Reassuringly Inexpensive :-)

It's a funny thing the human brain - you know those Stella Artois articles, the 'Reassuringly Expensive' ones? Yep, sometimes we actually feel more comfortable paying higherprices, subconsciously you're thinking, 'you get what you pay for'...

It's an attitude that's definitely around in the outdoors world too - a 20 quid fleece? Must be rubbish eh? Or is it? The guys from new outdoors company Alpkit wouldn't agree. Three quarters of the four-man team are sitting in my kitchen drinking tea and periodically producing budget priced miracles from a great big bag.

A pair of trekking poles for 35 quid? So what, except that the Alpkit trekking poles are made from wonder material carbon fibre and weigh 220 grammes each. Then there's the Tokay rock boot, a neat-looking, sticky rubber creation with a padded heel aimed at all-day routes. And the range of white goose down sleeping bags which use 700 fill power down in three different sizes to give comfort ratings from -5 to -20 C and, get this, are priced between £79.99 and £120.

I'm fiddling with the base Alpine Dream 500 and trust me, it has pretty much everything you'd expect from a decent bag - box wall construction, a down-filled baffle, adjustable hood. Nothing flash, no trapzoidal baffles or elasticated linings or flashy fasteners and superlightweight fabrics, but it feels dependable. And it retails - get this - for £79.99. That's a down bag with top quality down weighing 1200 grammes for under 80 quid. It's emphatically not rubbish.

And there's more with Fat Eric, an enormous self-inflating sleeping pad coming your way soon for around £35, a mooted UK-made merino / polyester baselayer top at a guesstimate price of £20 in the pipeline and some foolishly cheap down jackets also on the way.

So what's going on? Alpkit are four guys, three of whom, used to work with Outdoor Designs. Last year they sold their kids, remortgaged their houses and started up on their own with the aim of producing quality outdoors gear which they'd sell at killer prices.

Between them they have all the skills needed - two kit designers, a web expert and a far east-based outdoors kit sourcing expert. That cuts their overheads dramatically, then to rationalise things even further, they only sell direct from their own web site, where the price you see is the price you pay, including postage and packing, VAT etc. And for that you get next day delivery too.

They're not trying to compete with ultra-high end kit, but what they do aim to do is offer decent quality, basic kit at really good prices. And even at those prices, they say, they're making enough margin to make it worth their while.

They're also reassuringly up front about the limitations of their kit - there's a streaming video of them destroying one of their own trekking poles on the site - and they're happy to admit that you can break the carbon poles if you try hard enough, but then you can break pretty much anything if you want to. They'll admit too that the Tactel nylon fabric they use for their sleeping bags isn't the lightest fabric out there, but it's durable and downproof and, reassuringly, the TOG value of the bags has been tested by Leeds University.

They want to be a general outdoors brand too - "We're not just a single specialist area brand, we want to be a proper outdoors brand selling good honest kit."

Testing, Testing...

We have a pair of the carbon fibre poles, an Alpine Dream 500 sleeping bag and one of their bargain basement, five-quid LED headtorches on test and we'll get back to you in a month or two with some user impressions. Right now though, we're well impressed with the Alpkit attitude and the promise of some really effective-looking kit at stunningly affordable prices. What more can we say except watch this space. Oh, the URL? It's www.alpkit.com and we think you'll be hearing the name a lot more over the next few years.