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| GEAR FEATURES |
16 / 12 / 02 |
Santa's Shopping Selection! | | Gear features in association with |  |
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Just over 12 months to go before Christmas and because we're kind,
considerate, caring types, and because everyone does it anyway, we
thought we'd have a quick trawl through some of our retail partners
from the OUTDOORSmagic shopping section, and pick out a few choice
Christmas goodies for the outdoors man or woman in your life.
Remember though, this is just a small selection of the kit that's
out there - there's a lot more from our retail partners, but hey, we
might just save you some legwork with our inspirational ideas, ahem.
For all the retailers mentioned and lots of others, you can link
through direct from the OUTDOORSmagic
shopping section.
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Field and Trek have an awful lot of stuff that's quite
covetable, but here are a few we like the look of and reckon
would make good prezzies.
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Unbreakable Vaccuum Flasks Brilliant for frozen
winter walks or climbs or simply sat in the car waiting for
your frozen return after a day on the hill. F and T's range
ranges in price from 0.3 litres to a full litre and in price
from £16.99 to £25.99. The Vango Hot Stuff
stainless steel flasks are proven performers, but we also
like the look of the LifeVenture Wide Mouth Flasks, which
should allow for the biggest soup chunks you can imagine.
Just in case they forget to chop up the oxtail... Hot tip:
pre-warm the flask with boiling water before filling with
soup to maximise heat retention.
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Silk Sleeping Bag Liners Sea To Summit 100
per-cent silk sleeping bag liners come in standard, mummy,
long and YHA configurations. They pack down incredibly
small, feel luxurious agains the skin and keep your
expensive sleeping bag clean and happy, minimise
loft-sapping cleaning priced between £31.99 and
£36.99. F and T also stock Cocoon's liners including
the silk mummy version for £29.99. Very, very nice.
Yum...
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Cotswold has been so snowed under that they can no longer
guarantee pre-Christmas delivery, but there's always the
real life store if there's one near you. They've been
highlighting products they reckon are spot on for Santa's
sledge, so here's a few picks from their top ideas.
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Two-Way Radios
We've been using a pair of these Motorola two-way radios
and they are brilliant - fantastic for communicating on long
mountain climbs, when you could be belaying round a corner,
but also great for those 'split into two group scenarios' or
just keeping in touch in Brent Cross Shopping Centre. For
£100 all in you get two radios plus rechargeable
batteries and mains recharger. Very neat.
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Colin Prior Calendar
Colin Prior's best known for his large scale prints of,
mainly Scottish, mountains. His 2003 calendar costs £10
for a new mountain every month.
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Snow and Rock is also well into the holiday spirit with a
dedicated Christmas prezzie selection, some of it aimed at
outdoors people and some at snowsport types, here's a couple
we like...
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Leatherman Squirt
Brand new from Leatherman, the Squirt is small, but
perfectly formed, think a very scaled-down full-sized
multi-tool complete with Needlenose Pilers, Straight Knife,
Wire Cutters, Extra Small Screwdriver, Med/Large
Screwdriver, Phillips Screwdriver, Landyard Attachment,
Can/Bottle Opener, Awl and single/cross cut file. Price is
£39.95, size is dinky miniature.
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Black Diamond Moonlight Head Torch
Not as dinky as Petzl's Tikka, Black Diamond's Moonlight
has an extra LED, making four, and with three AAA batteries
will burn for 70 hours given the chance. It scores by having
an adjustable angle head and being surprisingly tough. We
chucked ours out of a second floor window, twice, to no
effect. Very nice, very useful and weighing in at
£28.
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CMM's well-stocked web site features some Christmas gift
ideas and advance notice of their online post-Christmas sale
which starts on 27 December, some good bargains in the
clearance section as well with up to 36 per-cent off
Mountain Equipment sleeping bags.
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Petzl Zipka
If you've not seen a Zipka, then this is it. Think the
head unit from the original Tikka but with an elasticated,
retractable cord instead of a head band. It uses three LEDs,
weighs 64 grammes with batteries and burns for a mildly
insane 150 hours. So tiny and light that packing it is a
no-brainer. Looks funky too, which makes it a great stocking
filler we reckon.
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Garmin Etrex Legend
Reduced from an RRP of £286.99 to £219.99, the
Legend should be spot on if your partner has the sort of
navigational skills that would disgrace a drunken wombat.
The Etrex range of GPS units is sleek, small and water
resistant and this one is able to accept downloaded data
from Garmin's entire line of MapSource CD-ROMS. Not sure
what that means, but it's the thought that counts.
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YHA has a good range of gear on their website and if you're a member of an outdoors/walking club you get 10% off: not to be sniffed at. Here's a couple of things that caught our eye over there.
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Calyx ladies' fleece
A natty hooded fleece nicely tailored for the female form. More a 'looking good and feeling toasty for the apres-ski' thing than part of your layering system, and not a bad price at £50.
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Karrimor Raid bumbag
Karrimor do a few different versions of the Raid. The simple Raid 2 (pictured) has a two-litre capacity and is ideal for runners wanting to carry a few essentials. Good value at £9.99. For those wanting a bit more out of a bumbag there's the 5 litre Raid 5 which has a coolmesh back, liquid carrying capacity and compression system for stability. A more serious bag and a more serious price at £19.99.
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