Camping

We've recently bought some new lightweight camping gear, with the aim of doing some long distance walking and wild camping in the future. (I think I've begun to realise, from my conversations with people, that I'm becoming a bit of an outdoor gear geek!) Last weekend, we decided to test it out a little, up on the Clwydian Hills in North-East Wales. I've put a page up in the walks section of this site with lots of pictures and a description of the route, but I thought I'd also just mention what some of the equipment is that we have been using - equipment which so far I'm extremely pleased with - in case anyone else is looking for some pointers at to what might fit their needs.

The tent is a Big Agnes Seedhouse SuperLight 2 Person, which packs down to just over a kilo and easily fits inside a 35 litre rucksack. We got this from REI in the US, where it was considerably cheaper than in the UK.

I'm sleeping in a Mountain Hardware Lamina 35, which whilst not the lightest bag in its temperature range, does pack down very small and will fit sideways at the bottom of my pack. You can pay as much as you like for a sleeping bag these days, and I reckoned that this was a good compromise. Got it from Cotswold Outdoor in Betws-y-Coed.

For cooking, we're becoming awfully fond of our Trangia 27 series. We got the one with the steel coated pans (too many scares about aluminium around), which doesn't add much weight at all. It weighs in at about a kilo, plus fuel (meths).

And my latest purchase is my Rab Drillium jacket, which I got from Joe Brown's in Capel Curig. This is an incredibly light jacket (around 350g) which is made from the eVent stuff, which has done better than GoreTex in many tests. Waterproof, breathable, hood, light, nice and short so also good for cycling. Oh, and brightly coloured so you can be seen by the helicopters should the worst come to the worst.