Bookpacking’s Blog

Yesterday evening found Bookpacking playing with a new toy in the woodland of Wimbledon Common. Sometimes the simplest of things can bring hours of enjoyment, and for £4 or so, we bought a sturdy looking compass from the local Aladaddin’s Cave that is Lidl, and headed off into the bush. The little boy inside takes very little prompting to appear, and with our new low-tech gadget, childhood memories came rushing back of family camping holidays with mysterious forests that had to be explored and hills that had to be conquered.

As people look for cheaper leisure activities – eg not buying a few rounds in a pub and waving goodbye to £50 in a couple of happily hazy hours – Bookpacking is predicting an upswing in activities like hiking and camping. Already surfing a festival wave, more and more people are discovering the joys of life under canvas. There’s nothing like that first cup of tea (remember the slogan: “Tea; best drink of the day”?). Especially when you’ve faffed on for a half-hour to make it – this the very definition of deferred gratification.

And the great outdoors is, well, great. Last night, surrounded by birdsong and devoid of people, it was hard to believe this was Zone 3, well inside the M25. If travel is often about escape, maybe we don’t always need to spend a  huge amount on airfares to find such solicitous solitude if we look harder at home.

And best of all, some sharp compass work brought us right to the final waypoint of the evening, the Fox & Grapes. A cute pint (served only a few degrees below room temperature), we aren’t being obtuse when we say this angle is our favourite segment of the hiking experience; the very apex of this little Boys Own adventure.*

Hi-Tec walking boots from £40; Karrimor boots similar at Field & Trek sale; compass £4 Lidl; OS map typically £7; Berghaus waterproof from £50 online, or c. £150 for Gore-Tex lined; walking trousers c. £30 from Blacks.

* apologies, but what’s the point in having your own blog if you can’t insert the occasional awful pun?

Every cloud has a silver lining, and for the ever-frugal Bookpacking that means that there are some cracking deals to be found as the overextended find themselves making new holes in those ever-tightening belts, and even the well-placed cut their outgoings as they monitor the uncertain economy.

Sipping a delicious 80p cup of “Flat Broke” (8 oz. of filter topped with hot milk, doncha know) in Brick Lane Coffee, we might use that caffeine to suppress our appetite for a few hours. But even then, Marks and Spencer are at hand to offer the £2 meal deal (sandwich, drink, crisps).

And falling upon a couple of hidden-gem hostelries amongst the mews of Marylebone, we were reminded that Samuel Smith’s pubs are more common than you might think in central London. They are uniformly cheap; £1.88 for a delicious pint of bitter? Now that’s t’ good Yorkshire thrift lad.