Christmas Cracker - Hydropal Bottle

Handy rather than sexy is probably the best way of describing the latest of our Christmas Crackers...

The new Hydropal Filtration Bottle looks like being an ideal gift for the outdoors person with almost everything. It's a bottle shaped like a standard cycling water bottle, but with a difference. Nestling under the lid is a built-in filter that reduces chemical residues while also filtering out a claimed 99.9 per-cent of giardia cysts and Cryprotsporidium occycts.

It won't kill viruses or bacteria though, so you still need to take care when using potentially contaminated water sources, but it should give you a little bit of extra reassurance if you're concerned about drinking, from, say, an upland spring with no other alternative source of water.

The Hydropal performs for up to 250 refills or around six months before a change of filter is needed and retails for £14.99. More details at www.hydropal.com

More Filtration?

If you're after a similar concept but with a more thorough filtration system, we'd suggest the more expensive - £40.00 - Aquapure Traveller bottle which uses a carbon filter combined with an iodine sleeve and kills both bacteria and viruses. We've used one of these successfully for Himalayan trekking and would thoroughly recommend it.

More about the Aquapure Traveller from www.bwtechnologies.com