Sleeping above the sky of Great Britain
Sleep under the stars… at an altitude of 100 metres. hanging off a cliff . From a giant tree. Of a skyscraper. Or a soccer field! The locations where you can be an extreme sleeper -an "extreme sleeper"- are many, and there is someone who is on his way to try them all: Phoebe Smith .
“It all started in 2006, when I was in Australia. A friend suggested that we go on a trip to Outback and we slept in sleeping bags (in this case, in folding bushman beds) ”, Smith begins for Traveler.es. “I had never been interested in camping before, but as is often the case when we are traveling, I decided get out of my comfort zone and try it."
The welcome was not exactly warm: that camping began with the guide listing all the things that could kill her sleeping rough , but then something magical happened: “I saw the sun go down, I saw the crowds leave, and then I watched in awe as the stars came out and the wildlife approached. Later in the morning i lay in bed watching the sunrise, which seemed to be happening just for me ".
"I liked it so much, so much so that I made a promise to myself at the time: that when I got back home to Britain, I would become an adventurer in my own land , exploring the landscapes around me and our local wildlife, as well as its history and legends”, continues the traveler.
The 'extreme sleep' hooked Smith
As, as Smith explains, she had little time and little money her, she decided that the simplest thing was to camp in a wild place, away from the typical campsites: "It was just me and my tent headed for the wild for several nights," she recalls. She slept in caves, on mountain tops, amid the wreckage of a WWII plane … He didn't care so much about the place as living the experience and learning about it.
By then, mind you, she was still pitching her tent on the ground, a limit she surpassed in 2016. So, by virtue of her work as a travel journalist, she was invited to sleep in a hanging tent . She took a liking to the subject, so much so that the following year, she did not hesitate when she was invited to join a solidarity challenge for the World Land Trust, which protects British land.
consisted of spend the night suspended on a portal edge , a kind of tent used by climbers when they have to sleep hanging from the mountain in places where there is no floor available, only a wall. The chosen enclave was the interior tropical forest of Great Britain: the Eden Project, in Cornwall.
After experiencing that challenge, Smith was left wanting more, so she attended a three-day, two-night course in Morocco to learn how to safely climb and descend ropes to prepare for her next adventure: a Extreme Sleep Out - translated as "extreme outdoor camping" - where she and two friends she had made at the Cornwall event, John and Ollie, spent ten consecutive nights suspended from ten iconic UK venues in order to raise money for young people. homeless.
Extreme camping in Bristol's Avon Gorge
Her first night out is the one she remembers most fondly of her entire life as an extreme sleeper: “We were hanging off the sea cliffs at Strathy Point in Scotland. It was the night before the summer solstice, so it was clear until around midnight. We had rain, rainbows, sunshine, a real mix. Meanwhile, seals frolicked in the waves below us and seabirds soared above. That day marked the beginning of one of the best adventures of my life Smith recalls.
However, during the same challenge, she also experienced the most overwhelming moment of her career in the heights: “I was suspended over Gaping Gill, at a height of 98 meters , above a Yorkshire cave system and the country's tallest single-fall waterfall, looking down into the abyss,” she tells us. Following her, she climbed into the Tentsile they slept in (a cross between a climber's portaledge and a hammock) hers her mate John's.
“Finally, when Ollie climbed in, the entire structure suddenly fell several centimeters. Seriously that I thought that everything would end there, that we were going to let go. Obviously, it didn't happen that way, -one of the ropes we used as reinforcement had loosened-, but I had my heart in my mouth for several seconds”. It seems that the scare was worth it: they got more than 20,000 pounds -about 22,500 euros- for those young people.
After that, the pleasure of spending the night in the open became "addiction", in the words of Smith, who has not stopped living similar adventures since then and who is looking forward to embarking on his next trip to Finland, where he will sleep over a bear's cave in order to photograph its inhabitants. After that, he plans to take on another charity challenge, also for ten nights. In this case, he will cross, along with his friend John, almost 500 kilometers in a kayak, sleeping where the terrain allows them, to raise money for Air Ambulance, where his partner works as a doctor.
At Strathy Point, Smith experienced the night he remembers most fondly.
Christmas will pass touring britain on foot with his colleague Dwayne Fields and, again, sleeping wherever the road takes him. The objective, this time, is to raise funds to travel to Antarctica and trace a route that they can then complete with a group of disadvantaged young people in 2021.
Perhaps it will also change their lives, as has happened to Smith, becoming extreme sleepers. “Without my ‘extreme dreams,’ I would never have learned as much about the environment and the natural world as I have, written my books and inspired others to go out and sleep in the wild. And above all, I never would have had the confidence in myself to make an effort to do the things that people tell me I shouldn't do”, analyzes the adventurer.
“Since the beginning, I have had to fight people who told me that I shouldn't do what I do because I am a woman , or because I didn't come from the 'right' background, but as I did the things that people told me I couldn't do, my self-confidence grew,” she recalls. “ I owe my waking hits to my adventures in my sleep ”.
Have they made you want, also to you, to sleep in the heights? You don't need much: the basics are to be skilled with the ropes (“after all, they're vital,” says Smith) and not be afraid of heights. “But to be honest, all of this can be achieved through practice and exposure to those kinds of conditions. What it takes is determination and passion to do what you believe in. ”, she finishes.
Smith during his harrowing camping trip at Gaping Gill