The Ridgeway - Ultralight 2008: Kit List

Notes on Kit vs. Cotswold Way Kit List

This is a brief summary of how this year's kit list compares with last year's. The post-trip analysis can be found here...

Pack

The pack is completely different to last year. It's an ultralight copy of an army framed pack. It's the first pack I've had that I've been still happy to carry after a week.

Sleep

I took a good quality 3-season down bag with me that would be able to cope with most of the weather that I could expect. This was heavier than the bag that I used last year but then this trip was in spring.

Shelter

I found that a very small tarp was not a fun place to be when you were expecting another night of rain. I was also having problems with dew on the down sleeping bag. This year I decided to 'spend' some weight on something more closely resembling a tent.

The weight of the shelter is now creeping up to be dangerously close to the best of the current commercial ultralight tents.

Cooking

Last year I took an MSR Pocket Rocket. This year I took an Esbit/Hexamine stove. It saves a lot of weight but is more fussy in many ways.

Navigation

This time I took a cut-down guide book with me. It gave me useful additional information even if it proved to be out-of-date at times.

I also only took a Harvey Strip mat and no O/S Maps. The Harvey maps are 1:40,000 which is a non-standard scale in the UK. I've found that it is a really bad idea to use different scales of maps for navigation on a single trip and so I now try and avoid it. The Harvey map was good enough on it's own and although it only covered a few miles either side of the track that was ample.

Weatherproofing

After last year I radically changed what I carried and have gone for some Silnylon weather gear that weighs a lot less and in some ways is more waterproof

Hydration

This time I took a bladder with me. It was surprisingly heavy at around 200g and so will be replaced with something lighter. I prefer a bladder to bottles - in part because I'll drink more often and in part because it gives me better weight distribution in the pack.

Underwear

This year I carried more underwear. I found that it will often take at least one day to get stuff to dry on the back of a pack. Taking more meant that I would always have something clean to put on. I felt the extra weight justified the saving in hastle.

Food

On the Cotswold Way I found that I got caught out - running food supplies down to zero only to find that the store I wanted to re-supply at no longer existed. This time around I put about 1500 calories worth of food into a bag marked 'Reserve' so that I would be in no doubt about how much food I had left and when I was heading into the danger zone.

Consumables

• Alcohol was carried in an 80ml Listerine mouthwash bottle. All of it was used - some for fuel and some for toughening the skin on my feet.
• A small dropper bottle was used as a primer for the Hexamine stove.
• The dental kit included two 15ml tubes of toothpaste. The first one lasted over two weeks and was finally finished on this trip on the last day.
• Alcohol Hand Gel was carried in a 15ml Theramed toothpaste bottle that was refillable. About 2/3 of it was used.
• I actually did very little heating of water and so hardly any fuel was used.