2026 Great South West Walk
Packed bag for the GSWW
Due to my father’s careers I spent a lot of time travelling overseas as a child. Then as adults for various reasons we both spent a lot of time travelling both for work and recreation. As a result we are both reasonably good at packing. Mind you, my packing style isn’t pretty, particularly compared to Gill’s; she’s more of a ‘fold it’ type of packer where I’m more of a ‘stuff it’ type.
One of the packing habits we have long held is that we always do an initial pack and then the next day pull it all apart and start all over. Yesterday’s pack, including 2.5 litres of water, totalled 19.03kg. Today after disassembling my pack and going through everything with a fine tooth comb, I managed to get my pack weight down to 17.6kg, a drop of 1.43kg. Not a huge amount by any means but close to my preferred (arbitrary) maximum weight of 17.5kg.
So how did I manage to drop this weight? First and foremost out of pure habit I packed my cold weather sleeping bag because traditionally I tend to hike in late winter. I then proceeded to add my new ‘shoulder season’ sleeping bag that I will be testing that weighs less and squashes down even smaller than my main sleeping bag. Removing my heavier weight sleeping bag was the biggest individual weight drop even though it’s not a heavy bag.
Then I realised I packed an extra 2 pair of socks, 5 pairs in total with what I was wearing, so there went 2 pairs. Still on the clothing, I swapped out a heavy weight merino layer and added in a lighter weight option.
All these changes, no matter how small all add up!
Given I am traveling on public transport I’m using a heavy grade duffle bag which will stay at my Portland accomodation until I return so my final task was to dissemble my pack and then layer it this bag. In going through this process one thing I realised I was missing is that I use lycra gaiters on most of my hikes. I thought I had 2 and realised that one of them had died on my last big hike so after a quick phone call to check availability, it’s a quick trip into my local outdoor store in the morning.
Due to my father’s careers I spent a lot of time travelling overseas as a child. Then as adults for various reasons we both spent a lot of time travelling both for work and recreation. As a result we are both reasonably good at packing. Mind you, my packing style isn’t pretty, particularly compared to […]