issues with fuel and have also camped -18C in England as well.
Otherwise you need more clothes - obvious but the reason is not always, unless you can get indoors or to a laundrette you will have to deal with damp clothes & possibly a damp sleepingbag, both if it rains and if it gets well below freezing.
Another issue can be no. 2s. You can't dig a hole in frozen ground, so you are going to have to take it away with you - plastic bags are useful and forget soap, go with the hand sanitizers if it is freezing weather - your water supply could be more important if you have had to defrost water to obtain it. We find visiting swimming pools is quite useful for hygenie - just shower before you swim and then again afterwards!
What else - well everything just takes longer, it is as simply as that and you get to sit outside the tent whilst you cook becuases the last thing you want is to fill the tent with condensation which freezes at night and drops on to you and your sleeping bag...
Oh and don't expect to be able to do the distances or speed you normally could do in warm summer months with less kit. Keep your goals realistic and leave yourself time in camp to sort yourself out.

However - all that said, prepare for lots of rain and if it freezes and goes well below zero for any length of time, you will be in the right place at the right time when others can not get there, and the photos/views are always stunning.

Sounds like it could be utter misery in a tent. Not for me, certainly not cycling anyway. I can think of better ways to see a winter landscape. You've not mentioned the wind and wind chill. Brrrrrr! How did you say you get clothes dry?

 

[Blue Hills]

I'm very impressed by SatNavStraightONs resourcefulness and advice but I must say it's put me right off the idea.

Don't mind it being very cold at night or even pretty cold in the morning, but I think it's the idea that it was never going to get any better that would get to me, especially after more than two days. Plus of course the drying issue. I've bivvied in October but it was good to dry the bivvy and sleeping back out over the farm gate at the campsite I rolled up at the next morning.

There are clearly far hardier souls than me out there - maybe there's a gap in the market for an Ortleib frozen poo sealed bag?

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Sounds like it could be utter misery in a tent. Not for me, certainly not cycling anyway. I can think of better ways to see a winter landscape. You've not mentioned the wind and wind chill. Brrrrrr! How did you say you get clothes dry?

Definitely not utter misery. We love it. As for wind chill, on the tops yes it can be a problem during the day, especially with some of the slightly more interesting patches of ice but that is what crampons & ice-axes are for when mountaineering and they are fantastic! Inside a tent, wind chill is not an issue, ventilation is, however.

It also depends largely on how wet you got your clothes/sleeping bag. If they are just damp from being used all day, keep wearing them (and be prepared to put cold clothes on the next day). Keeping plenty of sets of woolen socks is really useful, dry socks in the morning usualy leads to a much happier day all round. Some people say sleep with the damp clothes/socks in your sleeping bag but the truth is at those temperatures it is bad idea. you have to keep your bag dry and it naturally gets damp during the night from low level sweat which freezes at the condensation point in or on your bag. the colder it is outside the further into your bag that point is, so you can expect to wake up with a layer of ice over the inside of the tent and covering the sleeping bag.

Whilst it may sound insane to some, it is amazing to wake up in a situation like that, with the inside of the tent and your sleeping bag glittering in the torch light (I love it - you sleep really well if you have the right equipment). But the one thing you must not do, however tempting it may seem is sleep with your nose/mouth inside the sleeping bag because you breath out moisture and that makes your bag much colder in the long run because it gets damp and does not insulate you as well. You also have to learn to sleep without moving. Move around and you push that warm air away from your body and get cold again.

A damp bag is actually surprisingly easy to keep aired and dry - when you are in your tent and not sleeping, we just keep it unzipped and spread out over our legs and the heat from them raises the loft and dries it. Otherwise it is a trip to the laundrette to find a large volume low temperature tumble drier. Fort William used to have (don't know if it still does) an professional cleaners on one of the industrial estates out on the Inverness road and they always aired our bags for us when we were up there in winter. It costs obviously, but worth it. The old adage "warm toes, cold nose" stands very true for sleeping in a sleeping bag in sub zero temperatures.

Currently my husband and I have yet to even put the heating on in our bedroom, let alone close the window. We are both still too warm and both find we know instantly if the temperature has dropped further than expected during the night, because we both sleep really well in the cold. (We pull the window to, but not close it completely when the temperatures drop below -10C). One thing to bear in mind is that we are used to this level of 'cold' to the point where when the incident in my signature happened, we were cycling in -15C that day.
So now you know why I struggle in temperatures above 25C. Summer in the UK can be too warm for me!

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

do you have a smart phone? loads of cool stuff can be done on those to pass the time in a dark tent, music, readers, games, blogging etc.

I'm tempted to say take a woman...erm...but that has pros and cons lol!

my husband has only found the pros so far. the tent gets warmer faster with 2 people in it!

 

[Ticktockmy]

I would highlight that every week through the year in the UK thousands of guys and Girls are out camping, the majority are mountaineers, and backpackers and tend to head for the main activity centres, for such activities: Lake district, Peak district and Aviemore etc. For the cycle tourer in the winter in the UK I would recommend staying in similar areas.

In these areas there are plenty of all year camp-sites, normally with a hostelry near to provide evening entertainment, out of those and similar areas, camp-sites become few and far between during the Winter period, and one must resort to wild camping. The advantage because of the early dusk and late dawn, it is easier to camp without upsetting too many people.

When I have been out touring during the Winter Months, I have often found a Pub, looked to see if it has a nice beer garden and asked if I can camp in the Garden, in most cases if I have chosen right then I have been given the OK. if that failed I tended to look for a suitable camping spot, I tend to look for a bridle way joining the road, as I have often found that there is often room in places alongside the bridle way and sufficiently far from the road to pitch the tent.

Keeping warm is the main problem, and the most dangerous problem, all too easy to suffer the effect of hypothermia, the main point to watch is that a day,s cycling can leave you chilled, then if you do not have a sufficiently warm sleeping bag, then during the night the chilling effect can continue, and it sneaks up on you, until the effects of hypothermia take effect and you don't know it.
Willems and Satnavsaysstraighton Postings are very good advice, so I will not say anymore.

 

[Blue Hills]

Any recommendations for any sites (particularly near pubs ) with winter opening in the Lake and Peak districts ticktock?

I appreciate that you can't give pointers to particular pubs you have come to informal arrangements with.

But on the question of that, did these unidentified pubs have outside toilet facilities? If not, did that bother you or them?

I ask because I've often thought of doing the same as you - just rolling up and asking a pub.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Any recommendations for any sites (particularly near pubs ) with winter opening in the Lake and Peak districts ticktock?.

Not cheap, but Sykeside campsite at bottom of the Kirkstone pass on the Brother's waterside is a year round campsite. And if you are careful where you camp you don't get flooded in torrential rain!

Also the NT campsite in Wasdale is a year round campsite and there is a pub up the road from there that has camping as well - think it is effectively a field with a tap.

They are the 2 I have used in winter in the Lakes.

 

[andrew_s]

Also to think about is fuel for stove - in lower temps -5C or so we have had issues with lighting meths, down below -10C for a few days and even winter gas can struggle to warm frozen water, let alone boil it, so ideally you need a pressurized fuel stove. We have camped in Scotland in -15C for over a week before now and run into issues with fuel and have also camped -18C in England as well. .

A Trangia in the cold can generally be got working by either warming the meths beforehand, or by using a wick in the burner.
To use gas in the cold (anything much below +10°C), you'll need a remote canister stove (such as the MSR Windpro 2) used with the gas canister inverted after being started. The stove must have a preheat loop that has been warmed with the canister upright. Canister top burners can be used with a fairly close wind shield to reflect heat back onto the canister (take care not to overdo it), but you've got to start with a warm canister unless it's pretty fresh.

A multifuel stove used with coleman fuel or similar is probably best, however.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

A Trangia in the cold can generally be got working by either warming the meths beforehand, or by using a wick in the burner.
To use gas in the cold (anything much below +10°C), you'll need a remote canister stove (such as the MSR Windpro 2) used with the gas canister inverted after being started. The stove must have a preheat loop that has been warmed with the canister upright. Canister top burners can be used with a fairly close wind shield to reflect heat back onto the canister (take care not to overdo it), but you've got to start with a warm canister unless it's pretty fresh.

A multifuel stove used with coleman fuel or similar is probably best, however.

We now have a multifuel burner for the trangia - best of both worlds. It works really well, but it only works with the larger 25 trangia not the smaller 27 trangias.
Another trick is to stand the gas canister in luke warm water which aids it. problem was I could not even get luke warm water - I made the mistake of having a coffee with the water from the flask, rather than using the water from the flask to warm the gas canister to get more hot water!

 

[Blue Hills]

To use gas in the cold (anything much below +10°C), .

Below +10C is cold?

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Below +10C is cold?

I had read that as -10C!
+10C sounds a touch odd - that's the UK most of the time at night all year round!

though re-reading it makes me think andrew_s is under the impression that trangia's are only meths and I have had a gas burner for mine for 17 years I think. Only got the multifuel burner for it 2 years ago though they had been around much longer, I just didn't need it at the time.