The retreat from Moscow

When I was 16 I set off on a 3 day survival weekend with two friends - Magnus and Stephen. We had watched the news the week before about a survival expert who had used tracking techniques to help capture a serial killer. Following this there was much hype in the media about suviving in the wild etc. so this promoted us to see how we would fair heading out to the Yorkshire moors with only a survival bag (plastic bivvy bag) to sleep in for a few days. Probably as a precursor to a career in the SAS. My mum dropped the 3 of us off on Thursday and I made it very clear that she was not to pick us back up until the Sunday at the arranged meeting point - whatever we said if we happened to call up before that time and begged and pleaded for her to fetch us. As we left the car it started to rain and rain and continued to pour constantly through the night. We were cold and wet, lying in plastic bags in the dark by a river in the middle of nowhere. Of course the next morning we walked straight to a telephone box, called my mum and she came and picked us up straight away.


I mention this as for some reason this story came to mind as I got up out of the tent in the morning. My mum obviously couldn't rescue us this time but maybe Jody could....


The temperature had fallen down to around 32F. The snow hadn't really settled but it was raining/sleeting with a strong wind off the river. My sleeping bag was wet from the tent fly touching against the inner tent and one of my shoes was soaking having been pushed out under the tent runoff. It was fun putting that shoe on.


Despite the wet sleeping bag I had actually been ok during the night but Kim just hadn't been able to keep warm. Now we were both freezing as we tried to cook breakfast. All our gloves were soaking wet so it was very difficult to do anything after a few minutes as our hands would get numb. As you can imagine the first thought that crosses your mind is - What a lovely day for a bike ride". That's when old timer turned up with the news that the temperature was dropping and that the campsite up the road was 1000ft higher (and hence colder).


We thought about sticking it out a day at this campsite but in the end concerned about ice on the roads we decided to head back to Calgary and regroup. The trip had been a success in that we had found out a) we were completely unprepared for cold and wet combined b) without Len - one of us needs to bring the rum !


Some pics - sorry very few as hand froze to camera.


What we later found out to be a large one person tent.

Maybe an RV tour of Canada is a better idea.

We managed the return trip in about 3 hours. (2 hours faster than on the way there) - the kaiser is back !

The wet weather cycle gear worked out well and also looked really cool ! It was clear we were New Yorkers ...