Wild Camping with Geordie Jimny
We've been working with Geordie Jimny (or "Paul", as we shall refer to him from hereon in!) for many years now, collaborating on product designs and development along with various photo and video projects.
We'd discussed going on a camping trip together for a long time but, as seems to be the way with these things, we'd never managed to set a date! Last weekend, we were finally able head out on an adventure together in our Jimnys.
Paul is a big fan of wild camping which, thanks to the introduction of websites such as Wild with Consent, can be arranged more easily than ever. We chose the Low Trewhitt River Valley site as this is a 4WD-only location; perfect for testing out our Jimnys!
We elected to take our LCV Jimny, fresh from its recent APIO transformation (check out our YouTube video here!). Considering we've owned this particular Jimny for almost three years now, and it was still yet to have covered 1000 miles, we thought it could do with a decent run up the motorway!
At the end of a busy Friday, we set about transferring the Front Runner Slimline II Roof Rack from our SZ5 Jimny, along with the Clevershade 270 Degree Ultra-Lite Awning. This roof rack still had a Front Runner 4 Piece Tent Mount Kit fitted to it, so we could get our Front Runner Roof Top Tent out of storage and quickly bolted it to the mounts.
It wasn't until later that we realised that we'd previously configured the tent to open rearwards, and that a 270 degree awning needs to open across the rear of the car in order to be securely mounted. Had we not been rushing quite so much, we could have reconfigured the tent to open over the side of the car, which would have meant that we'd have had coverage at the rear and both sides of the car. Lesson learnt for next time, and we just had to hope that it didn't rain too much (or that Paul had a great awning setup of his own!).
We hit the road on Saturday morning, heading around the M60, across the M62 and then up the A1 as we headed northbound.
Our meeting point was the picturesque town of Rothbury - somewhere we'd love to visit again in the future and spend a bit more time exploring.
After a fairly short drive out of Rothbury, we found ourselves driving through farm fields to our campsite for the night.
The field at Low Trewhitt River Valley is quite undulating, so we made good use of the Jimny's low range 4WD system to traverse some of the muddier and less flat sections of the field in order to reach our preferred spot by the river.
After setting up our roof tent in a handful of minutes, we were keen to check out Paul's setup. After he'd just got the first section of his awning up, it started to chuck it down with rain - perfect timing!
Paul's DIY fridge and kitchen setup is fantastic and makes great use of the Dometic Go Tap and Jug, which provides water simply by tapping the tap (which is also secured to the table with a magnetic pad). The magnetic kitchen roll holder is also a genius idea!
The Explore Glazing gullwing window also makes for a handy table for lamps and other items.
By comparison, our setup was a bit more sparse; the HIGH PEAK Tailgate Molle Storage Panel kept our various essential pouches neatly organised.
With the rain still hammering down, Paul very kindly provided some snacks and we could enjoy a bit of British Grand Prix qualifying while sheltered from the worst of the weather. The Front Runner Expander Table is the perfect companion for nuts and an iPad...
...which was handy, as we could also sit back and enjoy England's very tense quarter final match against Switzerland!
As the rain finally subsided, Paul very kindly set about cooking up a couple of steak sandwiches...
...just as an incredible rainbow emerged from the clouds.
Waking up bright and early the following morning, the sun was shining and the view from our roof tent was spectacular.
After a little walk around the field, it seemed that the sheep had got used to our presence and weren't so afraid anymore...
...some of them were even sunbathing on the (makeshift) beach!
After a spot of breakfast and one of Paul's fantastic coffees (note the externally mounted AeroPress setup!)...
...it was time to pack up and head home.
We hit pretty bad traffic around Leeds on the way home and, adding to that, some sort of delay on the M62 meant that we ended up taking an extremely scenic route home along the famed Woodhead Pass.
We couldn't miss the start of the British Grand Prix though, so we were lucky to find a lay-by with a decent view and a strong 4G signal that meant we could make use of our Dashboard Storage Tray, recline the seat and relax!
We hope you enjoyed this blog post! We're going to make a push to start using the blog more, so keep an eye out for more adventures, news and also technical articles about some of our most popular products. Cheers!