No 444 – News Update

It’s been a busy month or two at The Outdoors Station and backpackinglight.co.uk towers. Our plans for some more remote hikes were scuppered by the urgent installation of a water treatment system as the other failed on Christmas day. (Nice. It was enough to put you off your Xmas pud!)

However as most folks will know I took off and did the Two Moors Way and Rose tackled the Cotswold Way over a period of 3 weekends, so although it wasn’t the Isle of Skye as we hoped, as least we have stretched our legs.

The next mini adventure is a trip to the south of France, by car, but using the rather unique Homecamper.com service, which invites campers, backpackers, cyclists and campervans into their garden for a modest sum.

Check out the interview I did with them at the Adventure Travel Show earlier in the year.

Yes it makes them a few Euros but more importantly it gives people more a chance to mingle with the locals and find out places or features, which one may never normally find. So far the bookings have been fairly humble by us, but I have been recommended places in the Champange and Cognac region, which I may just have to ‘test’ out to see what they are like 🙂

Someone sent me a link a few weeks back to a video on the Oregon Public Broadcasting service about Clint Bunting and he clearly reminds us that it is ‘fear’ why we pack so much and carry to much ‘stuff’ these days. True, but how difficult is it to let go? That’s the bigger question.

My TV viewing now has been reduced to minial with virtually everything being watched on ‘catch up’. As a result the YouTube has taken equal importance in my viewing time and so I have a big mix of subscriptions of content I watch which floats my boat.

I am happy to recommend folks check out The Backpacker TV channel on Youtube and Facebook, as Arianne and Scot have an enthusiastic presentation style, good experience living on the Appalacian Trail and run a business encouraging people to out and about more. So all due credit to them.

Also check out the wonderful video by Peter Hochhauser who made the wonderfully titled video on the PCT last year ‘This is not a beautiful hiking video’. It is ‘very real’ no hype and gives a gritty realistic look at the PCT and those who undertake it.

Plenty of humour, comaradierie, blood sweat and tears to see it through. More importantly it was his first long distance hike, so I’m sure he learned things very quickly.

Another video is of course the one I mention about the 2018 forthcoming Gregory packs the Optic and Octal. Just like Golite when they arrived in the UK I’m sure they will raise more than an eyebrow with the features. Just good to get my hands on a pre-production model.

So that’s about it for a while as we have a break. I will be recording more as the weeks progress as the 10 Million download total nears I hope to get a system sorted where you guys can create the content from comments you make about TOS and what it has done or meant for you over the last 12 years.