A medieval cloak TENT?! Camping and sleeping for the Medieval Adventurer

night that looks very uncomfortable it's not too bad you have a stick as a pillow using a stick as a pillow I mean there's not really many better ways to adventure and rest don't even thinks are good for pillows they're not and there's a lot of ways you can get as good at resting camping setups as an adventurer really oh yeah I'm gonna stick and a cloak can you tell a a little a little bit better you're telling me that you can find a better use for a stick and a cloak than what I just did I think we can do better thank you [Music] greetings I'm shad and as you've probably been out of tell from the title of this video we're going to be exploring some functional ways in which an adventurer can either make shelter or camp or rest on his adventures because when we think of the adventurer we often focus on the adventure the fighting and all that when in reality if we were to look at it realistically the thing that they're going to be doing the most is actually travel but also camping and in the camping side of things that's where I start to get really intrigued what would that be like in real life and so we have Kramer from living in acronism joining us in this video who will also be joining us regularly on shadowversity and is going to be exploring multiple different ways some of the ways that you know video games role-playing games give a bit of lip service to resting like the bedroll how effective is the bedroll as a type of camping tool I guess uh for shelter but also for us but also some other really intriguing things genuinely great stuff I can't wait to show it to you so Kramer take it away greetings shad and citizens of the Shad lands thank you so much for having me on it's a pleasure to be here so today Chad has asked me to explore something very important if you're going on an adventure and that is where and how are you going to sleep in the wild so the first and easiest option is to Simply have a warm wool cloak or a wool blanket and the idea behind that is essentially that you're just going to curl up in it and sleep wherever you are so that you aren't carrying any extra weight it's a very romantic sort of romanticized idea where you're not having to carry all of this extra stuff and you can just make do an example of this working in Fantasy is of course in The Lord of the Rings where a number of the members of the fellowship actually do this they have their Elven cloaks and that is what they sleep in Aragorn specifically appears to have something that looks like a bed roll slung over his back right underneath his quiver and his bow because he is a ranger and he does the most traveling of any of the characters before the fellowship actually goes on their Quest and I believe that this is confirmed as actually being a spare cloak or a spare blanket it's simply too thin to be an actual bed roll as we'll see a little bit in the video real bed rolls can actually take up a lot of space so how viable would this actually be to just travel around with a cloak you're already carrying it for protection from the weather and then when it times to go to sleep if you're lucky you get to light a fire and then you just curl up and you lie down well I can see this working very well in a temperate to warm climates definitely not going to be enough to get by unless you're really hardcore in anything colder right now it's around 60 degrees Fahrenheit over here and I am a little warm while wearing this moving around but you tend to lose a little bit of that core body temperature when you are going to sleep there is actually some historical precedent to this when a peasant was going on pilgrimage say they would try to be staying at it in as often as they could but if they had to sleep in a wild they didn't have the technology for light packing camping tents and stuff like that so they would sleep where they could but the interesting thing is that in the medieval period they would often sleep in a slightly upright position where they're sort of sitting in fact even in beds this is often what was done they would sleep sort of on an incline rather than fully laying down but this provides some bonuses when you are out in the wild the two lines of thought are one it is slightly more defensible you have your back up against something solid so you know you're not going to get snuck up on you pick a rock or you pick a nice big tree and you lean up against it it's easier to deploy a weapon and come to your feet as well if you need to do that so you can run away or fight depending on the situation the other thing though is that it actually keeps you warmer because it minimizes your body's contact with the ground the ground is often cold it is often damp and that is going to draw heat out from your body while you're trying to sleep but if you are leaning up against a tree the only thing in contact with the ground is going to be your legs meaning that you are going to lose body heat a lot less quickly this is actually surprisingly comfortable like almost more comfortable than just lying flat on the ground like on my back but like this I feel very very well supported and from here also it's very easy to just sit up and and you're you know you're in a position where you know theoretically you can get up you can defend yourself where did that come from right all right for science I'm just curious to see what a fast deployment looks like if I'm lying completely prone so far I still think the tree has just been objectively faster The Next Step Up from just carrying a single blanket or a single cloak to curl up in is to have a bed roll this is a bed roll that I made it has a waterproof canvas shell on the outside and inside is a 100 wool blanket a bed roll can be used essentially the same as a single blanket it just has a couple extra benefits and that it might be slightly more waterproof and it might be slightly more warm it does take up a little bit more space and they can be supplemented with all sorts of materials to fulfill the purpose that you need they can be lined with fur you can add your cloak to the inside of it if it's starting to get cold it's a slightly more versatile option but it's also a slightly heavier uh more bulky option the problem that both a blanket and a bedroll have is that there is usually no inbuilt insulation from the ground so what I have done in the past is I will carry around a reindeer Pelt with me this is in fact a real reindeer Pelt and it's very soft it's very comfortable and it has kept me nice and warm even when there's snow in the ground but the problem is that it's very very bulky and difficult to carry around from place to place takes away up a lot of space even when rolled up and it's not super heavy but it's not super convenient to carry around either and arguably the biggest problem with either just a blanket or a bed roll is that they actually provide no shelter from things like snow or rain or heavy winds like we're kind of having today and that is a problem because there are situations when you're going to be out in the wild where you need shelter or you are at serious risk of perishing oh and just as a caveat here you don't have to carry around a reindeer Pelt or let's say a goat hide or a sheepskin in order to insulate yourself from the ground you could trust to Nature and foraging your own leaves or say Spruce branches in order to try to build up about a three inch worth of insulation from the ground just so that you're not in direct contact with the cold Earth but I think that leaves a fair bit of chance especially if you don't always know where you're going to be maybe something to consider if you are actually exploring rather than just adventuring in territory that you already know I can do it and given that this is my first time trying this I could probably get better with practice but just given that the cloak is so much easier and this is more or less the same thing and being up against the tree I don't have to worry as much about the damp ground I'm not sure how necessary doing this with a bed roll is so maybe just a blanket or a cloak up against a tree is easier than trying to combine the bed roll and the tree okay so yeah that's definitely the worst what sorts of shelters would have been available in the medieval period they obviously didn't have nylon or plastic tents that would have packed up nice and easy they didn't have aluminum or stainless steel tent poles that folded up and were nice and light to carry tense in the medieval period were made out of linen and they might have been oiled or waxed in order to give them a waterproof property and that adds a lot of weight canvas can also be very thick adding even more weight and their tent poles would have been made out of solid wood because that is what they had to work with and that adds even more weight so tense in the medieval period were most likely according to the iconography that I have seen used during military campaigns or something like that where there is a lot of Manpower and a lot of infrastructure so that you can actually transport all of that gear around even if you were to reduce the size of those tents to say a single person or a double person they would still be very bulky and they would still be quite heavy to carry yourself even up into the 18th century when soldiers were sleeping in tents like that and they were making them a little bit smaller they were still meant to fit around four people and then you have that number of people that can share the load maybe you're using a cart or something like that so it sounds like tents might be viable they might be a little bit more expensive in terms of the time it takes to make them and the material cost all of that stuff and then they're heavier to carry and transport around to so what if we simplify it and do what the Bushcraft Community does and simply use a tarp now the tarp I'm using here is not waxed canvas or even canvas just because I don't have that at the moment this is a regular tarp but it illustrates one of the possible setups that you can achieve with a simple square of material the most popular size that I've seen in the Bushcraft Community is around nine feet by nine feet and that is how I am achieving this current setup here and that is one of the bonuses of using a tarp is that there are a lot of different variations and different setups that you can use based on your surroundings based on the weather and what it demands from you and you don't have to use it at all if you don't want to and compared to a tent it doesn't take up that much space the tent pegs and the poles can be foraged if need be you could even avoid the pull entirely and use a tie out up into a branch or something like that if that was available be careful of widowmakers that are loose branches that might fall and injure you if you're sleeping under them and this setup with a 9x9 tarp is big enough to fit two people or one person and all of your gear so very very nice but is there something that is even simpler that you're already going to be carrying around instead of having to have an additional tarp can you make a tent out of a cloak so what I'm doing here for the cloak tent is I'm going to gather a couple of small rocks or small acorns and I'm going to wrap that up in the corners of the cloak so that they're completely covered and then I tied those off so that they have something to pull up against and then those extra bits of string are going to tie out into the tent stakes and I'm gonna use three I think and then just like the tarp we're going to stick a scavenged Branch a pole something like that maybe a spear so long as you're not stabbing through your cloak into the hood and let's see how that works so it's a little tight in here but it does work and I could always add more tie out points to this excess and that would widen this out even more on the inside it's arguably about as much room as a 9x9 tarp if I lay all the way back here my feet are going to be out a little bit but with a fire sitting right here I imagine this would be very comfortable yeah I'm happy with this it's better than nothing so in this case instead of carrying around a cloak and then using it to sleep in we also have the option to use it as a tent it is going to be wool so theoretically it will also be waterproof anyway that is essentially why you're carrying it both to protect you from wetness and to protect you from the cold so this seems like a pretty good option to me the last thing that I would like to propose is not necessarily A shelter but it can be used with a shelter and that is to use a hammock this is something that the Bushcraft Community does all the time and for very very good reason there is also historical precedent for using a hammock as a bed as well say in the 18th century when you were on those large warships yes the sailors would sleep in hamlets like that but even before that they would use rope as the slats for their bed rather than planks of wood and I think the reason for that is one because it's easier it's less wood that you're having to process it's less material but it's probably also going to be more comfortable because the mattresses of the time if if you even had one we're likely going to just be a sack of hay if you were lucky you could say have um maybe wool or feathers or something like that but for the most part you know they're not using memory foam mattresses that are going to absorb a lot of that structure that's underneath but if you have a bed made out of rope instead that is going to be a lot more forgiving even if your mattress is thinner foreign so what benefits does a hammock have while you're out in the wild well Shad has mentioned and I absolutely agree that having a hammock is going to protect you potentially from Critters whether that's just small insects if you're just slightly off of the ground or if depending how high you can get it very large Predators or Monsters or something like that this is really peaceful I don't want to get up but the main reason that the Bushcraft Community uses a hammock is for heat conduction when you're using a hammock none of your body is in contact with the ground meaning that you aren't going to get cold from sleeping on the ground and in say a hot climate you are also allowing better airflow to your body as well hammocks can be set up in a variety of terrains you can even build a tripod if there were trees around that were big enough and modern climbers sleep on the sides of mountains and cliffs by just mounting hammocks there I don't know that I'd be brave enough to do that but it is possible and people do do it hammocks are a fantastic option because they also don't take up that much extra space it's just a little little bit of rope or a little bit of cloth theoretically you might even be able to make a hammock in the wild if you were good at harvesting bark and weaving it into your own rope or something like that and even though it is an extra thing that you have to carry like a bed roll instead of just a cloak the hammock is also useful for carrying extra things because if it's just made out of cloth you can wrap it up like a little bundle but if you have a rope One Like I Do Not only can you use it as a net to carry things but you can also hook things to the outside of it pretty much doubling your carrying capacity in an absolutely worst case scenario say someone gets injured you might be able to make it into a makeshift stretcher and you can also cut it up if you need the extra rope if you're also carrying a tarp at the same time there are tons of variations using hammock and a tarp as well you can essentially make a little TP just around the hammock itself while you're floating in the air so you're completely surrounded and protected from the ground it's just such a fantastic option and I can also see ins or establishment like that that adventurers are going to be staying at having their cheapest room essentially just be a large room with either large support beams or large support beams with hooks so adventurers can actually just bring their own hammocks in sleep in their own sleep system and they're just paying for the walls and the roof it also is a lot less work for the people that own the Inn because they aren't having to change the bedding you're bringing your own but everyone just sort of stacks their hammocks on the sides of the wall and sleeps where they can and just look at how little space this takes up when it's all packed up and ready to go and if this were say made out of cloth like a cloth hammock or something like that you could even use that as a mat to lay on or as part of your bed roll potentially and so there are a lot of different options and what I'm starting to discover is that maybe there's not one specific way that you're always going to sleep as an adventurer but rather that having lots of different options something that is highly versatile something that you can use as a ground cover and then also use as a hammock when you have the time to set something up that is probably going to be the best option so with a hammock like this I could obviously lay my bed roll on top of it or I could lie in it with a cloak or something like that and it's super super comfortable the problems begin when uh you get ambushed in the middle of the night and you have to get up out of it quickly you could easily roll and then topple over but in the right scenario this is the most comfortable I I think I have ever been you know out in the wild like this just really nice and compact well supported okay not terrible I like this I suppose you could say that with any amount of practice each one of these would eventually get faster and I think that that's true but I think the fact also remains that like on an equal level having had the same amount of training doing this with each one which is to say not very much um all things being equal getting up from the tree is a lot more intuitive and a lot easier to do without training than uh something like this which you'd have to drill in order to get muscle memory and figure out different techniques and stuff like that it's just occurring to me something funny for like I don't know like a DND campaign or something like that might be if you come upon a group of adventurers or something uh that you want to Ambush and they're all sleeping in hammocks what you could do is you could just like take like a tarp or a net or something and just like throw it over the top of them and then cut the ends loose and then like just just wrap them up like a burrito and like they're captured there's nothing they can do about it so that was really really interesting there are a lot more options than just a blanket or just a bed roll and a lot of different combinations available and the more I think about a hammock the more I really want to use one so what do you think Chad mate you are a legend and genuinely the way Kramer showed us how to stretch out a cloak by putting a pebble and then wrapping a cord around it blew my mind I bet it's so simple you don't need to poke holes in it stretches it out and from the other thing that honestly I genuinely loved and I think would is one of my favorite methods Kramer showed us was the hammock there are different hammocks that you can buy and they'll hammock that Kramer uses is basically made out of cord you could fit it into a pouch it wouldn't take up a lot of room because other hammocks I've seen are like thick cloth and if you roll it up it'll be like a bed roll but something like he uses in the video as we've seen is so convenient and the Avengers it lifts you off the ground you're out of the critters you can wrap yourself up your cloak it doesn't I I think that's my favorite but genuinely guys what was your favorite method that Kramer showed us in this video for sleeping also for shelter while you're adventuring can't wait to read in the comments below also Kramer you're a legend thank you for joining us Joe Kramer's here going on into the future and I can't wait to see the future videos we're going to make together I hope to see you on the next videos here on chat diversity so until that time farewell [Music] thank you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 258,488

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Id: wQTSgH9P2c8

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 01 2023