Best Night Out

Heltrekker

Section Hiker
Best night out: camping - watching the setting sun turn Pic du Midi d'Ossau gold from my tent with a mug of red wine in hand. Non-camping - my wedding reception. We actually drank a brewery dry (not just me and the groom, I hasten to add)
 

TinTin

Thru Hiker
Not backpacking but, 1977 A group of about 40 of us from University of Salford and LSE attended a social Evening Karl Marx Institute of Economics in Budapest. Beer was 1p a bottle and a few of us enjoyed the economics of the eastern bloc a little more than was perhaps wise. We took a few of the local students back to our hotel, Hotel Ifjúság, pronounced "If you shag" (I kid you not). Had an amazing water fight, in some unfortunate students room, with the whole room flooded and water flowing over the balcony. We had to smuggle the locals out of the room when plain clothed police came to the door.

Later that year me and a mate hitch hiked around Europe and were in Paris looking for the camping place in the Bois de Boulogne promised in one of the guides that we carried. A gendarme van screeched to a halt in front of us and we were ordered into the back. Inside the roof of the van were machine guns, and other serious looking weapons, clipped to the underside. After a worrying few minutes they dropped us in the park and pointed to a place where a number of tents were. We picked a pitch and put our little tent up. 6am the next morning we were awoken at 6 am by a gun being knocked on the tent pole. "Vite, vite!" we broke camp the quickest I've ever managed.

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cathyjc

Thru Hiker
Camping 'best night' - I cannot work out which I'd choose but I know what parameters are required :-
- No midges
- clear skies
- good views
- good water source
- flat dry grassy patch
- and the right frame of mind .......

Other things are optional.
 

kvragu

Ultralighter
To be fair the best days outdoors usually had subpar nights. Either because I would be too focused on moving and pushing further and end up having to sleep in a bus shelter, or trying to ride the high and not sleep (and, inevitably, crash). I think I need a more sustainable strategy.

Non-camping, must be one of the nights out with the philosophy folks in undergrad. Those always got the most worth out of nights.

Actually I remember my first night audax - I never rode through the night and was a bit worried about it, but I'll never forget how amazing the sky looked, full of stars and all that bull. I think I had a bit of an out-of-body experience then, I felt my head half a meter above my 'real' head. Inevitably I bonked an hour later and tried to sleep on a few curbs.
 

MikeinDorset

Ultralighter
Camping with friends and kids in a private field near the foot of Fan Brycheiniog. Way below freezing and our hair froze to the grass while we all lay on a rug looking up for satellites with the kids. Didn't get above freezing for days, the kids loved it.

Or a cracking one just below High Steet to the north, above the head of the valley with the deer forest, with the red deer herd all around us.

Staying up above Pe Yr Ole wen to watch the sunset.

One night in the Trocadero when we found out that if you put a tenner into the change machine you got £20 in pound coins. *Lots* of strangers got bought pints later that night.
 

Fubuki

Summit Camper
Half way up Snowdon on the little hill below Crib Goch (Bwlch y Moch) with my 6 year old daughter. She spent the evening bouldering on the rocks in her pink fleece onsie. At sunrise there was a cloud inversion so I picked her up in her sleeping bag and we watched it together with a hot chocolate.

We then climbed Snowdon (via Crib Goch) in blazing sunshine and swam in Glaslyn on the way down. On the way home we stopped off at a pub to have dinner and watch England beat Sweden 2-0 in the World Cup quarter finals... The gods were smiling on us that weekend!
 
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rikdon

Summit Camper
Not hiking but driving from L.A. to Philadelphia in a Honda Civic with a mate of mine.We stopped around 10.00p.m some where in Kansas for a bite to eat at a roadside burger bar. Got talking to a local rancher who insisted we stay at his house for the night. Spent 3 days with him being shown around to his neighbours and eating the best home cooked food. This was about40 years ago. I have had other good nights since!
 

Diddi

Thru Hiker
1999 Manumission in Ibiza. 10,000 people, 30ft winged Angel raising up the wall of the club as the walled curtains opened as the sun came up.... The best Set I have ever heard from a Dj playing hovering on wood planks/steel drums over a swimming pool what was earlier the dance floor ...:bla:.....
Oh yeah and bumping into Bruce Willis and Boy George :)....
 
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I enjoyed this night/nights Phil. Middle of winter, after bushwalking for two days (set out for three days in total) had non-stop rain and wind -wombats and/or bloody possums keeping me up all night head-butting the tent- I turn up at a remote lightstation.
"Can I stay please?" I originally planned to walk the next leg-25kms walk straight back to my car bypassing the lightstation.
"Sorry, off you go- if you start walking now it'll only take you six hours" says he.
I convince him, he says OK.
The 'best night' bit was the feeling of having the light station and the 1859 bluestone lighthouse to myself. Not anther soul-especially being mid winter. I sat in the lighthouse staring at the offshore islands and the swell of about 6-10 metres and rain and howling wind well into the dark and up early again to watch the sunrise. A wee drop of the good stuff and some fruit cake both times to keep me well. Had such a time I asked him again for the next night and did it all over again. Carried 800gms of Dark Fruit cake as sustenance against the cold. In between slept in the old school teachers house with the roof shaking from the wind, just like a wee bairn as my old man used to say. When I ran out of most food, coffee and fruit cake- I knew it was getting time to fang it, but still hung on the extra day, just for another night.

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One of the shy lightstation locals roaming in the late and early gloaming. My dodgy zoom photo.
 
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