May

So who is this Gareth bloke?

You have heard from James, so I reckon it’s time to introduce myself. I guess you could describe me as one of the outdoor bods I’m going to be helping James and the rest of the toggers by telling them about what clothes and gear I use whilst strolling & camping in the hills of Britain. I’ll also be reporting back to this blog the walks and trips I take along with my thoughts on the gear I am using.

I was fairly nervous reading the post on how James came to decide on selling outdoor clothes, as I figured he might blame it all on me if anything went wrong! I was also pretty pleased though as nothing else has given me greater pleasure in my life than hill walking and scrambling. I have been passionate about the outdoors since just after University. I started to head outdoors again after getting tired of city living and began recalling fond memories of my parents taking me for for walks on Dartmoor as a kid. I’d describe myself as a pretty novice scrambler and relatively experienced hillwalker. I try to spend as much time as possible in the hills that living and working in London will allow me to.

All in all I am really excited by the prototypes of the website I have seen, and I am blown away but how user friendly and good it looks. I also find it auspicious that the year webtogs launches is the 75th anniversary of the trespass on Kinder which has had a massive impact on how we access moor and hill land in the UK. As a city dweller, I find great peace and tranquility in the wild places of our land. Roy Hattersleys article on the trespass points out that the original protesters were working class folks from the Mills of Sheffield. It worries me that so many people in inner cities today see the outdoors and our countryside as something that does not belong to them, but rather to other people. Just as the original protesters changed how we view access to land, so I hope todays city dwellers will see the benefits of getting out more in to our beautiful countryside, and what it can do for them.

Anyhow, enough babbling and time for me to dry me tent out from last weekend, more about that another time though…..