Phil Geng

Not only is this one of the most asked questions for the Ordnance Survey (OS) Customer Service team, but also one of the most frequent for me when people realise I work for the very organisation “making” the by now iconic orange and purple outdoor maps. In short, the answer can be found in the OS Leisure product catalogue which is updated regularly. Especially where maps were recently reprinted due to logo changes and overall branding changes, many users believe the maps themselves were updated at the same time when this is not the case.

After a bit of a writing break I’d like to kick off this newest round of articles by sharing this personal favourite of mine. A quick and easy meal that can be easily bulked up or stripped down depending on your appetite and the number of people you’re cooking for. Especially suited to a single overnight stay in the wild as all the ingredients can be prepared before setting off without the fuss of chopping and slicing when at camp. For me this has become one of my staple foods when out and about due to its simplicity, taste and ability to fill me right up.

Keeping warm when out and about is a fundamental skill and one most people will hone to a T over the course of their outdoor life. While keeping warm when moving is fairly self explanatory, camping presents an altogether different challenge. So how can you ensure you’re warm and snug when out in a tent without the need for a lorry to transport your bed around for you?

Those of you involved in the outdoor industry will undoubtedly be aware of a recent move by the National Trust to introduce a licencing scheme for the commercial use of its land. Many hasty and frankly ill-informed respondents to the proposal have argued that this is questionable for non-access land but surely illegal on open access land itself. Hopefully I can debunk some of the myths and highlight some of the grey areas we operate in on a daily basis.

“The BMC recognises that climbing, hill walking and mountaineering are activities with a danger of personal injury or death. Participants in these activities should be aware of and accept these risks and be responsible for their own actions and involvement.” The BMC participation statement taken out of context makes for bleak reading. Personal injury or indeed death? Gosh these activities must be horrendously dangerous. Or are they?

A quick update on my latest project this week. Still very much in the initial concept phase I’m hoping to create an intuitive and semi-automated approach to route cards of the “let someone know where you are” variety. So far the tests are proving promising and with a little more work the first round of user testing will be kicking off.

As the climbing season is starting to ramp up again for the summer I hear more and more people asking me “What harness should I get?”. While there are many harnesses on the market today the choice is actually reasonably easy. But what are the important bits to look out for and when is it best to choose by your favourite colour? Fear not, this handy little guide will explain the few considerations you need to make and will allow you to make a reasonable choice in the stores.

Overall rating:

Overview

When Edelrid first entered the climbing shoe market I admittedly wasn’t too sure what to think. I had known Edelrid for a while and was well aware of their pedigree in rope access equipment and ropes specifically. However being able to produce excellent safety equipment is one thing, producing a whole range of climbing shoes a completely different one. Now I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t going to go straight for a pair and try them to my hearts content. After all I was on the lookout for a set of mid-aggressive bouldering shoes and the Typhoon in Edelrids range fit the bill.

“It’s health and safety gone mad” is as engrained a sentence in the mind of the British public as “fancy a cuppa”. For some baffling reason as a people we have collectively accepted the Health and Safety Executive (HSE aka “Health and Safety”) as the scapegoat and excuse for every knee jerk reaction to any form of risk we encounter. Many people don’t realise that “Health and Safety” was originally intended for the industrial workplace, factories full of potentially lethal machinery, not to dictate everyday common sense decisions. HSE was set up to ensure that employers could not force workers to take unnecessary risks that would put their lives in danger for the sake of maximising profit while also ensuring systematic failings in safeguarding could be addressed. These days though it appears we apply the “Health and Safety says” hammer to anything that could even remotely cause us more paperwork or difficult questions in the long run.

As I’m writing this post, having just spent a great week in wintry Scotland, I can’t help but think about recent events in the very hills I walked in this week. At the time of writing, the search for Rachel and Tim on and around Ben Nevis is still ongoing and this weekend 30+ rescuers were out again trying to find them. The amazing volunteers with the Lochaber MRT and other teams who joined them on and off have been out and searching almost every single day since the two climbers were first reported missing on February 15th. Conditions have been testing if not dangerous for a fair few days in this time and I can only imagine the exhaustion some of the teams must feel by now. Sadly it is reasonably expected that the search is no longer one for missing climbers but indeed their bodies at this stage. In the wake of their story hitting the national news once again many none climbers and mountaineers have asked why we do what we do given the risks involved at times.