Gear Mistakes I Made On My Baltic To Atlantic Trip

I can’t think of many things I wasn’t happy with on this trip, but, with hindsight, there were a couple of important things I would change.

RUCKSACK

I currently own two backpacking sacks, a 65 litre and a 70+ litre. Given that the 65l one is slightly lighter than the other, that’s the one I decided to take. However, it only took one supermarket shop for me to realise the mistake I’d made!

It’s a few years since the last long trip – The Kungsleden in 2019 – where we were totally reliant on shop bought food for the duration, and I had totally forgotten how much space 3, 4 or occasionally 5, days’ worth of food takes up, when none of it is freeze dried (never mind how much extra it weighs!).

I managed – I had to! – but every shopping expedition brought another infuriating battle trying to fit it all in. Out of interest, on long trips I always have one day’s worth of emergency food which I don’t touch unless I either have to, or right at the end of the trip, if I haven’t used it. This is freeze dried/lightweight food, and it gets wrapped up, sealed and packed at the bottom of my pack so that it doesn’t get used by accident.

MOBILE

I woke up in a flat panic one morning. I suddenly realised that if I lost/broke/dropped it in a toilet/etc etc, being without my mobile would be a real nightmare.

Not only do I use it as a camera, it has my Kindle on it, my mapping, emergency contacts, airline tickets, detailed planning, and not to mention the internet- which I was constantly using to find and book accommodation, as well as book the occasional train and bus. Added to all that, there were also the less important, but pleasant things, like music and I-player.

Of course I had paper maps and a compass with me, but to be honest the mapping would have been the least of my worries if something had gone amiss with the phone.

I should have had a cheap, pay as you go thing with me, with all the important stuff duplicated.

Once I’d realised this, fairly early on in the trip too, I became totally obsessive about constantly checking my pockets to make sure both the phone and my wallet were where they should be – and I mean obsessive…

SLEEPING BAG

Geoff and I both have two sleeping bags which are the same – a Rab 600 and a Rab 800 – but Geoff also has one of their new Rab Neutrino 400 bags. I decided that since I wasn’t expecting much in the way of very cold weather, I would borrow this bag.

As it happens, I did end up camping in temperatures of minus 3C for a few nights, and to my absolute surprise I was actually warm enough, but only if I wore nearly every piece of clothing I had with me, including my lightweight down jacket. So the sleeping bag wasn’t actually a mistake, but not trying it out properly first at home was, as it’s a very slim cut design and I felt decidedly claustrophobic in it on those very cold nights with all my extra layers on.

With hindsight then, I would take the same rating of sleeping bag again on a similar trip, but I’m now saving up for a slightly different model for myself, the Rab Alpine 400 Bag, which has the same rating but a looser cut, at only 65g more than Geoff’s version.

I find it’s very rare to come back from any longer trip and not think of something that you might have done differently, and often these are just quite minor things, but I think this time there were definitely a couple of quite major issues that were worth noting for myself!