The Outdoors Show In Pictures

The Outdoors Show 2006

A number of faces from OUTDOORSmagic appeared at the Outdoors Show this weekend, awaiting a free beer on the editor. Some seemed to need it, to sooth their disappointment that the Show hadn't really re-invented itself since it started out a few years ago. Still, there were compensations. The Alpkit guys materialised from their virtual habitation on the web, and Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Alan Hinkes both gave lectures. As for the usual array of manufacturers' stalls, a free GPS would have been handy, along with the show map, to help with navigation. After all, most hikers are used to dealing with curved, oddly-shaped contour lines around rugged crags, not identical rectangular blocks:-)

If you were at the NEC at the weekend, here are a couple of images that might look familiar. If you weren't, here's some of what was going on...

Ice doesn't form in abundance in Birmingham, and certainly not indoors, so they had to make do with polystyrene instead.

Or if rock is more your thing, find the nearest pillar ...

Or podder - this is Bob 'Podbob' Cartwright from backpackinglight.co.uk podding Montane's Julie Greengrass with his patent pod-corder.

Back in the gear zone, the so-called 'tent city' was built...

...if you could avoid the falling crates nearby, as the scouts challenged all-comers to build the highest crate tower.

Finally, there's no such thing as outdoor adventure without the food rations.

If the Outdoors Show caught your attention this time around then the organisers would like to announce the dates of the next one: 16th - 18th March 2007. You never know, we might even be there to buy you another beer. But then again, we aren't organised enough to have planned that far ahead yet:-)