Glasgow - There’s something magical about sleeping in the wild on the summer solstice. To watch the sun descend beneath the horizon, warming your face with the last of its heat, while you sit snug in your sleeping bag, the earthy aroma of your soil mattress filling your nostrils, waiting for the surrounding landscape to fade into the darkening sky.
That’s the dream, anyway – and one I have endeavoured to realise for the past three years, every summer solstice eve, on one special Scottish mountain called Ben Hope.
Sitting between the Kyle of Tongue and Loch Eriboll and rising to a height of 926.8 metres, this is the most northerly of the country’s Munros (mountains over 3 000 feet or 914.4m).
From its summit, you can gaze north and – if weather permits – see the Orkneys. Legend has it that on the night of the solstice, owing to its northerly co-ordinates, you can watch the sun sink down and almost immediately begin to rise again – as close as Britain can get to a midnight sun.
I arrived there last solstice to see if I could glimpse it – third time lucky; the previous two times I’d been rained off. In my rucksack was a warm sleeping bag, a camping mat, stove and gas, lots of food, a fleece, duvet jacket, headtorch, hat, gloves, map, compass and, of course, my bivvy bag.
Essentially a waterproof pouch for your sleeping bag, a bivvy represents wild camping (that is, pitching away from a proper campsite) at its simplest. Unlike a tent, there’s no room for your gear – you need to take a waterproof bag for it – and no “porch” to cook in. But then it doesn’t remove you from the outdoors in quite the way a tent does: from a bivvy, you can lie out in the elements and watch the stars dance overhead, and wake by the light from the sunrise.
En route to the summit, I tried to ignore the grey clag swirling around it. I ploughed on up the path for a couple of hours as rain became hail, driven into my face by wind. My boots crunched as I trod over rocks to reach the trig point at the top of Ben Hope, from where I could see… nothing.
I headed back – but I’d not given up hope. Halfway down the mountain is a flattened patch of grass next to a stream. There, sheltered, I set up camp. As the water in my stove splattered and glugged, I warmed a meal with it first, then poured the remainder into a bottle, wrapped it in fleece for use as a hot-water bottle, and surveyed my surrounds.
To my left, the stream trickled soothingly as it cleaved its way into the valley below. To my right, the grass glistened green, bejewelled by the raindrops, and beyond I could make out the edge of the hillside, behind which the sea appeared merely a faded watermark against the dull light of the setting sun.
Movement woke me in the early morning half-light. Only a little after 5am, it was already light enough to see five deer crossing the river only metres from my feet.
Cloud still sat on the hill but from my bed I could spy the muted colours of dawn breaking through. I smiled. Let the crowds have their solstice parties; for me, a night on a hill is as wild as I want it.
The Independent on Sunday