The OS Outdoors Show In Pictures

We popped along to the OS Outdoors Show on Friday. So many stands, so many people that we couldn't hope to do everything justice and unfortunately, we got so caught up in jawing with people that we didn't even manage to get to the bar.

Overall, we thought it was an improvement on last year's slightly disappointing effort. There seemed to be more interactive stuff around plus lots of stuff to buy too. On top of that, we spotted the odd interesting new product - more elsewhere on the site - and discovered that the excellent all-natural US Clif Bars are back in the UK.

Anyway, here are a few photos to give you an idea of what it was like, the first one shows what happens when the Royal Marines abseil off the roof a little too enthusiastically for the opening ceremony - that window looks expensive... Ooops.

Meanwhile, inside main sponsors the Ordnance Survey were showing off their massive range of maps and map-related products.

The European Bouldering Championships gave a chance to see how it should be done...

But there were plenty of opportunities to try a bit of indoor climbing for yourself, for example with the aid of the Royal Marines, who were also staging regular displays of unarmed combat...

If climbing wasn't your thing however, there were plenty of other options. Scuba diving for example in a large indoors paddling pool...

Or mountain biking over an indoor North Shore-style obstacle course - nice trousers fella...

And then you could do some shopping if you wanted. Some interesting stuff there and not always quite where you'd expect to find it. Fatface, for example, now has a range of technical clothing using proper technical fabrics and created by specialist outdoor clothing designers - below.

Online specialists Alpkit were there too with kit to sell but also previewing some new stuff including this rather fetching pink prototype bivvy bag. Yum ;-)

Something else that caught our eye was this uber headtorch from bespoke bike kit people Hope. More elsewhere, but it's a very neat, CNC-engineered housing with twin high-powered LEDs and a rechargeable battery pack that should blow away anything else out there in terms of brightness. Ideal for evening fell running, but not cheap at £175. Gulp... serious light, serious price.

Lurking quietly on the Aku stand was this; it's called the Stealth and, believe it or not, was originally designed for the Navy Seals. It's very light, has no membrane liner, so is extremely breathable, and sports a soft, flexible sole for sneaking up on people. And of course, it's black :-)

There were more new things too, notably in the new for this year innovation section where brands like Patagonia, Paramo, Rab, Sprayway and others were showing off their wares and previewing some new stuff too...

Arguably more interesting though, was the regular fashion show with dancing models in outdoor kit, erm, dancing really, and showing off. The Rab bit got our vote, clearly top kit for sub-zero clubbing.

Last but not least, outdoors bloggers and podcasters were much in evidence, if you knew where to look. Here Cameron McNeish, who we unaccountably missed - sorry Cameron - turns the tables of podaster Andy Howell.

The outdoor bloggers convene, coincidentally at the exhibition bar, how did that happen?

And OM's blogging / podding scene correspondent, Weird Darren, talks outdoors podcasts with Andy Howell.

And last, but very definitely not least, OM routes editor and caver, Dave Mycroft tells us that this fella was demonstrating speed prussicking on the caving stand. Figures like five seconds for 30 metres of ascent were mentioned... we can barely run that fast. Dave says it's a 'new technique', which we can well believe. You can't see the rockets in the picture though...

And that's it for this year. Apologies to all the people we missed as well as to those we didn't ;-)