I got a few things in the post. 4 x karabiners; 500 ml Trangia fuel bottle; Maya sticks; fire-bowl; emergency phone charger; Aqua pack waterproof bag (not shown in pic); waterproof compression sack for the Nanok sleeping bag (not shown in pic).

I will now justify the purchases. Ahem…

The karabiners will be used to put on the DDHammock and the BCUK hammock. These will act as a drip rings as well as a better method of securing the hammock to the tapes.

The 500ml fuel bottle will serve fuel for up to 5 days cooking. The 1 litre bottle was too big.

I’ve always wanted to see how efficient (or not) the Maya sticks are.

Fire-bowl – Some areas (including the location of the Spring Bushmoot) don’t allow open fires on the ground. If this bit of kit is as good as the write-ups, then the bowl should suffice for small BBQ type cooking.

The Aqua pack waterproof bag is in preparation for my imminent canoeing excursions.

The waterproof sleeping bag compression sack will replace the Nanok stuff sack which quite frankly is c**p and already is tearing at the seams and is by no means waterproof.

The emergency phone charger will provide a back up for my power hungry PDA so I can blog from the woods for longer. Not enough justification? It can power the PDA phone in an emergency situation when the main battery is flat. Still not good enough? Ok…it looked like a good gadget to play with. Happy now?

I had a chance between the showery rain today to quickly try out the Maya sticks and fire-bowl. I know you’re meant to use them with coals, but I thought I’d have a go at making a wood fire. I was amazed how quickly the Maya stick caught and how ferociously it burnt. This stuff is the business for kindling. I had in fact initially made a feather stick out of it, but I needn’t had bothered. I had found some reasonably dry twigs (despite a weeks worth of rain) and the fire quickly became hot enough to cook on. I liked the idea of the sides of the bowl folding up. I found this handy and used it more as a wind shield than anything else. I’ll do a full review at a later date, but my first impressions are that it could be quite useful as an open fire unit, as long as you’re prepared to chop down your fuel small enough to fit in the unit. It folds down reasonably small enough to fit in the back pack, but I was surprised to find that the legs didn’t retract or weren’t able to be removed. That would have saved even more space in the sack.

Pop back mid week and I’ll tell you about some new woods I explored this weekend and some rather strange squirrel behaviour.

Pablo.