Camping is one thing. CAMPING IN CHILLY WEATHER IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT BASKET au CATS !
When I was a kid, sleeping in a tent was a big deal. It seems like EONS since the last time I tried " roughing it ". Which ain't saying that I wouldn't like to. FYI : I only use " ain't " to emphasize something. One of my English teachers is spinning in her grave. 🪦
That exact spot is well known to my family, though we never bivvi’d out underneath! For years once we’d all grown up, moved to different places and had kids, we’d meet up at the bridge for an afternoon, have lunch at the windmill or the truckers’ caff and enjoy a walk over.
We learned about it at school and then later that our extremely modest running coach at Brid RR had had a part in the engineering. He told us with great pride that he’d calculated the tops of the towers were further apart than the bases due to the curvature of the earth! We were never good enough at physics to work out if he was kidding!
Hooray! It's fun to know you're acquainted with that place. That bit of shoreline with the bridge overhead must be a lovely sight when it's clear - trust me to pick a day with thick fog...
I'm glad to confirm your former running coach was correct! From the official Humber Bridge website: "The concrete towers are 155.5 metres (510 feet) tall and were built to be 36mm further apart from each other at the top than at the bottom, to allow for the curvature of the Earth." https://www.humberbridge.co.uk/about-us/
I have some misty and mist-free pictures. Will dig out!
Another memory is travelling home in the evening to my mum’s as a grown up-seeing the red lights on the towers just as the M62 comes to an end at Howden
Yes, we are taught to downplay our own experience because it has already been done better by someone else and "it's nothing new". But I always think, yeah but that's them. I want to do it myself, however badly I do it.
That's where all the fun is! I also think that the folk doing it for social-media bragging rights are nowhere near selfish enough for their own good. Why would anyone want their experiences ruined by the invisible presence of a bunch of total strangers? Bloody silly.
yes! imagine what it must be like to grow up always feeling strangers watching over your shoulder, constantly having to take pics of everything you do and posting it. You miss out on that feeling of being alone sometimes on your own. you lose a sense of independence and self-volition
Walking in the UK especially, engenders awe. I spent a couple of years their strolling around and was always taken how one moment you might be in a meadow of butterflies, move around a bend and you were for an hour or two enclosed within a rapeseed hell of overpowering yellow, make it around another bend and there was a remarkable Isambard Brunel structure and perhaps best of all a pub was not to far distant and neither was a train to take you home.
Agreed. I do love that about Britain, how diverse it is, or squashed up against everything else. I've heard from friends from Australia or the States how dizzying it can be to travel in Europe and cross multiple borders in a day - but I reckon the UK is like that with geography and the sheer denseness of what it has to offer, both horizontally in the present day and vertically with its history, but with so much overlap where the past is poking out into the air in all sorts of magical ways....
How do you find Auckland, regarding getting yourself awestruck?
One is damned by one’s familiarity, but. On a sunny day Auckland can seem resplendent. It is relatively economically buoyant and visible public infrastructure is of good repair. It is green and verdant with its myriad trees being a broad mixture of evergreen and deciduous so that it never suffers the skeletal winter of the northern hemisphere. Much of the foliage is in private gardens and although the ‘quarter acre paradise’ is no longer true, land tenure changes slowly so this reinforces the parklike nature of much of the city. In contrast to London though you cannot easily walk across or through the city using byways and commons and the like. Parks are destinations and to traverse the city and its suburbs means walking the street network with the potential conflict with traffic. My impression would be that many more people walk in London than in Auckland. Its public transport system is not comparable and whereas you could get off a train in London walk for half a day in any direction and then get back on another one that is not the case in Auckland. On the other hand if you have a car (and everybody does) then you are less than an hour away from a vast range of beaches and bushlands, good surfing, sailing, fishing, biking, camping, tramping and nobody much else about. Its also safe. There are no animals to worry about and with a little preparation you can avoid the risk of exposure. Personal locator beacons can be carried and you probably don’t have to get too far out of Auckland to where walking in a straight line you wouldn’t come across anyone or anything much for days. In short it hasn’t got the layers of cultural reference but it has undoubted natural beauty in many forms. And of course, it’s home.
The Internet has made it so hard to not compare ourselves, since we see so much. As a kid, I was super into astrophotography and looked forward when I would grow up and be able to afford a 35mm camera and t-mount to attach it to my telescope. That happened about the time the Internet took off and then I was like "why bother when there are 10,000 much better photos of the Triffid Nebula than I'll ever be able to do?" so I gave it up for something else. Only later did I learn it's about the journey, not the destination. And comparing ourselves is a perpetually losing battle.
Thanks, Mike. "Comparing themselves to themselves." There's some advice I needed to read! Now if only I can put it into practice.
Speaking of comparisons, I was interested to sort through the particulars of your Humber bridge in relation to our Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Bridge Tunnel. The former's original span, which opened in 1952 and with a length of 4 miles (6.4 km), was the world's longest continuous over-water steel structure. The parallel span was added in 1973. So "continuous over-water steel structure" differs from "longest single-span suspension bridge."
The latter, at 17+ miles long, still holds the record for the longest bridge-tunnel complex in the world. Whatever that means. 😅
Right, this is about awe, not comparisons. Back to work I go.
Today I have a lot of virtual meetings, lunch with mentees, and an in-person meeting to revise a manuscript. But the most important event today is the emergence of a Monarch butterfly whose chrysalis is becoming transparent, so the wings are visible inside. Metamorphosis is an awesome thing.
Awww you are so lovely! Yup I’ve done all the stupid wonderful stuff on the Colorado Trail as a solo woman and soaked up awe in the midst of misery and made it out alive. Then hitchhiking back to my car was quite sure the driver screaming at me was going to kill me. Yeah I’d do it all again. For why? Let’s call it awe.
Really good read, Mike - I could feel the cold and the malfunctioning body 😬😅; these kind of bridges are just amazing things and experiencing nature and some of the most amazing human engineering accomplishments at the same time: AWWWWE 😁🤩👏!!
I’m not up for camping but I’m all for finding awe in life. Lately, with the world’s goings-on, I think we need to fire the awe button a dozen times a day and today’s has been that magnificent image of water droplets in the web. The other, was looking at my 8 month old pup’s little head as he gazed forward in the car, watching everything (perhaps with awe). He was so awesome in his concentration, and it provoked such an upwelling of ‘yum’ in me, that I had to kiss the top of that furry little crown.
Beautiful story, Mike - reminds me of a lot of things: camping in the mountains with friends as a teen; how important awe is.
Along that vein, and as a response to your last column about our most recent discoveries: Last night we went for a walk in our new neighborhood in our new town - where try as I might, I don’t really feel “at home”. I had been sorely missing the swifts that flew overhead from May to August in the city where we used to live.
Suddenly, we heard the “twee, twee” sound of birds overhead, and yep, it was swifts. We stood watching till it was too dusky to see any more.
Awe, thankfulness, amazedness, and the feeling that maybe things aren’t quite as bad here as I thought.
Oh dear! I do put a lot of effort into presenting myself as some sort of weirdo who has an eccentric way of "enjoying" the outdoors, rather than any intimidating role model. And I can assure you that in my personal life I do come across as "a bit silly"...
Same kit as on the N Yorks Moors and slightly higher temperatures but feeling much, much colder? I tend to repudiate "it's all in the mindset" universal opinion. Some thoughts:
1. Not enough to eat the night before (or to drink, even: not sure of the physiology on this but dehydration would impair blood circulation and that might include resistance to cold)
2. Too many clothes on inside the bivvy bag can perversely lead to compression all around and reduced insulation
3. Damp gear
4. Maybe you've trained a lot lately and become a skinny bag of bones with no nice body fat
Love this adventure, Mike. The thing with these undertakings is they’re personal. My epic is just that … MY epic. There’s no way I’d walk 26 miles but 2000 kms in three weeks on the bike, yep, that’s my bag. I love ordinary stories of ordinary folk doing their own little bit of extraordinary. The whole ‘don’t look at me under the bush’ story is partly that bit where it is hard to explain ‘our’ thing. It makes sense to us, feels ‘big’ when we decide to do it and when we’re putting one foot in front of another, but makes no sense to other folk. The fog wreathed photo IS the answer to this riddle, whatever the question was. Oh, and coffee is always the answer!! Lovely writing. Great adventuring.
Camping is one thing. CAMPING IN CHILLY WEATHER IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT BASKET au CATS !
When I was a kid, sleeping in a tent was a big deal. It seems like EONS since the last time I tried " roughing it ". Which ain't saying that I wouldn't like to. FYI : I only use " ain't " to emphasize something. One of my English teachers is spinning in her grave. 🪦
Yes indeed - and bivvy bagging is a totally different basket again from standard camping! Essentially, you're sleeping in a (mostly) waterproof sack. It feels like you're alarmingly outside, whereas a tent at least gives the illusion of being indoors (which is a lie, but a convincing one). https://alpkit.com/blogs/spotlight/backyard-bivvy-how-to-recreate-the-aunthetic-bivvying-experience-at-home
A waterproof sack - one may as well sleep in a pool, under a fountain or on a lawn with sprinklers !
Hmm.... " the bivvying experience " - I'll get back to you in..... 2 years. Approximately. 🤔
That exact spot is well known to my family, though we never bivvi’d out underneath! For years once we’d all grown up, moved to different places and had kids, we’d meet up at the bridge for an afternoon, have lunch at the windmill or the truckers’ caff and enjoy a walk over.
We learned about it at school and then later that our extremely modest running coach at Brid RR had had a part in the engineering. He told us with great pride that he’d calculated the tops of the towers were further apart than the bases due to the curvature of the earth! We were never good enough at physics to work out if he was kidding!
Hooray! It's fun to know you're acquainted with that place. That bit of shoreline with the bridge overhead must be a lovely sight when it's clear - trust me to pick a day with thick fog...
I'm glad to confirm your former running coach was correct! From the official Humber Bridge website: "The concrete towers are 155.5 metres (510 feet) tall and were built to be 36mm further apart from each other at the top than at the bottom, to allow for the curvature of the Earth." https://www.humberbridge.co.uk/about-us/
I have some misty and mist-free pictures. Will dig out!
Another memory is travelling home in the evening to my mum’s as a grown up-seeing the red lights on the towers just as the M62 comes to an end at Howden
Yes, we are taught to downplay our own experience because it has already been done better by someone else and "it's nothing new". But I always think, yeah but that's them. I want to do it myself, however badly I do it.
That's where all the fun is! I also think that the folk doing it for social-media bragging rights are nowhere near selfish enough for their own good. Why would anyone want their experiences ruined by the invisible presence of a bunch of total strangers? Bloody silly.
yes! imagine what it must be like to grow up always feeling strangers watching over your shoulder, constantly having to take pics of everything you do and posting it. You miss out on that feeling of being alone sometimes on your own. you lose a sense of independence and self-volition
Walking in the UK especially, engenders awe. I spent a couple of years their strolling around and was always taken how one moment you might be in a meadow of butterflies, move around a bend and you were for an hour or two enclosed within a rapeseed hell of overpowering yellow, make it around another bend and there was a remarkable Isambard Brunel structure and perhaps best of all a pub was not to far distant and neither was a train to take you home.
In passing, 47 miles a day is frankly ridiculous
Agreed. I do love that about Britain, how diverse it is, or squashed up against everything else. I've heard from friends from Australia or the States how dizzying it can be to travel in Europe and cross multiple borders in a day - but I reckon the UK is like that with geography and the sheer denseness of what it has to offer, both horizontally in the present day and vertically with its history, but with so much overlap where the past is poking out into the air in all sorts of magical ways....
How do you find Auckland, regarding getting yourself awestruck?
One is damned by one’s familiarity, but. On a sunny day Auckland can seem resplendent. It is relatively economically buoyant and visible public infrastructure is of good repair. It is green and verdant with its myriad trees being a broad mixture of evergreen and deciduous so that it never suffers the skeletal winter of the northern hemisphere. Much of the foliage is in private gardens and although the ‘quarter acre paradise’ is no longer true, land tenure changes slowly so this reinforces the parklike nature of much of the city. In contrast to London though you cannot easily walk across or through the city using byways and commons and the like. Parks are destinations and to traverse the city and its suburbs means walking the street network with the potential conflict with traffic. My impression would be that many more people walk in London than in Auckland. Its public transport system is not comparable and whereas you could get off a train in London walk for half a day in any direction and then get back on another one that is not the case in Auckland. On the other hand if you have a car (and everybody does) then you are less than an hour away from a vast range of beaches and bushlands, good surfing, sailing, fishing, biking, camping, tramping and nobody much else about. Its also safe. There are no animals to worry about and with a little preparation you can avoid the risk of exposure. Personal locator beacons can be carried and you probably don’t have to get too far out of Auckland to where walking in a straight line you wouldn’t come across anyone or anything much for days. In short it hasn’t got the layers of cultural reference but it has undoubted natural beauty in many forms. And of course, it’s home.
The Internet has made it so hard to not compare ourselves, since we see so much. As a kid, I was super into astrophotography and looked forward when I would grow up and be able to afford a 35mm camera and t-mount to attach it to my telescope. That happened about the time the Internet took off and then I was like "why bother when there are 10,000 much better photos of the Triffid Nebula than I'll ever be able to do?" so I gave it up for something else. Only later did I learn it's about the journey, not the destination. And comparing ourselves is a perpetually losing battle.
Thanks, Mike. "Comparing themselves to themselves." There's some advice I needed to read! Now if only I can put it into practice.
Speaking of comparisons, I was interested to sort through the particulars of your Humber bridge in relation to our Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Bridge Tunnel. The former's original span, which opened in 1952 and with a length of 4 miles (6.4 km), was the world's longest continuous over-water steel structure. The parallel span was added in 1973. So "continuous over-water steel structure" differs from "longest single-span suspension bridge."
The latter, at 17+ miles long, still holds the record for the longest bridge-tunnel complex in the world. Whatever that means. 😅
Right, this is about awe, not comparisons. Back to work I go.
Today I have a lot of virtual meetings, lunch with mentees, and an in-person meeting to revise a manuscript. But the most important event today is the emergence of a Monarch butterfly whose chrysalis is becoming transparent, so the wings are visible inside. Metamorphosis is an awesome thing.
Awww you are so lovely! Yup I’ve done all the stupid wonderful stuff on the Colorado Trail as a solo woman and soaked up awe in the midst of misery and made it out alive. Then hitchhiking back to my car was quite sure the driver screaming at me was going to kill me. Yeah I’d do it all again. For why? Let’s call it awe.
Really good read, Mike - I could feel the cold and the malfunctioning body 😬😅; these kind of bridges are just amazing things and experiencing nature and some of the most amazing human engineering accomplishments at the same time: AWWWWE 😁🤩👏!!
Very much well done that man! And I wrote "Get a steady diet of awe" in my journaL Thanks!
I’m not up for camping but I’m all for finding awe in life. Lately, with the world’s goings-on, I think we need to fire the awe button a dozen times a day and today’s has been that magnificent image of water droplets in the web. The other, was looking at my 8 month old pup’s little head as he gazed forward in the car, watching everything (perhaps with awe). He was so awesome in his concentration, and it provoked such an upwelling of ‘yum’ in me, that I had to kiss the top of that furry little crown.
Thank you.
I have a little book where I write quotes that strike me, that remind me of something I need to remember, that hit home.
Today's post was quoted not once, but twice.
I needed the reminding. So again, thank you.
Loved this.
Green prescription is a great term. Thanks!
Impressive/slightly crazy February bivvying!
Beautiful story, Mike - reminds me of a lot of things: camping in the mountains with friends as a teen; how important awe is.
Along that vein, and as a response to your last column about our most recent discoveries: Last night we went for a walk in our new neighborhood in our new town - where try as I might, I don’t really feel “at home”. I had been sorely missing the swifts that flew overhead from May to August in the city where we used to live.
Suddenly, we heard the “twee, twee” sound of birds overhead, and yep, it was swifts. We stood watching till it was too dusky to see any more.
Awe, thankfulness, amazedness, and the feeling that maybe things aren’t quite as bad here as I thought.
I slept better this past night than in ages!
Oh dear! I do put a lot of effort into presenting myself as some sort of weirdo who has an eccentric way of "enjoying" the outdoors, rather than any intimidating role model. And I can assure you that in my personal life I do come across as "a bit silly"...
Same kit as on the N Yorks Moors and slightly higher temperatures but feeling much, much colder? I tend to repudiate "it's all in the mindset" universal opinion. Some thoughts:
1. Not enough to eat the night before (or to drink, even: not sure of the physiology on this but dehydration would impair blood circulation and that might include resistance to cold)
2. Too many clothes on inside the bivvy bag can perversely lead to compression all around and reduced insulation
3. Damp gear
4. Maybe you've trained a lot lately and become a skinny bag of bones with no nice body fat
Love this adventure, Mike. The thing with these undertakings is they’re personal. My epic is just that … MY epic. There’s no way I’d walk 26 miles but 2000 kms in three weeks on the bike, yep, that’s my bag. I love ordinary stories of ordinary folk doing their own little bit of extraordinary. The whole ‘don’t look at me under the bush’ story is partly that bit where it is hard to explain ‘our’ thing. It makes sense to us, feels ‘big’ when we decide to do it and when we’re putting one foot in front of another, but makes no sense to other folk. The fog wreathed photo IS the answer to this riddle, whatever the question was. Oh, and coffee is always the answer!! Lovely writing. Great adventuring.