Wild Camping - Crookstone Knoll

Saturday, 6 August 2016

Second Peak District wild camp in two weeks. Nice, sunny afternoon but the forecast said there would be clouds in the evening, some rain during night and clouds in the morning. We parked our car on Edale Road in Hope and set off at about 6pm. I estimated that it would take us about two hours to get to Crookstone Knoll. We knew how to get there as we walked in this part of Peak District many times before. This actually played an important role in choosing the location. As usual, the decision was made quickly on Saturday.

Essentially we wanted to get to the Roman Road, pass Hope Cross and turn left towards Crookstone Knoll.

Lose Hill

As we were approaching the plateau we heard people talking somewhere above our heads. We quickly discovered that somebody else already set up a camp on the southern side of Crookstone Knoll. They would get a nice view of The Great Ridge. I wondered how they would cope with their tarp during a windy night. I don't think they spotted us and we walked away in the opposite direction.

Crookstone Knoll

This lonely tree must be our favourite one in the Peak District.

Tree on the way to Crookstone Knoll

The wind was picking up. We considered finding a quiet spot somewhere below the Kinder plateau but if we did that we would have not tested how our Vango Nemesis 300 is coping in strong winds. We managed to find a spot on the northern side of the hill, not that far from the path, among heathers.

Despite the gusty wind, we put up a tent and managed to fix a meal. I have checked the weather forecast again and Met Office was estimating that wind gusts could achieve up to 50mph on Kinder Low. We were on the eastern side of the plateau, consequently a bit sheltered by the Kinder Massif so we probably never experienced this kind of wind. I still didn't manage to sleep much that night.

Sadly it turned out that Vango Nemesis is not really designed for gale-force winds. Despite its geodesic construction as the wind direction changed during the night and started hitting it more from the side poles started to bend inwards. I have not captured it on the video but it happened a few times in the morning. Not something I expected especially that I have had a very good experience with another Vango i.e. Mirage 200 in worse conditions. The search for a perfect tent goes on. Of course, I could simply buy my dream tent i.e. Hilleberg Tarra but well...the price.

Magda managed to make a nice time-lapse. She is only starting to experiment with it and uses her new phone which seems to be coping quite well.

Anyway, we survived. The tent survived as well. There was no rain at night but the morning was quite cloudy and chilly due to the wind chill. The temperature inside the tent during the night was quite high as I felt comfortable in cheap Hi Gear sleeping bag with 13°C marked as its bottom comfort temperature.

After taking a couple of time lapses, we packed and set off as early as 6am. 

View towards Win Hill

We had a nice walk back to the car even though the sun did not manage to get through the clouds. The car was still where we parked it which is always a bonus!