A wet weekend on the moor
Tuesday, 15 September 2026
The forecast said showers. It rained without pause for thirty hours, the kind of rain that finds every seam. By the second afternoon everything I owned was some shade of damp.
Learning to trust the one-inch map
Friday, 17 July 2026
For years I navigated by phone and treated the paper map as a backup I never opened. Then the phone died in the rain on a featureless moor and I realised I could not actually read…
Packing a lighter first-aid kit
Monday, 18 May 2026
My old kit was a brick of things I would never use on a day walk. Rebuilding it around what actually goes wrong cut the weight by two-thirds.
Walking in the dark on purpose
Thursday, 23 April 2026
Starting a long route before dawn used to feel like cheating the day. Now it is my favourite part: the hour of head-torch walking before the light comes up is quiet in a way the…
The three-season sleeping bag that does four
Sunday, 29 March 2026
I spent a long time looking for a winter bag before admitting that most of my cold nights were marginal, not arctic. A good three-season bag with a liner covers almost everything…
Choosing a tarp over a tent
Friday, 20 February 2026
A tarp is lighter, dries faster and lets me sleep looking at the sky. It is also a commitment to reading the weather honestly, because there is no inner tent to hide in when you…