eBothy Blog

It was a wild night last night, with Force 11 gales forecast though it didn’t seem to be as bad as that. However, these winds normally arrive in November and this is the second big storm of the summer so I don’t know what the weather is doing these days. After last winter’s lack of wind and Alpine snow conditions, perhaps this one will be a real stinker with proper storms. We shall see as they say. Today it definitely felt autumnal though. Very windy and alive. A wonderful day to be out and about. So I took the Salomon Exit Aero shoes kindly supplied by Fitness Footwear for an outing round Loch na Sguabaidh near Torrin as the tops were clagged in and it was gusting 40-45mph at sea level. I hadn’t been along this route in years since I took the MTB along it but ended up with a broken chain so I decided to head back and do a circuit of the loch this time. It was one of those days where if you didn’t like the light, just wait a minute or two for it to change.

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Fitness Footwear have kindly provided a pair of Salomon Exit Aero shoes for me to try out and review. They didn’t arrive in time for the Cairngorms trip, where I wore the Merrell Chameleon Wrap Slams but I’ll give them an airing at the weekend. The Exit Aeros are part of Fitness Footwear’s Salomon trainers range from their extensive Salomon footwear collection.

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It’s time for the third installment of my testing for the Merrell Chameleon Wrap Slams, kindly provided by Fitness Footwear and this time I took them up a mountain. Blaven to be precise. My initial thoughts are here and here and this time I wanted to test them on a day out on the hill, taking in paths, scree and scrambling. I couldn’t test their grip on steep grass this time as there isn’t really any steep grass on Blaven, just steep rock! Also, I replaced the provided insoles with my Superfeet ones, which at size 9, fitted the shoes ok.

With a pack on my back, the first thing I noticed on the walk up the path was the lightness of my feet. These shoes are really light compared with what I normally wear, the KSB Dartmoors, which have a goretex lining and are more robust on the outside, so I think they’re a bit heavier. Not much but enough to notice the difference in the Merrells. I really skipped along the path. In fact, I was on the summit in two hours from the car. I didn’t feel tired at all and after a breakfast of five weetabix I wasn’t hungry either. So I just plodded on, all the way to the top and I’m pretty sure the shoes contributed to that.

It was a wild morning, lots of rain and low cloud scudding over the tops so I thought I’d see if the new Merrell shoes kindly supplied by Fitness Footwear needed breaking in, with a bimble along the landrover track to Suisinish. I was in the mood for a windy coastal walk and it’d be an ideal way to see how the shoes would fit. First off, walking along the rough road, they were very very comfy, straight out of the box. With a pair of smartwool socks they were warm too, despite a 30mph cold wind blowing in off the sea. Excellent underfoot cushioning from the supplied insoles and I fair skipped along as they’re really light on my feet.

I’ve been recruited by Fitness Footwear to review a pair of Merrell Chameleon Wrap Slam shoes which have just arrived a couple of days after I had a chat with them. Normally I don’t have much interest in gear reviews but it happens that I’m looking for a new pair of shoes and the timing worked out perfectly with an email from Stef at BG! with the news that Fitness Footwear were looking for testers so I plumped for it and the shoes have arrived. I was a bit worried as I’ve heard that Merrell shoes can be on the small size but I’ve tried them on in the house and they seem to be fine.

A few months ago I took the plunge and replaced my old trusty Buffalo Bag with a Rab Quantum 250 Endurance. Lots of bloggers helped me with information so I thought I’d reciprocate with a small review of how it’s performed so far. I’ve used it at around 750m in the Mamores, at the top of the Glenshee road, next to the Kingshouse high on Rannoch Moor and on my mum’s floor! And the overall impression? It’s a very warm bag. Too warm for me in summer I think. In the Mamores I almost sweated to nothing in the night, despite a gale force wind hammering the tent all night but the bag started to work for me at Glenshee, as autumn approached. The night at the Kingie I was toasty warm even though I woke to the hardest frost of the season in the morning. It was a real scrape to get the car clear and the tent folded like cardboard but I slept warm all night with a silk liner. (more…)

This is ridiculous! I got an email from Tower Ridge this morning, around 8am, saying the bag had just been posted first class. It arrived with the post today! They’re based in Perth so that’s pretty impressive. Perth to Skye by 2pm. Superb service. What was the first thing I had to do? Get in it!

I Googled, read, cogitated, read lots more, saught advice from the outdoors bloggers, cogitated even more and late last night came to a decision and ordered one online. I’ve often ranted about blogs that just blog about gear but my attitude has changed somewhat now that I’ve used those blogs quite a lot to garner opinion. In fact I garnered so much opinion from the likes of PTC, Alan, Andy, Robin, Darren, Duncan, John, Marcus, Chris Townsend and some others that, really, the name’s Garner, James Garner! Perhaps I should do a bag review to give something back to the blogoshphere. (more…)

Not really sure on this. The Minimus is 465g and rated to 5C, which is pretty chilly but I can expect that sort of temp in the mountains on a summer’s night. They say it’s actually warmer than most 0C rated bags, which Andy Howell seems to back up. The biggest problem is the lack of a zip so I know I’ll overheat in it. Going for the 900 fill power down and a full length zip takes the price to 212.00, which is a lot. The Cumulus has 870 down and is about 180.00, so there’s prolly not much between them. The extra price of the PHD prolly reflects the 900 down in it. (more…)

So after much deliberation, it’s come down to two choices. Cumulus Quantum 200 or Rab Quantum 250. Side by side they are:

The fill volume is a measure of how much the down lofts, which gives it its insulating power and is calculated thus:

(weight of down / 30) x fill power (more…)