Solo Winter Camping In a Hot Tent ( -5 degrees )

In a world that's fast-paced, constantly evolving, with high levels of stimulus and time spent indoors, it feels so powerful returning to the woods and indulging in wholesome tasks in our natural environment. I've got big plans over the next couple of years, well for the rest of my life, to keep connecting to the outdoors as much as I can through multiple avenues. So this is my journey to furthering my connection to Mother Nature, one step at a time. Good evening, I am now all set up. The setup is looking really good. I've got the hot tent up, the new hot tent, and also the wood burner's in now, so I'm going to collect some wood, harvest some wood for tonight, and get the fire going, probably get some food on. But I can't believe there's a tiny, tiny frost in the snow on the ground, which looks beautiful. It's added a whole different wintry vibe, but it's definitely dropping. It is really dropping now, and I think it's meant to get down to minus five tonight, which is pretty chilly, for UK standards anyway, and it's feeling very damp in the air, so definitely going to get the burner going, and this is the perfect, perfect time of year to do some hot tent camping. I'm really looking forward to it. It is absolutely gorgeous. We've got a full moon, and blue skies, and little bits of snow hovering around the woodland. So, this is the life. It is so warm in here now. It's so cozy, and the little bits of ice and snow are melting in my tent, so it's sort of gone like a sauna in here, like a steam room. Some dinner on. Just going to be having something simple, which is fajitas, and a one-pan job, which is quite easy when you're cooking out in the woods like this. So, so peaceful, and it got dark so quickly. Time I cut some wood, split it, and got the fire going, and set up my bed for the night. It's just, time ticks on, and it's long, long evenings. Good evening. I am super chilled. I don't really know where the day's gone. It's just gone very, very quickly. It feels nice just being, I guess, just being present, being in the moment, connected to nature, just being outside, just doing wholesome things, like lighting fires, cooking on a wood burner, having my feet on the bare ground, being in the woods, cutting firewood. Feels good, and it feels so cozy being here. I absolutely love this tent. It's awesome, and to be able to pack this tent and the burner into a backpack and just walk somewhere, wherever it is, whatever distance is, it's pretty cool. So, good morning. It is so cold this morning. Oh, it's freezing. It's beautiful, and it feels so good to be light again. It's such long evenings. So, this is the life. It is really cold, but the sun just feels amazing. I feel like when you do things that are outside your comfort zone or slightly challenging, it definitely teaches you to appreciate things a lot more. As I'm out camping in the cold, just that sun feels amazing, and also just having sunlight after such dark evenings. It felt like it was dark last night for hours, which it is. It gets dark, I think, about quarter to five now, so we are gaining back some daylight hours, but it's still long, long evenings when you don't have stimulus, when you don't have TVs, a phone signal, lights. I feel like you take so much for granted, and that's why I love doing these things and being out in nature, because it's the real, real simple things, and I always say you should disconnect or reconnect, and it's just times like this when you just leave everything behind and you get outdoors in whatever form that is, whatever activities you do outdoors, it doesn't really matter. It feels strange reflecting and being in the same woodland where I spent three months living in a belt end, and at that point of my life I felt so, so connected to nature and just nature's cycle of slowing down, I guess, and running with nature and not rushing and just learning the skill of being patient. Obviously, boiling a kettle takes so much longer than electric, like a switch, you're boiling it over a fire, you've got to prepare a fire, and you've got to process firewood and then make a fire and wait for your water to boil like that, and all the other little conveniences are missing, like shower, running water, maybe cooking from scratch, which was often done a lot in a Dutch oven, and it's really wholesome, and I really enjoyed that three months. I'll always look back on that time because it was a really, really beneficial part of my life, and I think it gave me a lot of direction. Obviously, when you're not thinking about other outside influence and you're just focusing within, you really learn a lot about yourself and what you want and your direction, and yeah, that was five years ago, and I'm pretty happy with the way my life is going. There's obviously been a lot of lows and there's obviously been so many highs, and that's just life, and yeah, it's been one hell of a journey, and yeah, I'm just glad I can share it on here with other people to help them either connect to nature, to find parts of themselves, or just to give them that freedom through watching my videos if you're unable to get outdoors yourself or into wild spaces due to a number of reasons, and it's really nice to hear and people sharing their moments outdoors or how I've inspired them. It just, it's really, really lovely, but I'm really glad I come out this overnighter and come out in the winter and come out in the hot tent because I've got a busy, busy year coming up, lots going on, and so it just feels nice to have slow moments like this in between where you don't really have to do much, you're just being and connecting, and that feels right. That sun feels lovely. You can see all the steam coming off everything. Okay, I'm back in the tent after a little bit of a walk around this woodland and just having a explore. I've had a couple of cups of tea and my bacon sandwich. I'm now going to talk about my sleep system just before I pack it away, just so people can get a rough idea of what I take, either to compare your setup or if you're not really sure what to take on winter campouts. This can vary through like climates. Obviously, from what you'll see now, I don't really have a damp weather sort of sleep system. This is something I really take on pretty much all my trips, the quilt especially. First off, I've got a Bushcraft Spain wool blanket, and this has been brilliant. This is such an awesome system because when this is wet, it stays dry, and that's the good thing about wool and natural materials, hence why my boots, the fabric inside the wool, I try to take wool jumpers with me, wool hat, and I've just chucked that over my quilt. But I love this blanket and I'd advise to go support the company Bushcraft Spain at this hard time. They've had severe floodings and it's sort of like washed the warehouse away and their workshop, and yeah, they're in serious trouble in terms of losing a lot of equipment. So now is the time if you're thinking about buying anything like wool blankets, canvas tarps, that sort of thing, then they'd really appreciate that. And then underneath that, I have got a minus six down quilt, and I really like quilts because they're easier to sleep in. They're not as bulky and they're lighter, and I take this on all my trips pretty much from the trip I did to Iceland, the trip I did to Kyrgyzstan, and yeah, winter campouts, but I just tend to put something on top of it or layer it with something just in case it's too cold. But yeah, this is awesome. It's down, so that's questionable with these damp climates, but you can get synthetic ones also. And this is enlightened equipment and I got it from Balian Peak. And I usually store it in a pillowcase, and then once it's out the pillowcase, I put my down jacket in the pillowcase and use that as a pillow, which is a pretty cool system, and it just helps with storage in the van. And then finally, my roll mat, which is a one-tigress roll mat, and it's super comfy. It's a really thick and comfortable mat, and I really, really rate it. It's so comfy, and it actually comes with an electric pump to make it easier to pump. If not, you've just got one of those inflation bags that works brilliantly. And yeah, that's my sleep system. I was really warm. It was minus five last night, and I was really toasty in that. And then talking about wool, wool socks. I've got the down taff wool socks, or you know wool, to keep my feet warm. And these bad boys, which I'm really excited to talk about. It's the Vivo Barefoot New Winter Boots, and these were designed in Canada. The people are doing like snowshoeing, dog sledding, that sort of thing. So people who have designed them know their stuff. And they've got this cord to keep it all together, because it's a high boot. But the outer material is made of canvas. This black material is canvas. You've got a Michelin sole, which is obviously ace. And then this is the exciting and cool part. The inside is wool. So what you can do with this boot, and I had these like little booties last night, camp booties, is you can just take the inside out of the outer. And you've got these really cool wool boots for just around camp. They've obviously got like a sole on them. And these are great for just like being in the tent at night, and just pop them on. And they're just like camp boots. They just keep your feet warm, even when you're just chilling and you don't need a big boot. Say this was covered in snow or mud, you can leave that by your doorway and just pop these on instead. I'd love to do a trip to really test these somewhere like Arctic Sweden or something, to really trial these out and do something like that, because that would be awesome. And you know that these would be definitely able to cope in them conditions. And if you are interested in these boots, I've got a 20% discount code. I use pretty much all their footwear because I just can't really go back to wearing normal boots now. I really struggle. I've got wide feet and I just want to be comfortable. Code is GO20. 20% off all their footwear. I think I'm going to pack up now. I'm going to pack up the tent and head on off. I've got so many exciting trips coming up and I'm just sort of planning and prepping for them at the minute. That's a lot of what January's about. I'm catching up on some videos and just planning for what's coming up and I cannot wait to tell you what I have in store. So I am all packed up now. I've left no trace and I am heading back. Thank you so much for watching this video. I really hope you enjoyed it. It's something a little bit different and it was really good fun. It was really good and I had a beautiful night in this beautiful woodland. So I hope you enjoyed watching. Thank you to all my patrons for making this possible who are listed in the description below. Thanks again and take care and happy new year.