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Thursday, June 25, 2009
Coleman Lightweight Stove  This is the latest Coleman stove to come into the shop. It's the Coleman F1 Lite. It's a pretty stripped down stove and weighs just 77g excluding the gas bottle. Tricks like making the valve control key out of wire rather than a more solid material definitely shave off the weight. It folds into a tiny little pouch and to be honest is probably rather easy to loose. It fits the standard self-sealing gas cartridges that come in a variety of sizes and can be found in almost all campsite and outdoors shops. Coleman claim that it can boil a litre of water on a windless day in 3 minutes. That's rapid! Would be interested to know if anyone has one of these stoves and if they have timed it? Please leave a comment if you have. Buy the Coleman F1 Lite Here Labels: Coleman, lightweight, stoves Posted by bigcrags @
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 Thursday, June 11, 2009 New Coleman Folding Camping Stove
We've got a bunch of new Coleman stuff on the shelves waiting to go on the website. The first is the new Coleman Fold'N Go (that's Coleman's spelling) propane double burner.
 It really looks great. Opened out it gives you a 60cm cooking surface under the two rings and it's easy to close up and throw in the boot of the car. It runs off Coleman propane cartridges which cost around £6 each but use every gram of gas until they are empty, supposedly getting more value from each cartridge. The cartridges are widely available so there should be no problem finding them. See the Coleman Folding Stove here Posted by bigcrags @
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Tuesday, February 03, 2009 DPM Boot Bags
We've now got boot bags in olive DPM as well as black. Perfect if you want to hide your boots so you can't find them again!
Boot bags might seem like an extravagance when you could just use a poly-bag to keep your car from getting muddy but once you use one I'm sure you wont be disappointed. The mesh top means that your boots can breathe and dry out, even before you get home and clean and dry them properly. Perfect too if you keep a pair of shoes or boots in your cupboard but don't clean them every time you go out. With one of these boot bags you'll save the bottom of your cupboard and other shoes from getting mucky. Posted by bigcrags @
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Wednesday, November 26, 2008 Sleeping Bag for Kids  I remember as a kid going camping and sleeping in what seemed to me at the time to be an enormous adults rectangular sleeping bag. It was big, draughty and red. My feet didn't reach anywhere near the end and I was cold in it. Well times have changed and kids sleeping bags are now available from a lot of manufacturers. Given those early experiences, it's probably been a bit remiss of us to ignore kids all this time, but we've finally added a kids sleeping bag to the stock list. It's 2-3 season and is a good value sleeping bag. We know it's good - our kid's got one, and two of his mates do too. Posted by bigcrags @
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Wednesday, October 15, 2008 Hairy Coo Mountain Bike Challenge
As part of this year's Drovers Tryst in Crieff, the Hairy Coo Mountain Bike Challenge is running this saturday (18th Oct 08) at Comrie Croft between Crieff and Comrie. I'm riding it, and I'm mentioning it as it's my first bike race ever.
It looks like they've got loads of places left through the website, so if you fancy a saturday biking round the perthshire woods, I'll see you there. http://www.droverstryst.co.uk/hairycoo.htm Posted by bigcrags @
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Thursday, September 25, 2008 Choosing a Camping Stove What kind of stove should I buy for backpacking?This is something we get asked from time to time at outdoorscotland.co.uk. There are loads of different camping stoves on the market and choosing one can sometimes be a tricky task for the first time buyer. Decisions should be based not just on weight but on fuel availability, ease of use and in some cases cooking speed. Posted by bigcrags @
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Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Make ANY Item 100% Waterproof
That's the claim from Plasma Product Innovations (P2i) who are busy applying their new technology to Hi-tech footwear amongst other things.
Their treatment process involves coating the item in an ion-mask plasma. Sounds complicated. The resultant waterproof item is then fully waterproof and it won't wear off either, apparently. It almost sounds too good to be true, but time will tell. Read all about it here. Posted by bigcrags @
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Tuesday, August 05, 2008 Choosing Synthetic or Down Sleeping Bags  New article - choosing a sleeping bag. Describes the advantages and disadvantages of both down and synthetic sleeping bags. Posted by bigcrags @
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008 GPS Tracking for your Outdoor Activities  If you have a modern GPS enabled Nokia phone, it might be worth checking out Nokia Sports Tracker. This handy little application will record the important information via GPS from your walk, bike rides, runs etc and allow you to upload them with ease to the Sports Tracker website. From there you can show the routes on Google maps (handy now Google have terrain maps). you can compare your trips, share them with friends or the world and a whole bunch more that we've not explored yet. From the 3 or 4 tests we've done it's all worked very well. Finally, something useful you can do with your GPS phone! Posted by bigcrags @
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Monday, July 28, 2008 Frightening Footpath in Spain El Camino del Rey - If this footpath in Andalucia, Spain doesn't give you sweaty palms you've got a stronger constitution than me. I love how the guy is just breezing along it while the people he passes are busy clipping their via ferrata gear in earnest (as I would be). Posted by bigcrags @
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Tuesday, April 01, 2008 Backcountry Skiing/Boarding in Scotland
A couple of mates posted this video on YouTube. It shows them walking up one of the Loch Tay mountains in January, then coming down by an altogether more enjoyable means. Fantastic stuff. If only it was like that every day.
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Thursday, February 21, 2008 Highlander Hydro 35L Review  Until this pack came in I had only seen the cartoon-like image above of this sack. On closer examination though the real thing is a pretty good daypack. I tend to take out a 20-25L pack when it's not winter and I always find that with a set of waterproofs, spare fleece and sandwich box it's overstuffed. The extra space afforded by this pack though could come in really handy. I tend not to use Camelback bladders as I find the water gets warm over several hours close to your back, but for those that do there is a tidy little pocket and conduit for poking the hose through. I like the pre-sprung plastic frame too - anything that keeps your back drier is a good thing. It does have an integrated rain cover too which could be handy in the UK. It's not the lightest pack out there, but that's probably due to all the features. Hydro 35 Rucksack Posted by bigcrags @
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008 Great Camping Website
A while back (nearly a year ago), Kat posted a link to a website called The Happy Campers in a comment here, and I've only just had a look at the site. It's without doubt the prettiest camping website I've come across. Lots of good info in there too, but just go and have a look at the photos and illustrations throughout the site and see if it doesn't put you in the mood for spring and nights under canvas. Fantastic stuff.
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Lightweight Full Length Sleep Mat  I'm sitting looking at one of these mats just now and can't believe that it's weighing in at a measly 550g. This self-inflating mat is full length at 183cm (well, not full length for me, but pretty close) and costs just £30. It's a full 3 cm when inflated and packs pretty small. I've been using one of the standard size Thermalites for the past 5 years (and no punctures yet, touch wood) but I suspect it may be relegated to the loft in favour of one of these at half the weight. As for the green thing going on - the other side is olive and a little more easy on the eyes. See the Thermalite Mummy Shaped Mat here. Posted by bigcrags @
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Monday, January 28, 2008 Compasses and Foil Blankets Back in Stock
It's been a long time coming (last summer actually) but we've finally got some new stock of Reflective Survival Blankets and Deluxe Map Compasses. Apparently the London Marathon had swallowed up the world's entire supply of foil blankets but we're happy to see them back on the shelves again. The deluxe map compass is a long baseplate standard compass - no messing about with sights or mirrors, this is the standard type of compass that you probably learned map reading with.
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