Summer Solstice Wild Camping

We should have gone out last week when the moon was full, but the weather was wet. This week I wanted to camp under the waning moon before the Solstice.

I'm sure my physio will not approve of this but armed with two poles I am determined to go. I normally go for the Solstice but it's more of a trial this year as I probably need a new hip. It's a small 12-hour adventure.

It's good to be able to get on the moor to camp after the recent controversies surrounding the topic.

My first, and only, river crossing leaves me with a wet foot and a pole floating downstream.

It's a cloudy evening but I can still make out the twin peaks of Hay Tor on the horizon and the and the squarer Kestor closer by. The Landscape is like an old friend as I greet the stone circle at Littlehound tor.

You seldom see many people when you go wild camping, there a tent is further up by Hound tor, and, as the sun is setting, two figures are framed on Oke tor.

My trip from the tent to find the recently discovered Metheral stone circle is not a resounding success...I pick my way down the track towards the Taw marshes, through the Bronze Age Hut circles which line the route. It's very boggy and Mabel jumps into the bog, she's attractively framed by the bog cotton plants, but I know she's now filthy if she to joins me in the sleeping bag later!

I find plenty of stones and some of them might make a circle but it's quite hard to tell in the bog grass and the bracken, but I always have my favourite stone circle to go back up to where my tent is. Thankfully the midges aren't abundant; I emerged from a previous trip like this looking like I'd had a bad case of chickenpox and only noticed this when I eventually found a mirror.

Something wakes me at about 1:00 a.m. and I crawl outside. I look around, the stars are startlingly bright and, on the horizon, there's a faint orange glow which resolves itself into the half-moon. Mabel sits sentinel outside the tent, a yellow glowing figure in the dark, like a small modern Hound of the Baskervilles in her high vis coat.

In the morning, halfway up Cosdon Hill. I get uncomfortably hot, I should have removed some of the four layers I slept in. As I reach the top the sun is breaking through the horizon, staining a sea of clouds pink.

The real world is still blanketed in cloud as I make my way down towards the lane, it's gloomy below and it's like being in an aircraft descending through the bright clouds into an English fog.

I arrive at the car at 6 a.m., having had a dip in the chilly Shilley pool, I drink the last of my thermos tea in the car and Mabel curls up gratefully beside me and starts snoring.

I've been to Glastonbury for the summer solstice and I was thinking about going to Stonehenge, but on the whole I think I prefer a solitary sunrise. One woman and her dog on a girls' night out.

Well, I suppose I should go and do some teaching now...

Author: ​Sue Perry