bought some cheap kit at the weekend . . .

[metalfury]

Hello, thought I'd share some of the purchases I made at the weekend.

TK Max had lots of camping stuff that I thought might be of interest. I bought the following:

Breathable/waterproof Bivy bag (Trekmates I think) - £19.99
Magnite (medium, 2 x AA one) £6.99

They had lots of other things that I didn't really need, but was very well priced, e.g. 2-3 man emergency shelter, pots pans, kettles, head torches, tarp, knives, gaitors, lamps, walking poles, shelters, dry bags, etc

Also visted the 99p shop and found a folding trowel, and 20m of 'paracord'.

I'm not expecting anything to be top of the range, but if you've got a limited budget and a bit of knowledge of what is good/not good there were some bargains to be had!

 

[whats wrong with you all]

i saw the bivi bags in there, thought they looked like a good deal. post on here how it goes

 

[yomperalex]

I went in recently and got the mini maglite - 4.00

I saw the bivvi bag and did consider it. any chance of a review?

Alex

 

[BPR_MiK]

Yeah give us a review of the bivvy bag please

 

[Rabbitsmacker]

tk maxx also had some really nice waterproof softshell gaitors. was really tempted at £15 and they were a good fit.

 

[metalfury]

I will post how I get on with the bivvy bag - was tempted by the gaitors too (I think they were even cheaper if you went for the green ones rather than black!)

In the meantime here's a couple of reviews from others:

http://www.outdoorsmagic.com/forum/forummessages.asp?v=1&urn=5&utn=33525&umn=

I tried the bivvy bag last night and it worked pretty well. The temperature was below freezing and the inside of the tent/fly was iced up. There was no condensation inside the bivvy except where my breath had condensed due to pulling both sleeping bag and bivvy over my face. I'm not really surprised, I didn't expect it to be as breathable as my goretex bivvy and shouldn't have pulled it around my face although I'm curious about the weight of the basic MOD mummy shaped bivvy bags. If anyone has one they could weigh I'd appreciate it.

I wanted to make sure there was a big difference between the outside temperature and the temperature inside the bivvy so used 2 sleeping mats, a POE Peak Oyl Lite full length self inflate with a Millets dual layer (4 season?) CCF mat on top which was a really warm combination, I used my PHD Minim 500 and wore a full 'Serious' synthetic baselayer. I imagine that should have been enough to encourage condensation inside the bivvy bag.

All in all it's was worth £20, it's light at 311g inc stuffsack and packs down to about the size of a 500ml bike bottle.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B002067S6G/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_summary?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Its faired well after a decent amount of use and I only planned on using it every now and then as a lightweight emergency shelter but its served me well and kept me protected to a level i wasnt expecting considering the price. I'd definitely recommend this bag to others looking for a cheaper solution.

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bivi-bags-trekmates-alpkit-mag-review

trekmates was narrow and cost about 12 quid if i remember, i got a hunka from alpkit at the outdoors show for a tenner two weeks ago(slight second) but thats quite narrow too compared to my army surplus one. trekmate was lightest on test but that was partly due to lack of material i.e. narrowness.

 

[spandit]

I find the £ shop paracord is pretty good - there's another cord inside the outer braiding, not just loose fibres