Join me on a seaside cliff camp in the North York Moors. As you will see in this video, I was caught of guard by the early strong winds and rain of storm Franklin (At the time of my camp the storm had not been officially named). When I set out on the hike, multiple forecasts for this area predicted mixed precipitation of rain and snow that afternoon into the evening. With winds between 5 and 10 miles an hour the majority of the night rising to around 25mph at around 2-3am. As I start the hike the weather continuously gets better until I reach camp. I was pretty happy, as I ended up with clear skies and very little wind. I was able to enjoy the sunset and cook a nice meal with the door of my tent open. As I went to bed the forecast began to change calling for 25 to 35 mph winds starting around midnight. This forecast was pretty accurate, however it kept getting worse throughout the night. After a few pegs came loose as the ground became saturated with rain, I was able to resecure everything with rocks. By 2 AM winds began reaching speeds up to 45 mph. The tent handled these conditions fairly well as the gust were still sporadic and my location was still protected behind a small hill beside the tent. Aside from being blown around quite a bit I was able to sleep a some. Around 4am however, gust were starting to top 52mph and more importantly, the wind direction changed and the tent started receiving the full brunt of the winds. At this point I felt the integrity of the single pole could become compromised and I decided to begin packing. As this is a new tent I also had no intentions of seeing it destroyed. I also did not feel comfortable being in essentially a parachute next to a seaside cliff.  After getting everything packed I was able to sit behind some rocks closer to the hill out of the majority of the really strong winds. I intended to wait for more light because the cliffs that I was camped on were reached by a very narrow exposed path along a steep drop into the ocean. As I was waiting, the forecast began calling for even stronger winds topping 60 mph after sunrise so I decided to start hiking with the little light that I had. As say at the end of the video. I think this is a really good lesson in how weather conditions can change fairly quickly. The forecasts that we rely on are just a prediction of how the weather can be not necessarily how it will be. And on this trip you can see that those conditions can swing both ways. I hope you enjoy the video and really appreciate all the comments and feedback I’ve received from everyone. You all are awesome!

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