Welcome to Outdoors 101, your introduction to getting outside!
It occurred to me earlier this year that while I’m quite happy to get out and walk and hike and make merry with the great outdoors, how to go about this might not be so obvious to other people. So this series covers the basics of how to get outdoors safely while having fun. From equipment to skills, you’ll find it all here.
This week, I’ve seen this Guardian article – Three-quarters of UK adults can’t read a map – going around my social media several times. It’s one of these classic “what’s happened to the world??” articles designed to get older readers tutting. Now. This is a write-up of the results of a poll by Ordnance Survey,… More Outdoors 101: A few map-reading basics
I’ve just watched someone in all seriousness tell a fairly large following that you can use Google Earth to plan a hike and therefore I need to announce categorically that no, you cannot! And thus here is how to plan a hike.. This is about the route, by the way. It’s not about equipment, experience,… More How to plan a hike
It occurred to me this week that although I travel and camp and hike and generally adventure solo, I don’t talk about it much, not about the actually solo aspect of it. It occurred to me because Cat Higgy was asking for advice on Twitter, about the South West Coast Path and about hiking and… More How to camp and hike solo
I’ll do a real YouTube-circa-2014 “what’s in my bag?” blog next time I go to Dartmoor but today a follow-up to “what to carry while out walking” from the other day: what’s in my first aid kit? I would recommend carrying a first aid kit whenever you go out walking. I mean, I don’t bother… More Outdoors 101: What’s in my first aid kit?
In the last Walking 101 post, I was mainly making the point that you don’t need a lot of stuff or to spend a lot of money to get outdoors and get into walking. This post is “what to carry on a day hike”, aka all the stuff you do need. But you still don’t need… More Outdoors 101: What to carry on a day hike
This is kind of second in the How To Get Outdoors series but after Outdoors 101’s “what shoes should I wear?”, consider this the first part of related series Outdoors 201: we’re going to investigate why and how to use a route card. What is a route card? A route card is a piece of… More Outdoors 201: Why and how to use a route card
Traditionally, the first post of a new year would be my Christmas Adventure With Tom but that’s waiting for Thursday this year because today I want to make a post for the Resolutioners: how to get into walking A New Year lockdown hasn’t been announced as at time of writing but we can all feel… More Outdoors 101: How to get into walking