For those of you new to walking, the video gives a great intro to the sort of kit you will need to take when heading out for a days strolling, whether that be in the hills or valleys. We would recommend at least the following gear, as weather conditions can change rapidly when you are out and about.

- Small rucksack of between 15 & 25 litres in size
- Good pair of walking boots, spend the lions share of your budget on this.
- Baselayer to push or wick sweat away from your body, it should be synthetic or merino wool (not cotton!)
- A Midlayer, generally fleece, either heavy or light depending on the weather and a spare one in case of emergency.
- An outerlayer, usually a waterproof jacket, but can be a soft shell which is a water resistant and wind proof layer.
- Good pair of walking trousers and a pair of waterproof trousers if the weather looks bad. Don#’t wear jeans, if they get wet, they are rather uncomfortable, again stick to synthetic options which are hard wearing, water resistant and dry quickly.
- Compass.
- Map (great guide from Ordanance Survey here on choosing the right map).
- First aid kit.
- Food & Drink as you burn a lot of calories out strolling.
- Hat & Gloves (make it a sun hat for summer along with some sun cream).

This is just a basic list, so take in to account if you are doing anything more strenuous, or if you are heading in to the mountains, you may well need more equipment.

What would you consider essential for your rucksack or clothing when heading outside?

So for the last few weeks I’ve been without the use of the bike (although fortunately I have a moutain bike too, which is getting well-used instead). Time to get it fixed. First I took the back wheel over to SJS Cycles, where Dave had a quick look at it and said he could have the hubb all fixed up in half an hour. And sure enough, after half an hour, I walked out of the shop with a replacement hubb, and new sprocket fitted too. Very impressed. I also stocked up on three Schwalbe Marathon XR tyres.

Yes I know a bike only has two wheels! In any case the tyres that took me through Africa still have some life in them. But Schwalbe no longer manufacture these tyres and there’s just no other tyre that will stand the test of touring time. These should keep me on the road for a while longer. My legs are bound to give up before the tyres give out.

But the rest wasn’t going to be quite so simple. Simply because I’ve decided to fix the rest of the bike myself.

I thought I had the spare parts I needed. And so on Sunday morning, with multi-tool, pliers and a good supply of WD40, I set about taking off the old parts that needed replacing. On closer inspection, this turned out to be most of the bike bar the frame, wheels and new hubb.

My touring bike - mid-repair

Having removed several layers of bike oil and grease from my hands and body, the afternoon was mostly spent on the internet searching out the replacement parts I need… brake cable set, gear cables, headset bearings, chain, chainring, a new twistshifter assembly and the only part that sounded remotely interesting which was the ‘noodles and boots’ (and they’re nothing but small bent metal tubes that the brake cables fit through).

So until I get the new parts through, the rack is on my mountain bike so I can head off to the hills at the weekends. In the meantime, my trusty tourer is scattered about my room in several rusty or dirty pieces.

I think I forgot to mention – the next tour I’ll be cycling the Great Divide from Canada, through the USA, to Mexico. You can read more about it on my new website, Helen’s Take On…

And over the coming weeks I’ll be posting more on the Togblog about how the preparations for the trip are going.

Catch the bluebells. Countryfile have a list of the best bluebell woods in the UK, 
whilst Visit Woods lets you type in your postcode and find the carpet of bluebells nearest to you.

The National Trust’s top 10 places to visit over easter are all stunners, from castles to rocky islands.

In need of inspiration? Live for the Outdoors have a fantastic destination guide. Click on the place nearest to you for walks on and off the beaten path.

If you feel more like celebrating than avoiding the big party, check out my list at Countryfileon the best ways to celebrate being British.

And if the weather doesn’t stay fine, you can always hang out indoors and prep your gear with LFTO’s handy guide to caring for boots, waterproofs and sleeping bags.

The Girl Outdoors

I’m a little bit in love with these gorgeous Keen Auburn boots – they somehow manage to be both pretty, functional, warm and durable, which doesn’t happen a lot in the world of women’s outdoor gear. They are perfect for country pubs now and they’ll still be going strong in the summer as brilliant festival footwear.

The fair isle print is really current and will brighten up jeans and a woolly jumper (which, to be honest, is pretty much my uniform when it’s cold). You might want to invest in some suede-saving spray though, given that we don’t live in the sunniest climate in the world. Sigh.

The Girl Outdoors

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

It’s worth noting that this update does not rely on the feedback we’ve received from the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, which we launched last week. However, we did compare the Blocklist data we gathered with the sites identified by our algorithm, and we were very pleased that the preferences our users expressed by using the extension are well represented. If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them, which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits.

So, we’re very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it’s a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results. We’ve been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we’re working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results.

To start with, we’re launching this change in the U.S. only; we plan to roll it out elsewhere over time. We’ll keep you posted as we roll this and other changes out, and as always please keep giving us feedback about the quality of our results because it really helps us to improve Google Search.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, and Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer

This will come to the UK in time and is great news for ecommerce. There are a lot of poor websites out there that have used Key words and link building to improve their Google ranking when they should have been concentrating on building a good website with interesting and engaging content. These sites invariably offer a poor experience for the consumer and overall devalue the ecommerce experience.

As someone who gets jittery on the tops of tallish buildings I’m not the first person you’d think of when imagining a cliffjumping enthusiast, but an enthusiast I most definitely am. A few years ago I was surfing in Pembrokeshire near the Blue Lagoon (which has a pretty self explanatory name) and couldn’t resist jumping from the smallest of several cliffs. It was only about seven feet high, but I found the rush of cold blue water rushing up to meet me totally addictive.

Since then I’ve cliffjumped in a few places when I’ve been surfing – by far the best was the beach by Tintagel, in Cornwall. The water is a deep turquoise green and the cove is towered over by the remains of a castle that supposedly was the birthplace of King Arthur. There’s even a waterfall when the tide is right. Here too there are various smaller rocks and larger cliffs to jump off, making it safe for beginners as well as those who are a little braver.

You can, of course, get taught to cliff jump – go coasteering and you’ll be provided with a wetsuit, attractive helmet and guide, which I’d recommend if you’re nervous. But as long as you’re careful, cliff jumping is fine done freestyle.

Take basic precautions – don’t go alone, wear a wetsuit as deep water is cold (even in summer months), never jump from a height you’re unhappy with, make sure the water below you is free from rocks and obstructions, and jump straight and tall, with your legs together and your arms by your sides. It’s perfect for getting rid of the winter blues, I promise.

The Girl Outdoors

This is essential knowledge for the outdoorsy type as you never know when you could come across a Grizzly up a mountain. Unfortunately, opinions seem to vary on what to do when there’s a big bear snarling in front of you, quite possibly because some do not live explain their failed methods to pacify their fuzzy attacker. At least after our handy guide you’ll have lots of options to consider.

1. Watch the Backpacker Magazine’s guide to Black Bears and Grizzlies video guide. The best bit is when they tell you not to run away. Yeah right.

2. Adventurer Steve Young is about to embark on a walk to the North Pole, and recommends that you “take a big gun” to shoot polar bears, as their paws are about five times as big as your hands and you probably can’t run away very fast on ice.

3. Bill Bryson says that “All the books tell you that if the grizzly (bear) comes for you, on no account should you run. This is the sort of advice you get from someone who is sitting at a keyboard when he gives it. Take it from me, if you are in an open space with no weapons and a grizzly comes for you, run. You may as well. If nothing else, it will give you something to do with the last seven seconds of your life”. As for the difference between Grizzlies and Black Bears, Bryson reckons that “A grizzly may chew on a limp form for a minute or two but generally will lose interest and shuffle off. With black bears, however, playing dead is futile, since they will continue chewing on you until you are considerably past caring. It is also foolish to climb a tree because black bears are adroit climbers and…you will simply end up fighting the bear in a tree,”

4. The Art of Manliness website differentiates between species.
Grizzly Attack: Carry bear pepper spray. Don’t run. When you run, the bear thinks you’re prey and will continue chasing you, so stand your ground. And don’t think you can out run a bear. Bears are fast. They can reach speeds of 30 mph. Unless you’re an Olympic sprinter, don’t bother running. Drop to the ground in the fetal position and cover the back of your neck with your hands. If you don’t have pepper spray or the bear continues to charge even after the spray, this is your next best defense. Hit the ground immediately and curl into the fetal position. Play dead. Grizzlies will stop attacking when they feel there’s no longer a threat. If they think you’re dead, they won’t think you’re threatening. Once the bear is done tossing you around and leaves, continue to play dead. Grizzlies are known for waiting around to see if their victim will get back up.

Black Bear Attack: Carry bear pepper spray. As with the grizzly bear, bear pepper spray should be your first line of defense in a bear attack. Stand your ground and make lots of noise. Black bears often bluff when attacking. If you show them you mean business, they may just lose interest. Don’t climb a tree. Black bears are excellent climbers. Climbing up a tree won’t help you out here. Fight back. If the black bear actually attacks, fight back. Use anything and everything as a weapon- rocks, sticks, fists, and your teeth. Aim your blows on the bears face- particularly the eyes and snout. When a black bear sees that their victim is willing to fight to the death, they’ll usually just give up.

The Art of Manliness has a handy disclaimer at the end saying that the website “does not encourage people to go out and find a bear to practice these skills with. Practising on your significant other will not do either,”

The Girl Outdoors

The plan wasn’t always for a wander, we woke up at Cath’s folks house and decided when looking at the heavy hoar frost that it would be a stunning day for a wander. Persuading Grandma and Grandpa was done first thing, and the boys didn’t even turn round as we bolted out the door. We needed a gentle, swift wander as we didn’t want to leave the boys all day, so we headed on over to Cutthroat bridge, just up from Ladybower reservoir to park up. We were heading off to a bit of the Peaks I had not been too before, up to Strines reservoir, before heading across to an old favourite, blackhole moor and down to Derwent edge.

It’s been a while since I have been in the hills with Cath, so Monday was a bit of a dreamy day, my memories now I am back at the PC is of the chuckle of many grouse, trying to break through ice sheets whilst giggling, the silent movement of mist and cloud across the heather, and the beauty & majesty of Peak district gritstone. We’ve just been looking at some of the photos we have taken, and it’s lovely to share a smile and memories we have had together again of the hills. Time to plan some more dates, it’s been too long.

It may look like a bunch of slightly crazed people running around in a muddy field but it’s actually a hardcore British Military Fitness run. In which you, erm, well you run round a muddy field. There are obstacles too. The website promises that “All of our courses are wet, muddy and challenging. Along the way you’ll find ditches, water, mud, trees and plenty of hills! You will get dirty, and your trainers will never look the same again!”

Sounds like a challenge.

The March runs are happening in unconfirmed locations in the north of England (5th March) and London (26th March) and cost £20.

You can find out more on their website.

There’s a video too, if you don’t believe us about the mud.

The Girl Outdoors