Saturday

Friday Night

At last. I made the decision to get a bivi bag, the weather has turned and it is getting to the point where spending night after night sleeping in a wet sleeping bag could start to have an adverse effect on health. A hugely good buy I have to say, it fits over both sleeping bag and thermarest self inflating mattress (punctured). I ended up getting the best nights sleep yet. I did wake up in the middle of the night coughing from the damp air so I ended up pulling the hood up, zipping it half shut thus cocconing myself in a pocket of warm air. Best of all my sleeping bag was dry when I awoke. On of the sleeping bags is at the dry cleaners at the moment (I recently discovered putting one inside the other to keep warm) so soon enough I'm going to have a dry clean warm comfortable bed. What more do I need? I'm looking forward to getting the sleeping bag out of the cleaners, the smell of damp coming off the one I'm using at the moment is getting a bit much.

I had also bought a new padlock and an alarm clock. I set the alarm for 5am intending to get up and meet friends in London for a bit of a run. For some reason I chose to stay in bed and appreciate this new found warmth and dryness and have a lie-in.

I lazed about quite comfortably oncle I had woken properly at about 8 quite content to drift in and out of slumber and come to a natural state of alertness over time. What really got my attention was the leaves on the Beech tree next to me. I had never really analised the the changing of the leaves that closely before but had imagined it to be a fairly uniform proccess with all the leaves on any given tree changing colour in unison. Not a bit of it. The colours change seemingly at random, sometimes just one or two leaves will turn yellow, occasionaly an entire branch will change but none of the branches immedietly around it, the efect is stunning. After a time spent appretiating the colours I turned my head and caught sight of a Red Kite circling above, after a minute or two of circling it broke off and flew directly overhead at the height of no more than 20 feet. The closest I have seen one to date, it is a magnificent creature, very graceful and with enormous power.