Cord Lock Light

An 8g wonder from Black Crater.

Via Uncooped.

Google Maps give walking directions

I have just noticed that Google Maps now gives walking directions as well as driving directions. That is pretty cool IMHO.

It plotted the walk from my office to my home as 4.9 miles and said it should take 1 hour 41 minutes - that is 2.91 mph.

It's still in beta, and gives the warning to 'Use caution in unfamiliar areas'. It will be interesting to see how this develops. At the moment it only uses the roads.

Wouldn't it be cool if eventually it used the footpath and cycle path networks, paths through the park and that sneaky shortcut through the school playing fields, with options to make the route high, scenic, mostly downhill or 'get me home from the pub ASAP'.

One last thing...

The last bit of kit arrived this morning - the fantastic little Gorilla Pod camera tripod.

I come from a traditional photography background due to the nature of my business, so I used to haul around SLR's and piles of lenses and filters and a huge Manfrotto tripod.

I am now on my fourth digital camera and my snapper is now the tiny Ixus 850. I am very happy with quality of the shots, the ease of use and the range of the lens - perfect for this trip. The Gorilla Pod will let me take timed exposures, low light shots and 'press the button and run' self timer shots, all for 45g. It even came with a spare mount so Al can attach one to his Ixus too.

Blackberry - email to blogger

I have just managed to set up the email-to-Blogger so I can post from the C2C on my Blackberry. I was practising from Outlook and it kept blowing my template to bits - change from HTML to plain text - hey presto!

So next week, keep coming back, even if it's to see how wet we are :)

Al's new watch

We had a good day yesterday completing the last 10 miles before our first week on the trail. Al was playing with his new Suunto watch - we are still getting the hang of all this new technology...

Chris: "Al, how is the air pressure looking, is the weather improving?"
Alan: "Hang on a minute... about quarter to four"

The future of navigation?

I am a fairly early adopter so I have been using my XDA Exec and Memory Map (with a Tomtom bluetooth GPS) for a while now, mainly for novelty value but more and more recently for navigating on the hill too. Last night's hike was great using the aerial photography to find tiny paths in the darkness.

Memory Map have just launched their Road Angel Adventurer 7000 and I want one! It's a good size, lasts for 8 hours and takes Memory Maps as well as behaving like Tomtom in the car. Still a bit expensive at £350, but give it a month or two. You can download the PDF brochure here.

I'll be taking a close look at this at the Outdoor Show later this month.

Oh, and it's 180grams, 220 with it's case.

Geocaching

Happy new year to you all!
I had the day off today so went to do a couple of local Geocaches that I had not ticked off yet. The first was in Ilston Woods on Gower and the second on Cefn Bryn, also on Gower. I have my own cache hidden on Gower, Radar Love.
For those of you that have never tried Geocaching, take a look at the site, tap in your postcode and be prepared to be amazed by the number of caches within a few miles of your home. The site gives you a set of co-ord's for you to enter into your GPS and off you go.
A cache can be many things, but it is usually a Tupperware box hidden in the countryside containing little gifts and a log book for you to record your visit. You can take a little gift with you and swap if you fancy something (great for getting your kids into the countryside as it is a sort of hi-tec treasure hunt).
I like geocaching as it takes you to some great places. When we went to the Lakes the summer before last, I entered half a dozen caches into my Garmin before we left and they were the basis of our 'family' walks. Just the job when you don't want a full on hill day but just a lungful of fresh air and some exercise!

If you have a GPS, give it a go, especially if you have kiddies.

Technology - gear weight calculators

Backpackinglight.com runs a competition to design pack weight calculator spreadsheets and they are available for free download. I had a quick look at these and they were a bit too complicated for me, some even worked out the calorific value of your dried dinners. But if this is your thing, go for it.

I found a much simpler solution in Chris Ibbeson's 'Gear Weight Calculator', a simple free PC app (sorry Mac people) in which you enter your gear and it's weight and then categorise it. Each item has a check box next to it, so you can pick your kit list for each trip and let the software work out your pack weight and print a packing list.