I am a great fan of PHD down clothing; they produce really top-notch products.

I bought this combination last autumn in preparation for a winter trip to the Cairngorms which had to be cancelled. I had been inspired by Colin Ibbotson’s ‘Sleep System’. I reckoned this combination would allow me to use my usual base kit but provide some extra backup when then weather turned colder. The Challenge was the first time I had used both pieces of kit. I am knocked-out at how good and effective they both were.

Minimus Trousers

These weight 230 grams and are rated down to -5. They are not cheap at £150 but they are worth every penny!

These are not so much trousers for walking in but for wearing about camp. I quickly came to realise what these were all about and settled into a regular patter of use.

After making camp and settling down into the tent I removed my walking trousers and put on the Minimus trousers. The comfort effect was immediate. The amount of down here has been judged for camp conditions. The trousers are not hot but just lovely. Down is a naturally breathable fabric and this added breathability also made a big contribution to comfort.

The trousers are generously cut both around the waist and the ankles; there is no problem pulling these on over the top of other clothing if necessary. The waist band is pretty high which helps ensure that cold cannot creep into the system. A simple but effective drawcord on the waist ensures a good fit

The nights were not cold enough to have worn these trousers in my sleeping bag but I have no doubt that if I had have done I could have coped with quite low temperatures.

I can honestly say that I have never worn anything as comfortable in my tent! There is no way I will be leaving these behind in the cooler months. Even when you don’t need the warmth the comfort of down is a revelation! At £150 these feel a bargain!

Minimus Down Trousers.

Minimus Down Socks

90 grams for £66.

These accompany the trousers and oh are they so good …

Each evening I put these socks on at the same time as the trousers. After a hard day of walking in Terrocs (often with wet feet) these felt a real luxury. Most evenings I continued to wear them in the sleeping bag and that breathability again meant that they were not too warm, just toasty and lovely. There was also one unexpected bonus.

While walking through days of bog I developed a blister on my right heel. The Compeed plaster kept getting tied up with my X Socks and so I moved to Teko socks and for a few days did not want to take them off to make sure that the plater stayed in place. On one evening the socks were wet. Now I know the old trick of taking your wet socks into the sleeping bag to dry them out. What would happen if I wore the down socks over the top of them?

It felt strange at first although when I took off one of the socks my feet immediately felt cold. During the night my feet were warm and in the morning everything was dry! Everyone knows that down is useless when it gets waterlogged. But down is a great and natural wicking material — so long as it is not wetted-out it can deal with moisture very effectively.

When it is cold I often wear woollen socks in my sleeping bag but the down socks are far more comfortable and far more effective. I reckon those of you who find sweaty feet leaves you with a damp bag will have no such problem with these.

Minimus Down Socks

So, in conclusion this is a wonderful combination. These pieces of down clothing may not be cheap but they are about as good as it can get. I now really do see the point of a down sleeping system. Combined with a down jacket these garments give you more comfort than you could ever imagine.

Well done PHD. Amazing stuff;.

I thought I’d tell you about one of the most interesting buys that I have made this year. I was looking for a pair of casual shoes to knock about it while in Snowdonia and I found these in the Field and Trek discount store in Betwys.

I’m not sure what you would call these but the Merrell website says of them:

Teched out and ultra light this chukka encourages border crossings. A swooping welt defines the deconstructed upper in soft, conformable Pittards® leather. Combination of Merrell In-Board™ and OutBoard™ midsole keep a low-slung profile. Deconstructed oval lugs in the Vibram® Adventure™ sole have gradated macro and micro patterns for all-surface grip

No, I have no idea what this means either! I bought these as a decent pair of shoes to stroll around he Snowdonia villages with. I was surprised at how comfortable they were. These shoes/boots have a proper sole unit, one that is not too hard but one which gives you more security and performance from ordinary street shoes.

Since buying them at New Year I’ve send them a lot. They are just as effective for urban street walking as they are for ambling around country paths (say after you’ve left the pub on Sunday afternoon).

I wouldn’t wear these on the hills but that’s not the point. As a pair of reasonably robust shoes for casual outside usage these have suited me very well indeed. If you are in the market for something like this you might check them out. Personally, I prefer bot the look and feel of these to many hiking trainers that are around these days.

RRP £85.00 but you should be able to get them cheaper by shopping around.

 

I’ve been told that I have to review this! the Pocket Scope is one of those little pieces of kit that Bob at Backpackinglight.co.uk is so good at sourcing.

The Pocket Scope does what it says on the tin. It is a small telescope only just over 3 inches long. made out of plastic.  It is pretty light, only 48 grams. And it has 7 times magnification.

This is was one of my famous BPL xmas presents. But guess what? It really works. Whisper it quietly but I am very impressed with this. Really useful for studying wildlife and looking at detail in the distance.

The makers describe this as “.. small and mighty”. And it is!

And it costs £22.49.

If you have any idea how this might be useful to you personally then I wouldn’t hesitate to buy one. It is rather good!

When it was released earlier in 2010 the Kindle 3 caused quite a stir and led to a fair amount of interest from those backpackers who love their gadgets. It is not difficult to see why. The Kindle weighs around 250 grams which is as light, if not lighter than many paperback books.

Could this Kindle be an ideal companion to the lightweight backpacker? Well, I’ve been using one extensively for a couple of months now and I thought I’d review it not just in normal usage but in backpacker mode as well.

So, how does the Kindle 3 measure up?

The key to the Kindle is its weight. This is a properly portable machine which can slip into your case or pack quite happily. The Kindle is not a computer in the sense that an IPad is, but then you wouldn’t want to lug an iPad across a chain of mountains. The Kindle has two big things going for it.

First off, this is a very light way of carrying a lot of books — Amazon reckons you can get around 3,000 paperbacks here, more than enough to keep you busy for even a long trip!

Secondly, the Kindle doesn’t use an LCD or LED display and this saves a lot of power. A computer screen — such as the iPad — refreshes thousands of times a second, which is how we get animation and so on. The Kindle uses a completely different system known as e-ink. The screen in nowhere near as versatile as a computer screen but it is optimised for reading. The display is mainly static and only refreshes when you turn the page. The screen is also not backlit which saves power as well. As a result the Kindle doesn’t need a big battery. Amazon say one charge can last a month. I’ve certainly used mine for several weeks at a time without re-charging.

So, it’s very light, has a big book storing capacity and the battery lasts a long time. You can see why backpacker were interested!

The Screen

The first big surprise with the Kindle is the quality of the e-ink screen which apparently has 50% more sharpness than that of its predecessor. Reading a Kindle is a rather pleasant experience and certainly feels less stressful than reading on a computer screen.

E-ink is not backlit and in many ways it appears like paper. The Kindle always looks better in good light. The mat screen does minimise reflection. It is still present but at nowhere near laptop levels. In poor light you will want to illuminate it as you would a book. When camping a head torch makes a big difference. You can’t read a Kindle in the dark. The machine does have a contrast setting but this only seems to make a small difference to the overall quality.

In good light text is very crisp. Being an e-reader you can optimise the size of the text to suit your own eyes with a simple click of a button (and you can even change the typeface). I find the standard default settings work well for me.

Operating Controls

The Kindle is easy to operate and anyone who uses a computer will pick things up quickly. Mind you, it is amazing how the Kindle feels very old fashioned now. No matter how hard you try you just want to touch the screen with your fingers. It is amazing how quickly touch-screen phones and tablets have become the norm.

In operation the ‘turning of pages’ is very easy. On each side of the Kindle there are two large buttons. The largest of these flips you on a page and the smaller of the two flips you back.

Underneath the screen is a QWERTY keyboard and some non standard buttons.

MENU brings up the standard operating menu. This allows you to switch wifi on an off, search the book, add bookmarks and notes. The ability to highlight and add notes is a real plus. There is also an option to shop at the Kindle store but this is nearly always more effectively done from your computer — but it does allow you to make purchases on the go. Actually, there are two menus, one for reading a book and one for the home page.

BACK simply takes you back!

HOME takes you to the main home screen, the one which lists your books. This can (and should be) customised as you expand your book collection. In effect, you can group books into folders or Collections as the Kindle calls them.

In addition there is a kind of joystick key which allows you to move around the menu system and select options — remember this is not a touch screen device.

On the bottom of the machine is an on/off switch and a contrast control. It is worth pointing out that the Kindle never really switches off in the sense that in off mode it displays a picture of a famous author. Remember the screen is static and not refreshing and so the machine is not really using much power. I kind of like the pictures of authors.

All-in-all the operation of the Kindle is simple and straightforward and there is no great learning curve. Most people will be up and running in a few minutes.

Synch Operations

The ability of the Kindle to synch with Amazon’s servers is a major plus. Kindle software is available for PCs, Macs, iPhones and Android phones. Buy a book on your Kindle and you also have access to it on your computer and phone. When the Wifi link is turned on Amazon’s Whispersynch service comes to life. Basically, this simply synchs all of your page positions, notes and bookmarks to the cloud which in turn synchs them to your other devices.

This means that you can follow books on any device. But probably more useful (to me at least) is the ability to have access to notes, bookmarks on each individual platform. You may find that this is important. For example, it is not possible to copy and paste text from the Kindle to a text file or word pro file. But I can take a quick grab of highlights or notes and push them through an OCR reader — using DevonThink on the Mac this is a pretty quick and intuitive process.

Use in the Field

The Kindle is light and while I wouldn’t say that it was particularly fragile I do think it benefits from some protection. I have purchased a leather case from Duragadget that not only protects the Kindle but incorporates a very useful stand.

I mentioned battery life earlier on and this is very impressive. With the wifi link usually off I have been able to get three weeks usage without any problems at all. If you are backpacking you should be able to rely on three weeks, maybe four, so long as you keep the machine warm at night, although I must say I’ve not noticed any great degrading of battery performance in the cold.

When backpacking you will want to keep the Kindle in a waterproof sleeve of some kind — I use an Ortlieb map carrier which I know to be watertight. Phil Turner has devised his own protection system details of which he has published here so you can knock one up yourself. I have to say I would ignore his comments about the costs of covers. The Duragadget is much cheaper than Amazon’s own leather cover but it is very effective.

My Kindle weighs 240 grams or so and the 3G version weighs just a few grams more. Even with a leather cover the overall weight is comparable to a decent sized paperback.

Other Apps

This is basically an e-reader but there are other utilities on the machine and software available elsewhere. There is a built in PDF reader which works moderately well — in grey scale of course. You can also transfer a whole range of documents — including Word Docs — to the Kindle using the USB cable that comes with the power fitting. If I link up to my mac the Kindle shows up on the desktop as an external drive and I can copy and paste accordingly.

The Kindle also has a browser of sorts. I say of sorts because, well, it is not that good.

There are some games available for it and some third party apps. For example, there is a Twitter client available — Kintweet — but while this is a clever bit of programming it is not good to use as the Kindle keyboard is pretty poor. The keyboard is simply used to enter simple notes or configuration/account details. Writing text on my iphone is far easier.

More interesting is an audio book feature which can be used with a headphone socket, although I’ve never tried this.

The Kindle Store/Buying Books

So far there have been few downsides to the Kindle. But the Kindle bookstore is bizarely one of them but this is not Amazon’s fault.

If you are chasing a particular book search carefully as many ebooks are as expensive as their paper equivalents, indeed sometimes they are more expensive!

You will find that big selling books — like the Stig Larson trilogy — are very chear, a couple of pounds or so. But go beyond ‘the charts’ and the cost can mount up. As a long and regular customer of Amazon I have Prime status and these discounts often mean it is cheaper to buy the hardback that the kindle ebook! The reason for this? Publishers! I guess so many have no been sold — especially at Christmas — that these prices will fall but meanwhile think carefully about which format you want your book in!

The Kindle will also accept books in the AZW format — downloaded to your machine using the USB link.

The really big downside is that you can’t share books or pass them on to someone else. You can register up to 6 Kindles with one Amazon account, which might get around things a little. But this system is still far too inflexible and Amazon need to sort this out quickly, even if it is to let you pass books on a limited number of times.

Conclusions

I could go on and on, and some people will think I have missed some main features. But I’m dealing here with the basics.

The Kindle is a great e-reader. The screen is comfortable to use over long sessions and integration with Amazon’s store is superb.

Battery life is so good as to make this an ideal companion for most two or three week walking trips. Beyond this, well the power chord and ‘plug’ are pretty lightweight. I can place the USE cable of the Kindle into my iphone charger and that saves weight and makes recharging the Kindle a doddle.

During the summer I seldom carry a book at all. I prefer to simply drink in the landscape or concentrate on photography. But during winter camps I suspect the Kindle will become a regular companion.

If you are not one of the thousands of people who had one of these for Christmas but who is thinking of buying one I wouldn’t discourage you! It is a fine machine. But you do need to think carefully about the pricing of these books.