Back Tor

Location: Back Tor, Dark Peak, Peak District Derbyshire

Distance: 7km

Date: May 2016

Kit: MLD DuoMid + Exped Downmat 7 Ultra Light + Wilderness Down Quilt

Fourteenth Wild Camp

This was a quick, last minute solo wild camp, setting off from home at around 4pm I drove over to The Strines Inn and stopped for a swift pint. After asking the landlords permission to leave the car in their carpark overnight I headed off West along the Foulstone Road towards Derwent Reservoir. It was raining relatively hard and the wind was battering me as I climbed up to Derwent Edge. Back Tor overlooks the reservoir (on a clear day) and is a high cluster of large boulders popular with climbers. By the time I’d arrived at Back Tor it was thick with mist and visibility was down to a few metres, so no photo’s other than a few of the shelter. I setup the Duomid at the base of one of the larger boulders to provide some wind protection. The weather wasn’t too bad by that time, the rain had stopped but wind speeds were gusting at around 30-40mph. The morning was much the same with a heavy fog skipping across the heather with 30mph gusts. The route back to the car retraced by steps, arriving back at The Strines carpark by 8am. The route was short and very easy to follow, but it gave me the chance to check my pace/distance tracking and micro navigation. Along the Foulstone Road there are Grouse butts every few hundred metres, this provides the perfect feature for checking your stride length/pace count against. As a bit of a navigational test I used compass bearing and return back bearings to locate Back Tor (given the extreme poor visibility) this was good test of compass skill.

I took a few photo’s on my iPhone just as the mist lifted (slightly) for a brief moment: