TGO Marches On

Well, as January comes to an end, the March edition of TGO arrives on the mat. Makes sense. Gone are the snow-capped peaks, now replaced by desert-hiking in Jordan.

Editorial: Cameron's organising an ultralight mini-expo at the Backpackers' Club AGM in Northumberland in April.

Main features: National Trails. Excellent. I think I'll be coming back to that one time and again.

Reviews:

• Women's 50 litre packs (so why are many 60 litres plus?). Anyway, always good to read on the trends and advice on what to look for.
• Knives/pocket tools. I don't know why, but I've never been a fan of the Swiss army knife. I find multitools big and clunky. There is a wee SAK in my emergency kit, but I just have a 'Oddities' pocket-knife in by pocket-kit. The Gerber Revolt has been assigned to KP duty, or opening the mail.
• Judith Armstrong (the other one) talks about gear for her Alpine challenge. Bob's interview.
• Chris Townsend reviews lightweight cooksets - he didn't review the Snow*Peak that I use, so I'm in the huff ;-)
  In truth it's more a comparison piece between materials.

Colin Prior actually mentions his hikes out, rather than the thoughts and technicalities of his stunning photos.

Others: great photo of the ruins at Petra; some pages on Snowdonia; Jim Perrin's recollections always need a proper read; Mike Harding continues to drop French into his musings (is he secretly educating the readership?).

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I dropped into Nevisport this afternoon and ordered up a proper USB cable for my Geko unit. Thirty notes on a cable! It's only a cable! It's not even shiny :(

Being my usual cunning self, I took the opportunity to suggest to the boss that a course on cable-making might be interesting to the general public. Something the students could make money at on eBay.

Sadly it meant turning down Big Kev's soon to be eBay'd mapping gps unit. Even at a tempting price, I just couldn't justify it to myself (or the bank manager). I too must get round to eBaying my unused gear.

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Summary of March...err, January. Got out once, but at least it was an overnighter and tabbed 15 miles down a glen I'd passed but never been down before. Also, the overnighter was in my first shared bothy - having had Rowchoish to myself on the WHW. New boots worked well, nice and comfy, and I've been wearing them around town (and even in to work on one snowy day). A lot of spare time taken up with technical problems with PC. Hey ho.

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And finally: was the closing sequence in "Open all hours" an example of video-blogging?