Saturday 26 April 2008 - Lightweight Equipment at Ashford in the Water

Today we had a busy morning, entertained friends with a small baby for lunch, then headed out to Ashford to pick up some gear I had secretly ordered from Bob and Rose at backpackinglight.co.uk.
Bob and Rose had been very busy. When we arrived at 2.30 they were so busy they didn’t notice us looking in to their busy little empire.

By 2.45 pm they were just tucking into their breakfast!
The Aquagear Water Filter, Montane Lite-Speed jacket and CCA Waterproof bumbag were all there waiting for me, at a very good price. The latter two items are for cycling (I’ll test them tomorrow), and the water filter was an impulse buy after listening to Bob’s interview with the supplier. I may test it on the TGO Challenge and it will probably accompany us on our long Italian backpack starting in June.

Bob gave an excellent exposition on a couple of primitive stoves; no doubt Weird Darren has both of them and is carrying out exhaustive testing. It looked interesting, but too messy for me!

Sadly we missed Julia (we saw the back of her head when peering into the Backpackers Club’s AGM later), and it’s a shame that we also missed Darren, John and Dawn – three of the outdoors bloggers.
It was good to hear that Rose has a holiday booked! – this year Bob and Rose didn’t get into the TGO Challenge (where I first met them last year).

But Bob is setting off on the Cape Wrath trail next week. It’s featured in June’s Trail magazine as the Number Two Long Distance Path in the UK. It looks great, and I’m certain he will enjoy it despite the fact that it sounds as if he's taking some rather primitive equipment! I hope the lightweight gear doesn’t sacrifice too much by way of comfort… What is absolutely certain is that he'll be reporting back in graphic detail on the Outdoors Station. Perhaps he has to carry very light camping equipment to make room for all the electronic gadgets he uses to review that lightweight gear as he progresses along the route.

We couldn’t venture into the Peaks without going for a stroll. So we enjoyed a circular 6 km, hour and a half’s walk (map shown below) on what remained of the sunny afternoon, heading along dry paths strewn with Lesser Celandine and Duke of Edinburgh Award school kid hikers.

Some of the hedges were laden with blossom.

The grounds of the small church at Little Longstone looked very well tended.

Up at Monsall Head we enjoyed ice creams together with many folk out walking or touring, a car park full of bikers with ‘God's Squad’ emblazoned on the backs of their leather jackets, and a fine view of the old railway viaduct and Upperdale.

Looking back towards Ashford we noticed that not all the dry stone walls around here have survived.

The trees were coming into bud – I feel (and probably am) very ignorant not to be able to immediately identify this one:

Back at Ashford another scenic church filled my viewfinder, and at the Village Hall the Backpackers Club AGM was in full swing, the equipment suppliers were going home, and so did we…