The Bath Chronicle sent reporter Simon Davies out to sleep rough on one of the coldest nights of the year – and he lasted until 1am.
Simon has been covering the Chronicle’s annual appeal on behalf of Bath’s Julian House homelessness charity for the past three years. Their challenge is to raise £75,000 to pay the charity’s basic running costs for the year.

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It was never going to be a completely fair comparison.

But spending part of the night sleeping rough on one of the coldest nights of the year did provide a bit of an insight into the ordeal of those without a home of their own.

I, of course, had a safety net in that my car was close by if I got really cold and a nice warm bed was only ten minutes away if I felt I couldn’t continue.

Having written about the homelessness charity Julian House’s Christmas campaign for the past three years and taken part in early morning street counts each year, I had some pretty valuable inside information as to thebest spots for sleeping rough in the city.

Unfortunately, some of the best spots – beside the warm air vents around the Roman Baths and the Pump Rooms – are no longer accessible.

Instead I decided to head for another favourite spot with rough sleepers – the stands of Bath Rugby Club.

One of the benefits of The Rec to a rough sleeper is the covenant that says it must always remain open to the public.

I found a good spot on seats eight to 12, in row K of the Hampton stand and at first tried to read.

But the wind coming off the ground simply added to the cold and before long I had decided to climb into my sleeping bag and settle down for the night.

It was just before 9pm and I was not expecting a good night’s sleep but hoped that by putting my head down early I might finish up the night with the sum total of a couple of hours shut-eye.

I buried my head and tried to ignore the discomfort of the five plastic seats I was lying on.

It was a good spot despite the seating and by turning my head away from the pitch towards the back of the stand I stopped noticing the chill wind coming off the pitch.

I slept fitfully for a while, aware of every noise happening on North Parade and the Orange Grove area.

But I did drop off for a time.

I woke again at 10.20pm to find it was snowing.

At least that meant it was probably above freezing, I told myself, but my body didn’t believe a word of it.

I decided to phone my mum for sympathy but she failed to give me the words of encouragement I had hoped for and told me I should have wrapped up warmer.

Feeling particularly bored by now and in a bit of a foul mood I smoked a cigarette.

Apparently 20 seconds after you start smoking the temperature in your extremities drops by 1°C but I can honestly say I did not notice.

By then it was only 10.45pm and I considered nipping over to the Rummer for a quick pint before last orders but realised I would never want to come back afterwards so instead I tried to get my head down again.

From then on I could not sleep. The wind had picked up and I kept getting cold blasts sneaking into my sleeping bag. No matter where they came from, every time I blocked the gap I created another one elsewhere.

And my discomfort continued to grow. At first it was just a dull ache in the parts of me that were touching the seats but after a while I was left with a horrible chill in my stomach which I couldn’t shift.

The cold took over in the end and I developed an aching cramp where I had hunched up to try and keep warm.

In the end I did give up. I saw in midnight and lasted until just before 1am – when I decided I wasn’t playing any more.

I know I could have continued through until morning and would have survived.

But what would that achieved, I asked myself. After a 30 minute internal debate I decided I had lasted long enough, packed up my sleeping bag and went home.

But, of course, it’s not everyone that has the luxury of that option.

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