V’s New Lowe Apline Pack. Click for Specs

What a weekend ! The idea was to got up at lunch on Friday and spend it with J&S in Stockport – do some leisurely gear shopping and possibly go for a day walk in the Peak District or get V a snowboarding lesson at Chill Factore. V got solidly stuck at work on Friday afternoon, so we only got to Manchester in the evening. Between 9 and 1 Saturday we bolted around every big name shop in what must be an Olympic record. Our shopping list was long, but it was more about seeing and trying on things we had seen online. V’s essential item was a backpack (I think she already has 7 – what’s one more). She found the perfect one at Snow and Rock .  To quote V, “It has a whistle, but no bells” – the chest buckle doubles as a whistle. I’ve been hearing about all its specs, features, pockets, buckles and zips ever since. It is really quite a pack – think I may have to get one too 🙂

Shopping is Tough

I found a pair strops for myself (ones that don’t make me look like I’m wearing flippers) and we made a dent in our list with a few other odds and ends. I miss being able to pop into an outdoor shop whenever I want – it really isn’t the same as shopping online. Thankyou thankyou J&S.

Saturday afternoon we went down to London for a surprise (for us too) engagement party for V&T that went on till 2am – that was a looong day – but great fun to be around good friends. By Sunday afternoon we were all spent but it must have been even worse for J&S – at least we could snooze on the road back home.

“Ah, my birthday. Normally I’d put on a festive hat and celebrate the fact that the Earth has circled the Sun one more time; I really didn’t think it was going to make it this year, but darn it if it wasn’t the little planet that could all over again.” – thanks House .  My best one so far – got away with tonnes of cool loot and my V has spoiled me rotten – again. Thanks to all.

V arranged a great day out today, the perfect opportunity to test some of my recently acquired gear in amazingly sunny UK weather. A colleague of V’s from work was kind enough to be our guide and driver. We headed south for adventure (but not too far).   

Clee Hill from the top of Ludlow Castle

Titterstone Clee hill near Ludlow (see geo-tag) is a goliath of English geology. The summit climbs to a towering 533m. Due to the heavy snowfall the moutain could only be accessed form a remote car park some 2300m away. The challenge looked epic and daunting – chances were good that we were going to lose digits to frostbite – but we had no choice. Okay. Maybe NOT. 

A small snowball !

The locals reckon that Clee Hill was used during the Second World War to pick up radio signals from Moscow (hence the Kremlin Pub). Apparently there are no higher hills between here and Moscow. I’m skeptical !   

It was a beautiful short trail. Perfect weather with fluffy knee-deep snow in some places. My gear performed flawlessly keeping me warm and dry all morning even while fending off snowballs of varying size and rolling down snow covered slopes. Only one minor injury – Chirs managed to mangle a knee and tear his pants – that’s what you get for trying to lob a 15kg snowball at me.   

After the apline expedition we headed for the Medieval Urban Gear Testing Grounds (LMUGTC) of Ludlow and it’s castle. I figured it would approximate some of the historic places we intend visiting.  

So to answer the question – No I don’t leak.. well not when covered in GoreTex.  

More photos in the gallery >>.

So today I emailed the Vietnamese Embassy to request pricing for a multiple entry visa. They responded efficiently and informed me that they are closed until 22nd Feb, but that the visas cost almost £100 each !  Considering all the other visas in the region are less than £30 each  this is crazy ! V and I have decided we’ll take the chance and try to get the visa in Hong Kong. I suspect this will be a challenge. The biggest issue with the visa is that you need to specify an entry and exit date – not realistic in our case.

Then I contacted a motorcycle training school in Shrewsbury (very helpful –  Complete Bike Traning). V and I decided it would be good to get bike licences so that we can rent bikes if possible. Foiled again !  Turns out we need to convert our SA drivers licence to  UK ones first. It takes 4 weeks and they keep your passport – ummm.. we need those to go snowboarding !  Then a 3 day of course before  the first level exam – for which you may have wait a couple of weeks to get an opening. Then on with another course and exam before you get a full licence for a small bike. Looks like we’ll have to hire bicycles !

Nope… I’m not going to tell you how much I got spolit on Valentines day.
V didn’t do too badly either 🙂

We needed to get passport photos printed and check out the gear shops, but most importantly satisfy the hunger for a KFC Zinger. Shrewsbury, only 40 minutes by train, has a few gear shops and reportedly (google) two KFC’s. Got our passports photos at the Jessops on the walk into town, but I have to say V’s photos are the worst I  have ever seen – so bad that if I post them here I’ll be travelling solo – and there are 20 copies !  HUGE rip-off… £1 per copy. We should have just printed them ourselves at home.

High Sports (cool toys)

V wanted to check out snowboarding boots but we could not find ‘Sail and Ski’ (Note to self – practice navigation skills). We did stumble into a fantastic find. High Sports is a real enthusiasts shop on the edge of the centre. All the best gear, fair prices, small and friendly – highly recommended to anyone after real gear. They have a room full (floor to ceiling) of backpacks. V has a fetish for backpacks – more extreme than most women and their handbags – so she thoroughly enjoyed herself. I got spoilt rotten in anticipation of my upcoming birthday with a new pair of ‘travel’ shoes. They are the business !  Salomon XA Pro 3D Ultra .. the black/grey ones. My second piece of kit with GoreTex. Happiness is.

Starvation started to take it’s toll so we headed back into town in search of the KFC. We walked straight past it and continued wandering in a hunger induced haze for some time (in our defence it has closed down and the windows were painted over). We opted for the second KFC – which we had located during a previous visit to Shrewsbury. We know that take away is bad for us and we never really eat the stuff . Just think of it as training for the months of dodgy food ahead. It was excellent.

Railway Research

After checking out the consumer outdoor shops and a book shop we headed home. V got herself another travel guide (Lonely Planet’s Trans Siberean Railway). Who would have thought that you need a 380 page book to explain how to get on and off a train for 2 weeks, how hard can it be ? Carrying the guidebooks seems more challenging to me, besides, I prefer the idea of electronic versions on an iPhone.

We spent the remainder of the weekend looking for information online, playing with the WordPress themes and plugins, and generally chilling out as we were both stiff and sore from walking around Shrewsbury.. yes… from walking around a little town for a few hours – what have we gotten ourselves into ?

Well this the first post (kinda). We knuckled down and started planning our adventure on Sat 6th Feb 2010, but only decided on blogging about it a week later.. so you will have to imagine that this was actually written on 6/7 Feb. “What adventure ?”,  “What’s this all about ?”, “Who are you?”, “Are you insane?”……. “I can hear you caring” (thanks House MD)  Well check out About Us and Best Laid Plan pages above to answer some of those questions. If you are new to reading a blog (Mom, Dad etc), look at the Credits page. If the pages I mention don’t work it’s because I haven’t done them yet ! So to the five people who accidentally stumbled onto this page and we hope to our family and friends, it’s….  

On with the Show –  87 Sleeps Go  

A BEEG wall map (socks shown for scale)

First thing – hang a BEEEG map and get some markers (done). Then get lots of great ideas and inspiration (easy). Next find the energy to do some basic planning (boring). V had a large collection of Lonely Planet guide books and a few hundred random web links. I got back from SA last Sunday so we decided that it’s now or never for the boring bits. True adventure I guess is having no plan at all, but we like plans, so we started with some basics; 

• What countries are we going through (more or less) ?
• What are the Visa Requirements ?
• How long will it take ?
• How much will it cost ?
• What gear do we need ?

Two hours on the web later and it turns out we are looking at 20 or so countries. The visa requirements seem simple with some exceptions – Russia, Mongolia and China we’ll get through a UK company called Real Russia, Vietnam we’ll need to send off to the embassy in London, for Laos the information is sketchy and the rest seems you can get at border posts (we hope). Estimated around £1000 each for visas !  (Vicki has promised to add an accurate ‘Budget’ page as a resource). 

We scribbled some estimated durations onto our wall map without too much detail. Pushing back our start date to 5 May will cause some problems (like trekking in Nepal during the monsoon – got to figure that one out), but it looks like we will be travelling until the end of the year or until the funds run out (whichever comes first). 

Then the scary bit, costs! We found a few sites around giving estimations for different countries…. Adding a randomly generated fudge factor we came up with an all inclusive average of £50/person/day for the duration of the trip. We hope to publish accurate figures as we go providing a resource for others. We’ll keep you posted, but an absence of posts means we ran out of cash in Borneo and can’t even afford 5 minutes in an Internet cafe. In this case we suggest you ignore this paragraph. 

We are both serious gear junkies. So the rest of the weekend was spent looking at gear online. Planning never really made it back onto the agenda once we started talking gear. We’ll have more for you on this one (a ‘Gear Page’ soon), but we are looking at 8-10kg packs (around 30-35L). I think we are going to have to change our names from Vicki & Simon to Fast & Light !

I’m sure the posts will get shorter and more interesting as we get into this – thanks for reading anyway !