« A cunning plan | Main | Cooking on Classical Gas »

I’m still not hugely keen on hammocks.

Last night I decided to give sleeping in the hammock another go, this time I was especially careful to tie knots that would not come undone and not to tie it to branches that could break. What I didn’t do was tie it high enough off the ground, having got in I found myself in the hammock on the ground. So it was a matter of wriggling out and retying the thing higher up. This time I neglected to tie the proper knots at one end so soon found myself on the floor again. Once wriggled out, re-tied and wriggled back in I was amused to find that the head end was much higher than the foot end. Wriggle out, adjust, wriggle in, head still too high, wriggle out, adjust wriggle in, head too low – repeat until too tired to care any more.

I reasoned that as I had been far very cold trying to sleep in the hammock in the winter that if I slept in it in the summer whilst I was in my winter sleeping bag I would be at a good temperature – wrong, it was freezing. Not that it was freezing at first, no no no, far too much wriggling about trying to get comfortable for that. One good thing about my hammock is the built in mosquito net, well that’s what I thought but when in a vain attempt to get comfortable I found I had managed to tip the hammock over completely and the only thing that was keeping me in was the none to strong looking mosquito net pressing into my face I was not so sure. It took a little while to claw my way back into the correct part of the hammock. Eventually I got to sleep and only woke every half an hour or so feeling either cold, uncomfortable or even occasionally both. I put up with it though, hammocks are the only thing to sleep in whilst in a jungle so I best get used to it. I would be glad of all the mosquito netting in the jungle I thought. The hammock you see has a great design, a built in mosquito net over the top and an entrance through the bottom that closes when you get in to the thing by the weight of your body forcing Velcro strips together. That’s the idea anyway, I woke at about 5 am with my legs sticking out through the entrance and the view of a massive gap plenty big enough for a million hungry mosquitoes to get through and bring all their shopping. At this point I gave up on the hammock, squeezed out of the gap and flopped to the floor, soon I was warm and happy with the reassuring feel of the stony ground beneath my back.

Posted on Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 16:07 by Registered CommenterJam | CommentsPost a Comment

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
All HTML will be escaped. Hyperlinks will be created for URLs automatically.