So why have I started a Blog? Well why not, I would like somewhere to put my own thoughts down on being in the outdoors and I’m conceited enough to believe someone else might find it interesting.
I’m a relatively private person so I doubt I’ll be posting a raft of candid photo’s of myself from my daily life. In short I’m married to B who spends lots of time away from home working and we have two Border Terrier bitches, B1 15 months and B2 3 months. (B3 as the collective shall be known). We chose not to have kids.
I enjoy food, wine, reading, films, tv (although I haven’t watched live tv in an age choosing to binge shows), travel, music concerts and comedy. I like photography, wildlife, landscape mainly and am trying to improve my shooting and post shoot editing. I taking videos and editing them. As part of that I was bought a drone (DJI Mavic Pro) which has brought a whole new dimension to videoing (check out the video page). A wildlife cam has given me access to some local beavers (check out the video page). And finally developing a strange habit of listening to shortwave radio whilst camping.
I spent a large part of my life at sea and was fortunate to travel all over the world. Now I work for an international charity as a manager based primarily in Scotland. This provides me with regular travel across the country and a lot of nights away, not all of them welcome all the time. In order to alleviate the boredom of average hotels I camp overnight regularly. This has proven to be entirely cathartic and means I’m not spending more of my limited home time with B3 out camping or walking. It also allows me to refine my camping kit to the nth degree. I’m not an ultralight camper or walker, I have done it in the past, but I’m also not someone who carries the kitchen sink, which I have also done in the past.
I always enjoyed being outdoors as a kid, although growing up in a city I didn’t get loads of it and the schoolboy teenage years were spent mainly underage drinking and chasing girls. As I’ve got older I’ve got fat and lazy but am now on a diet with Weight Watchers since Jan 18. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight but still have further to go. Reinvigorating my time outdoors is key to losing weight with the exercise but also to provide an alternative outlet to a very busy, stressful and to be honest frustrating work life.
In addition to sharing my outdoor experiences I intend to review some of my kit. I am a complete gear hound and am mindful of the maxim ‘He who dies with the most toys wins!’. I’m a Kifaru Fanboy, Apple whore and a penchant for titanium cookware. I have a lot of camping kit, rucksacks, clothing etc some very common others not so. I’m not being paid to review kit or receiving it purely to review, this is stuff I use occasionally, often, frequently or all the time. Should someone want to send me kit to review, dig out. I’d be happy to but I’ll make it clear in the review and maintain my integrity. I have spent a lot of money on quality long lasting kit usually being mindful of ‘buy once, cry once’ rather than have kit fail and then have to buy similar again (as just happened to my gas stove). Some reviews will be written up with photo’s others may be videos on the youtube page although early ‘screen tests’ were not satisfactory.
In addition to the youtube channel I have also set up a facebook page initially just as a marker but we’ll see how it all works out.
Pack Your Bag 