Aside from Dartmoor, wild camping in England and Wales is illegal, it’s against the law, it’s naughty. If you can be bothered to look up the word ‘camp’ or ‘camping’ in the dictionary, it’s almost certain there’ll be mention of tents or temporary structures … so what if there are no ‘structures’?Imagine you’re strolling across […]
Contrary to what you might have seen or read, the thermal efficiency of bravado is actually quite low. It may appear perfectly adequate at 3pm on a sunny afternoon but roll the clock forward twelve hours and you’ll probably wish you’d packed something a little heavier. Staying warm through the night is often the difference […]
I’ve long been a fan of using CO2 when the time comes to mend the almost inevitable puncture and for a number of years I’ve been particularly partial to using other peoples CO2. There’s obvious benefits to using someone else’s, less weight, lower cost and just so much less trouble than having your own. However, […]
Bikepacking is the perfect hang-out for the gear geek, no matter how deep your need for the lightest, latest or smallest, chances are there’ll be someone else with an even greater ‘need’ than yours. Just knowing that there’s someone else who’s obsessive geekery is even more out of control than yours, somehow helps to reduce […]
If you signed up for this years WRT, you should now be in possession of the all important grid references. Depending on your character, the next four weeks might be spent plotting, deliberating and re-plotting, honing your route until you know every tussock and potential locked gate … or if you have a cavalier attitude […]
Why would you want to run drop bars? asked the bemused bloke in the car park. My usual response in such situations is to fabricate some barely plausible and totally fictitious answer and see how long I can get away with it for … which probably goes some way to proving that there’s no such […]
Bikepacking is … walking into a sandwich shop and discovering that there’s no menu, it’s not that you can’t buy a sandwich, it’s just the opposite and you can buy absolutely any sandwich you want. Now imagine that having deliberated, you’ve finally made a choice, only to then be told “everything’s in the back, off […]
Tools of the trade … a series of posts looking at tools, gadgets and gizmos that might help get you home or keep you going. We’ll start with somewhere to keep them. While riding along the WHW, I noticed how the majority of the walkers I encountered appeared to be day walkers and although they […]
For every official, managed or sanctioned bothy in the UK, there’s probably at least three that aren’t. They’re bothies in the true sense of the word but not in the sense that you’ll find them and their locations conveniently listed on the internet … if you want to find these places, then I’m afraid you’re […]
If you’ve got a nice shiny frame (or even a battered old nail that you’re fond of) and have invested in a frame bag … then, before you mate them together, it’s worth taking steps to keep them apart. Some things you just can’t buy. The reality is that, you could tape your frame with […]