Odd places to sleep

[summittoppler]

I spent last weekend in this quirky place with the Mrs up in the Lakes and it got me thinking. We've all had some very random locations for getting our heads down and thought I'd ask the question as to where has been the oddest/most peculiar place you've spent the night? For info this was a booked accommodation via https://www.canopyandstars.co.uk/

20211120_090210 by Jeff Price, on Flickr

received_438789230954864 by Jeff Price, on Flickr

[fatbikephil]

Head over to the BAM thread Jeff - there's been all sorts of daft goings on over there of late!

[boxelder]

That's just up the road from me I think, @summittoppler (between Lorton and Loweswater?). Only seen it far some way off.
The last 30secs of this https://dirtmountainbike.com/videos/wat ... trict.html is in the woods nearby. But maybe you knew that and were there to shred.......?

[Verena]

Good thread there, looking forward to reading all about it

[Verena]

Just thought of one: My parents took me and my daughter on holiday to Canada, when she was nine. They thought it would be lovely to book us family rooms wherever we stayed. She didn't, on account of both of them snoring very badly, and I was struggling too to get any sleep. One place we stayed at, the most expensive one too, my daughter and I ended up sleeping in a wardrobe.

[RIP]

One place we stayed at, the most expensive one too, my daughter and I ended up sleeping in a wardrobe.

If only you'd pushed further on through those fur coats!

[RIP]

Good thread Jeff. Hmm. I rather enjoyed the hen-house on wheels next to Sellafield nuclear power station in the pouring rain (what else), having been refused lawn-space by the local boozer's landlord because I "might upset the customers". Sadly it was otherwise unoccupied so no eggs for breakfast. Apart from that, any number of graveyards.

[ScotRoutes]

I've stayed in a wooden hut made from the crates used to transport a herd of reindeer (and so has someone else on this forum).

[Moder-dye]

I can't think of anything much out of the ordinary for where most people will have slept here.

I can tell you that horse stables are no use, the racket they make all night chewing and farting is incredible!

I did manage to get the ok for me and a mate to sleep in a pub garden unlike above. But then my mate, who'd I'd stupidly let be responsible for the tent, forgot the poles so we ended up just sleeping under a flat tent

[summittoppler]

That's just up the road from me I think, @summittoppler (between Lorton and Loweswater?). Only seen it far some way off.
The last 30secs of this https://dirtmountainbike.com/videos/wat ... trict.html is in the woods nearby. But maybe you knew that and were there to shred.......?

Yeah near to Lorton. Nice part of world
No shredding as was with the Mrs

[TheBrownDog]

Agree stables are no good with the noise of horses keeping you awake, but most horse yards have sheds in their fields that make excellent shelters. Not to be done without permission: you will be shot and fed to the pigs.

I slept under a picnic table in a park in the middle of a village in Crete once. Got there late and intended to leave before sunrise but had not counted on the early rising grandmother who woke me up with a cup of coffee and some bread.

[psling]

I've spent a few nights on Crete in various places from beaches, cliff ledges, and even a couple of nights on a small rocky island a short swim off-shore.

I slept under a picnic table in a park in the middle of a village in Crete once. Got there late and intended to leave before sunrise but had not counted on the early rising grandmother who woke me up with a cup of coffee and some bread.

Your early rising grandmother reminds me of a bus trip across the interior of the island when the driver stopped at a small crossroads and an old lady got on with a basket, sat down by the driver and proceeded to dish out his lunch from the basket. We were there for a good half-hour or so and the few of us on the bus got to share the contents too

[TheBrownDog]

Ah, Crete. Wonderful place. I'm going to have a proper waffle so if you're offended by disconnected gibberish, please look away now.

The Cretans have one of the longest average life expectancies in the world because the grandmothers stop buses to share lunch with the drivers. They may or may not have been related. The diet is incredibly healthy but it's the relaxed approach to life that makes the real difference. They make the Spanish look industrious. (Sorry Spain)

Which is probably why the place is broke, rife with corruption and wheeze. I remember asking a bus driver why so many of the houses still looked unfinished, the flat roofs featuring foundations for another floor. Answer was that an unfinished home did not attract any sort of tax, even if it had been lived in for decades. Bless.

Still, it's hands up and down the most wonderful place. The people are just amazing, welcoming and relaxed and interested in things. I kept going back because the second they heard my Aussie accent I would get invited to lunch/dinner/drinks. A huge number of people left after WW2 and basically moved to Melbourne. Lost count of the times I was asked if I knew their relatives.

It's a brilliant place for bike touring with miles of largely empty roads. Every town and village has a taverna that will be closed when you get there but, if you quietly sit in the courtyard for a bit, will magically open and feed you. And such food!!!

There are good maps of the road network but going gravel is a risk because so many dirt roads simply lead to a farm or a caravan and you have to backtrack. Ive not been there for 15 years but there were no decent maps of paths or the like back then.

And if you go, you must remember to always carry several good sized rocks to see off the inevitable advances of loose dogs. They can be really scary, but respect a good arm.

The western end is the place to go. It was still very undeveloped last time I was there, unlike the eastern parts which were infested with tourists on package deals looking for a full English/German breakfast at 1pm. Sad because a lot of the great history is on that end of the island.

Anyhoo, if you're looking for a picnic table to sleep under, I can't help. I've no idea where I was at the time, but it was close to the Agia Sofia cave, which was interesting but mostly a nice place to hide from the heat for a few hours.

So. Crete. Go.

[In Reverse]

Fell asleep with my head in a bassbin in Amnesia in Ibiza. Sven Vath was DJing.

[ton]

in my youth i spent a night in one of the old roadbuilders huts. the little corrugated type with the arched roof.
was on D of E expo. teacher would have failed me if had ever found out.

[ledburner]

I was spent a night in a plain bivvi bag in the open winter around Feb 93.Bob Scott's bothy was over subscribed. not even standing room. we dossed In a pit in the snow, by a deer shelter on the other side of the stream. it like a grave and as cold as one, my mate reckoned -10°c (pocket thermometer and woke up to a flask of frozen water, frozen boots and oat for porridge that were really oat meal. we had just walked over near Ben macdui from Ford's of Avon. it was full on 'Ice pick' and 'croutons' conditions proper skiing weather... he was hardcore and now does the spine race etc..

[The Cumbrian]

My mate and I spent the night in a perfect little howff beneath Gardom's Edge in 1992. The experience was enlivened when my petrol stove squirted fuel over my rucsac just as I lit it, which resulted in two decent sized lads trying to put a fire out in a confined space while trying to keep our sleeping bags and climbing gear away from the flames. We succeeded, but I had to later replace the damaged tape on the hipbelt with a bit of old seatbelt.

I was back there four or five years ago and tried to find the howff, but couldn't

[RIP]

I was back there four or five years ago and tried to find the howff, but couldn't

Burned to the ground by a mysterious arsonist?

OK, I don't mind spinning the wheel again. Inside a 'Covid pod' outside a boozer in a nearby village this year... the seat was about 1" shorter than me so not wildly comfortable....



Not particularly odd (wot, me?) but one summer in the early 80's I had to go and install some software at a company in the south of France. Boss assumed I'd be there and back in a day on an aeroplane. Convinced him to let me go on the train over 4 days. Packed a suit, sleeping bag and toothbrush, and the very valuable magnetic tape reel in my rucsac and ferried to Calais then train to Paris and TGV to Valence. Did the job then returned via Strasbourg and Amsterdam. Tried to stay in Strasbourg YHA but it was completely full - international footie match. A bit desperate I rolled my sleeping bag out under a big bush by the river, head on my rucsac with the tape in it. Woke up in the morning next to a French tramp! Chatted in my rudimentary French and it turned out he'd just walked from the south of France more or less the same route. I didn't mention this little interlude to my boss for some reason.

[Bearbonesnorm]

I once spent the night in some caves overlooking the sea above Hastings. I didn't have any kit so didn't get much sleep - which is probably the reason I noticed a car pull up by the waters edge in the early hours. Two blokes got out, opened the boot and proceeded to remove and then throw into the sea what looked like a very heavy roll of carpet

I also once spent a night beneath a large 'stunt ramp' at a motorcycle show in Holland - the entire trip was a fiasco that involved not being able to get a hire car, train travel, high wire fences, grumpy guard dogs and discovering an unattended fridge full of beer.

[RIP]

Er. Did they look like carpet fitters? I'm not sure what a carpet fitter looks like TBH. Did you fish "it" out? Might have been a valuable oriental carpet that they needed to offload sharpish like. Or something.


1985. Took a whole month off work - a year's holiday in one go - and Interrailed around Scandinavia with just some spare socks and a hopeless Lichfield one-man tent. Variety of trampy sleeping situations, including a shed a few hundred yards from the Russian border in Finland in full sight of a guard hut on stilts, but the best one was being invited, in the pissing rain (yes Rain God even then!), to the home for the night of a stunning stereotypical Swedish blonde lady who took pity on me.

Absolutely nothing happened.

[The Cumbrian]

1985. Took a whole month off work - a year's holiday in one go - and Interrailed around Scandinavia with just some spare socks and a hopeless Lichfield one-man tent. Variety of trampy sleeping situations, including a shed a few hundred yards from the Russian border in Finland in full sight of a guard hut on stilts, but the best one was being invited, in the pissing rain (yes Rain God even then!) to the home for the night of a stunning stereotypical Swedish blonde lady who took pity on me.

Absolutely nothing happened.

When I worked in Sweden, one of the (stunning stereotypical Swedish blonde) women on site overheard that I wanted to see a moose. She said that one often visited her garden, and invited me to her house to see if it turned up.

Nothing happened and I didn't see a moose, but she did make very good coffee.

[boxelder]

Burned to the ground by a mysterious arsonist?

Be more than mysterious to burn down a rock howf.

[RIP]

Burned to the ground by a mysterious arsonist?

Be more than mysterious to burn down a rock howf.

Amazing amount of heat comes off a blazing rucsac

[macinblack]

Many moons ago when I worked down the pit, sometimes I got taken off the face to be a button man if the regular one hadn't turned up. That basically means being in charge of a section of conveyor to make sure it ran properly and didn't get jammed if a large rock came off the face. Usually coal conveyors ran on the intake side of the mine, i.e. on the fresh air side of the mine and so were usually quite cold. Sometimes they went through the return side of the mine, which was much warmer. The job was mind-numbingly boring and if it was warm, it was almost impossible not to nod off. That said the amount of times a fitter would come by riding the belt whilst fast on didn't bear thinking about. You had to stop the belt and wake them up, otherwise they had a date with a chute outbound with a crusher in it. That was the only real incentive to stay awake, other than losing your job of course.

We also had a derrickman on the rigs who had a fear of heights but whose job was to rack drill pipe lengths at the top of the mast. In order to do so, he would have a few brandys (This was onshore,) It wasn't at all unknown for him to fall asleep on the diving board on nights if we were tripping the hole and got delayed for any period of time.

One of the oddest for me personally was four of us in a massive earthmover bucket when I was on an outward bound course. It wasn't at all comfortable but did a good job of keeping the wind and rain off. When it got light, a farmer's wife came over from the other side of the valley and said we could have used their barn. She did offer some egg sandwiches, which was nice. Reg has probably been there.

[RIP]

down the pit

Which pit(s) did you work at? Apologies if you've already mentioned.

One of the oddest for me personally was four of us in a massive earthmover bucket when I was on an outward bound course.

Excellent! Four in a bucket, must've been a biggie . Corby's giant R&R draglines come to mind. Incredible machines. Very nearly kipped inside one (the famous 'Sundew') at Shotley Quarry but bottled it. Or if coal, 'Ace of Spades' at Stobswood mebbes? Intrigued .