I bought the 65 litre rucksack (“black please, not pink or
anything” said my teenage son) and stared at the kit list in horror. Once the
sleeping bag, bivvy bag, roll-mat, waterproof trousers, spare jumper, spare
gloves, multiple pairs of socks and underpants had all gone into the bag, there
wasn’t much room left for the other vital stuff such as food and the very
random stuff such as a scratchy pan scrub and tea-towel.
I found a dry sack for vital things such as matches,
plasters and spare torch batteries, but what food to pack? For someone who can
empty the bread-bin in a day and make a serious dent in the contents of the
fridge, my son was curiously uninterested in what he planned to eat. “Just
noodles and biscuits” he suggested.
Well, that was no good, so we embarked on a tasting session:
boil-in-the-bag dinners were tracked down on the internet and tested in our
kitchen (for the record, the Wayfarer chicken curry was not too bad) and lists
of snacks were drawn up. At the last minute, I threw in two packets of Super Noodles
just in case.
The night before the expedition, my son started to pack his
rucksack. An exchange by Messenger with his team-mates ensued. “Is a10kg
rucksack normal?” asked one of the girls, sounding worried. My son weighed his
– it was 12 kilos and still being packed. Then there was an emergency pitta
bread purchase: apparently one of the team was bringing paté. This was proving to be a very
middle-class D of E expedition.
With no agreement on who was going to carry the tent, off he
went the next morning, looking for all the world as if he would be gone for a
fortnight, so much stuff was crammed into his bag.
Three days later, we are both much the wiser. What did we
learn?
Well, the super noodles got eaten and at least one of the
boil-in-the-bag meals is back in the cupboard (five minutes is too long to wait,
apparently).
Pop tarts do not travel well – they turn to crumbs quite
easily. All those Himalayan mountaineers who swear by them as a boost when
climbing forgot to mention that they were probably frozen solid in their
packaging.
Little cheeses in their red waxy shells go down a treat.
Teenagers do not use bivvy bags to cover their sleeping bags
in a leaky tent, although they will later wish they had.
Finally, it was pointless packing lots of spare clothes: only
the socks got changed. Mothers of teenage boys take note...
