Hiking 370km on the Cape Wrath Trail, Scotland | Kit, planning, logistics, food, and top tips

this summer i cycled paddleboarded and hiked all the way from the bottom to the very top of scotland and i called it the scottish adventure triathlon i hiked the cape wrath trail a 370 kilometer long distance walk from fort william to the most northwesterly point of mainland britain cape wrath it's boggy it's mage infested but it's absolutely incredible and because i survived it i thought i'd tell you how [Music] you don't have majors in wales what the hell's going on you don't need to come and be in the video just because i'm talking about scotland hello shamai grab yourselves a coffee or an alternative beverage of your choice also drinking it from a saucepan is optional in this video i'm going to tell you about how i survived the cape wrath trail and i don't think survived is too much of a strong weird so this is going to be more than just a kit video i'm going to answer some of the big questions that people usually have before doing the cape wrath trail such as how did you do food did you resupply did you send yourself food how did you charge all your electrical items what did you pack how did you find the navigation where did you poo is that one maybe not i'll be honest this probably is going to get a little bit personal so if you're not comfortable with talking about poo and pants then so i asked for questions on instagram as well and the number one question that i got asked was how much did your kit weigh so i took a 65 liter pack and spoiler alert i am not a lightweight packer so i didn't weigh the thing before i went i packed last minute and i did not need to put that on a scale to tell me that it weighed a ton but the other thing is my pack weighs a very healthy 70 tons but i have now weighed it because so many people asked and i don't know if i'm mortified at how bad i am at lightweight parking or like more impressed i actually carried it 370 kilometers what i'm gonna do is tell you the things in this video that i wouldn't take if i did it again and the things that you wouldn't need to take if you weren't filming this for youtube because i could probably ditch about a kilo and a half in battery packs i'm not gonna lie so without further ado the base weight of my pack not including food and water but everything else that's in there including the pack itself stop beating around the bush sarah and tell the damn people how much you carried 15.3 kilograms 15.3 50 50 15.3 kilograms base weight that is shocking so just for context if 15.3 kilograms doesn't mean to you that you've basically carried an elephant on your back for the cape raft trail most people would aim for under 10 i would say as a base weight for something like this some super super ultra light packing people would probably be able to get it under five kilograms but honestly they must be walking in a thong like i don't know how they do that i haven't got time in my life to be cutting toothbrushes in half and like freezing my tits off at night in no tent it kind of comes down to your choice but 15.3 is a little excessive but like i said i'll tell you what i wouldn't take again and i survived so it can't be that bad [Music] so this is my little seeky foamy thing it was literally like um a few quid from go outdoors i think it was i never usually take this type of thing but actually it was really useful um i stayed in this like deer stalkers hurt the one night and there was water like pissing through it and this was handy just on the floor so i could like stand on it when i was trying to get like in and out of my sleeping bag um because that was a mission and a half because it was like a tiny little thin bench thing which i had to fall off anyway useful and would take again um so in the bottom evan packs differently i've always packed similar things in the bottom of my pack i always have my sleeping bag in the bottom i actually really up i forgot to put this in a dry bag which is just insanely stupid like i always put this in a dry bag even just on like a one night wild camp i put this in a dry bag unless it's you know like definitely not gonna rain um yeah put your sleeping bag in a flip and dry bag especially if it's at the bottom because you put that down in the rain and it gets wet anyway i managed to like after like a few days to get a carrier bag but um it did get wet a couple of times which is just annoying i don't know why i'm getting it out anyway it's it's the rab ascent 500. it is a down sleeping bag which you don't want to get wet um yeah i've had it for years i can't remember what this the rating is on it but um it probably is one of the like slightly warmer i think most people would probably take like a 400 considering i did it in august but i only have one sleeping bag so that's what i took um then i have the thermarest neoair it's the yellow mustardy colored one um i haven't had this that long actually and i've been through a lot of camping mats because they really piss me off like they're actually quite hard to buy this thing isn't cheap but i'm actually really glad i brought this now bought it now because it is the best one i've had so far so yeah obviously i would take that again uh little pillow never used to take these either why do i keep trying to get these things out you don't need to see it um i don't know do you want to see it let me see if you want um actually i can't remember what it's called so we need to get out so i can actually read the thing uh made in china uh that's all the label says oh trichology checkology i never normally have these and normally just use like a bag of clothes but actually this is really good um so it's really small you just blow it up wood would take again um oh silk sleeping bag liner it's the rab one the silk mummy uh didn't use it i mean it was august i think i was like over again taking this but i usually always take this when i'm wild camping but then most of the time i'm wild camping like up high where it's a bit colder whereas on the trail there was a lot of like camping and glens and quite low down so i never needed it because i was never cold actually tell a lie i used it when the sleeping bag got wet i didn't get right into the bottom of the sleeping bag i left like the bottom bit like empty because that bit was wet so i had it like just up to like there and then i had this on my top bit but i could have just thrown my down jacket would i take this again if it wasn't august probably would flies again um but like if i was doing it in august again no i was warm in the night i didn't need it and whilst we're on the subject of sleep and recovery i'm really comfortable now in here can i just do the rest of the video from my sleeping bag i really did try to prioritize my sleep on this trail i was very aware that if i was going to end up hiking my arse off until the end of the day and then getting up super early and hiking my ass off again the next day i was just going to be borrowing time from the days ahead of me all the time so i tried to get myself a cut off every day depending on where i was or if i was going to be hiking late into the evening i would then give myself slightly extra in the morning like not a lion we're not talking a sunday lying like you know but just like an extra hour or half an hour just to give myself a little bit more recovery and i think it made a massive difference i am terrible for like really pushing myself and kicking my own ass into the ground on stuff like this so in my head i imagined like a graph this is highly scientific now right this is like your energy and recovery levels and after day one it's dipped to there but then it's come back up to there then after day two is dipped to there and it's come up not as high as day one but still pretty high day three is dipped a bit lower but it's still coming up pretty high and over the course of the trail yeah the general pattern is that you are getting more fatigued but you're always still gonna have enough to keep going now conversely if you kick your own ass on day one it drops down to here and your recovery only comes up to there because you're hanging out your hoop on day two it comes all the way down to here and then it only comes back up to there because right now you're dying on day three you've hit the floor and you're almost dead the next morning you need cpr to start hiking do you know what i mean you just can't do that it seems really obvious but it's very easy to get carried away and just be like oh i just won't eat right now or oh i won't have a drink or oh i won't stop and sort my feet out because they're hurting you know you've got to as soon as you think something like that i'm hungry i'm thirsty my foot hurts you've got to do something about it and that is probably the best piece of advice that i can give you smidge absolutely bloody vital let me tell you don't get avon skin so soft they change the formula it does not now repel the midi pidgeys if you go in august it's the worst time for midges you'll see when i end up my videos they were an absolute freaking nightmare they let they definitely add like a huge layer a huge like winged flying layer like literally you know on cartoons when like you see like a black cloud of flies or bees or whatever coming over on the cartoon i'm not joking it was like that i am not exaggerating and you'll see that my videos so smidge absolutely vital doesn't always work but i think it does help um and in the beginning i wasn't just putting on every day but i suddenly realized like you have to so just just put it on preventatively every morning um because i think it helps with ticks and stuff as well definitely get that would take again uh gaffer tape duct tape whatever you want to call it did i use this dunno probably would take again always take anyway because it's handy um gas i had this size on my stove at the start and i used this in about 10 days i think maybe slightly for nine or ten days this was empty um so i had another gas and i actually had one of the bigger ones which is like probably twice the size of this which is on my stove now and i didn't use all of that like i didn't even i probably used half of it maybe not even half of it um and i helped someone else out who i met on the trail who had run out of gas and i helped him out a couple of times because we crossed paths a couple of times so um if i was doing it again probably just two of these size ones not the bigger one because i came back with loads of gas um and you'll i'll tell you about how much i was cooking as well so that for context that makes kind of sense um powder talcum powder 100 wood take again i'm going to park it there because i'm going to tell you about my foot routine but i'll wait till i get to the other foot stuff that's get confused um this is a guilty one baby wipes i do hate them because it's so wasteful like they are disposable i only buy the um biodegradable plastic free ones but they still come in a plastic packet they're still something that you're throwing away i don't use them for like normal world camps like you know just little couple of days or whatever but for the kate brass trail you just need a clean ass man like i'm not ain't gonna dress this up you wanna wipe your butt poles trekking poles absolutely loved them never used trekking poles before but actually that's a lie i've used one once i hiked the gr20 trail in corsica years ago um with the university author training corps a number of us ended up coming down with d and v like halfway through um i definitely left my dignity on that trail i'm not gonna lie like when you've had squirty shits behind trees at every opportunity in the mountains you just lose all dignity was that too much information i don't care um so these are the alp kit um carbon marathon something or other i think they're marathon hang on let me just stop trying to make up and actually read it it does stay on here somewhere oh wait i need to construct it because it says it up there okay alp kit carbon marathon so they fold up as you've just seen um they're really easy to put together amazing like absolutely would never do a long distance trail where you're carrying loads of weight without poles ever again so good um and these ones alp kit if you're not familiar with the brand these were gifted to me so thank you very much alpka um but they're not like massively overpriced in fact they're really reasonable and these are the marathon racer ones so they're mainly for like ultra runners and stuff so i was a little bit worried are they going to be strong enough but i wanted something super light which is why i went for these and do not regret them for a second these are so strong like i'm not gonna lie i put these things through the absolute mill i was using them as like crutches pretty much like i felt like i had four legs at times um i catapulted myself across bogs with them i was like sticking them in rocks getting them stuck yanking them out like i was not careful like i've scratched them a lot but they were so strong so good absolutely love them definitely recommend them definitely would take again water so i took a camelback that is a two liter camelbak and my waterwell bottle and then for filtration so water is not a problem well i say water is not a problem water wasn't a problem for me on the cape breath trail the only time i started to like mildly think about water a little bit more was towards the end because it did dry off but it was still fine however i would say if it was like dry weather for a prolonged period you would i don't think you'd struggle but you'd have to think about it a little bit more i could literally just held it like that and it would have filled within three seconds like there was enough water and i never had to plan where i was going to get water it was around every corner and i i always pretty much camped quite near water or if i wasn't right next to the water then i would just get it just before and because you don't want to be having to traipse back out of your tent not if you do it in august because of the midges uh come on to that and so yeah my water well bottle with the filter i also took the straw which is in there now because i took some rehydration tablet things uh like electrolyte tablets so i filtered water with my other filtration device poured it into there and then put a rehydration tablet in there if i wanted so i obviously didn't want to drink that through the filter so with this when you put the filter on you just literally scoop the water from the water source and then drink it through the top and it comes through the filter so i'm an affiliate of waterwell the company so if you do want to pick up one of these please use my link which is in the description um it doesn't get you any discount unfortunately but it does make me a tiny little cut so i appreciate it if you do want one um then please use my link um so yeah there was that the camelbak and then my other filtration device so the reason i had two filtration devices is because a i don't ever trust one one water's quite important so you know and two because i i want a bag one for filtering the water for using for like cooking and stuff and it was actually really handy to have the two things so this is what i filtered water to put into the camelbak for and then that one was obviously just separate and i would fill up the camelbak but then if i just really wanted to be quick and just get a bit more water then i would just use this and also i tend to drink and drink and drink from the camelbak and then not realise when it's about to run out and then if i'm not near any water then it's a pain in the butt whereas if i had this filled as well then that would run out without me realizing it was going to run out and then i still had that does that make sense i feel like i'm just rambling anyway this is the platypus um something or other i don't know the platypus filter anyway comes with this bag which you fill up from the dirty water and then that attaches onto there and then it's full of water and then you just basically just squeeze this was great i brought this literally before the trail and it was awesome would definitely recommend and use again both of those and obviously the camelback my knife always take this just in case there's any weird people and also i cut off i cut off the top of a lucas a bottle which i bought in fort william because basically the midges if you go in august right the midges are horrendous it is their worst time of year once you're inside that tent you ain't coming back out right so if you need a pee you're peeing in that tent so i cut the top off a um lucas aid bottle using that so i did use it didn't stab anyone not this time um my hair torch it's the petzl arctic had ages it's fine uh aqua pack phone case did actually use this um don't normally put my phone in anything because like iphone's meant to be waterproof these days and i just don't bother because i like to live on the wild side but i did actually use that because it was very wet um gloves didn't actually use these i can't find the other one but hey montaigne gloves didn't actually use them took them because i have reynards and even in august my hands can just like touch a rock and be like i'm gonna die so um took them didn't use them probably would take again because my hands are unpredictable uh sponges these are a hazy outdoor special so hate outdoors i watched his video before i went he used these like spongy things um as his like towel and like to wash himself and stuff i don't know if he used them to wash himself actually but use it as a towel so i think he only took like two but i took like four they were really handy for like wiping down the tent in the morning if it was wet wiping three million midges off the tent in the morning oh well a half-assed job anyway because you couldn't get them all off um but yeah washing and drying myself um in the rivers used them um what else did i use them for just loads of stuff really handy didn't take a towel just use these put like four of them spread throughout my bag definitely recommend those would use again oh the midge net literally the life-saving piece of equipment so this is like a full jumper one and i got it on a website which i think is literally called something like midgenetjumpers.com or something like that anyway google midge net jumper if you want one um so good like better than just having the head net because like if you've got a t-shirt on and stuff they couldn't get your arms it comes with like little mittens as well but i didn't wear them that much because you can't really do anything like you get them stuck in the tent zip and stuff um so i sacrificed my hands most of the time but yeah amazing definitely if you go in to scotland in august get yourself one of these i'm not even joking it's so good or at least a head net you need something trust me my tent the msl hubba nx one person tent so i kept like the internal bit on the inside of my bag pegs and poles on the outside and then the outer fly sheet fly sheet where it's called the outer sheet of the tent i kept mostly in the front this is a great tent um really lightweight love it would use again i never ever feel the need to have a two-person tent like a lot of people will have a two-person tent even when there's only one of them i've never in life ever needed that but there were a couple of occasions on the cape breath trail where i was like a two person would be handy right now and the only reason that is is because of the midges because like i said once you're in your tent you're literally not like you can't even open the zip a bit because they're gonna come in so you almost wanted to have everything like in the actual compartment with you so that in the morning when you're packing up you could pack up like in that compartment and then only get out once you've got the midnight on obviously and you're all smidged up to take the tent down and pack that away and so and that was really difficult in a one man so yeah that's the only time i thought about having a two but i managed fine with a one and i wouldn't buy a two just for that oh these gators gatorades they're not called gatorades they're called gators so um these are really good like i i haven't used these before i bought a cheap pair relatively cheap pair trek mates um just to go outdoors special would definitely use again like really good like they just stopped stuff getting in your boots they stop like the back of your leg getting like wet when you go in a bog i mean obviously you do still get wet but like they just help a bit um and there's just like a nice little warm hug for your lower leg like i actually really enjoyed wearing them i got really like into that then didn't i anyway yeah gators love them definitely would use again um okay so my stove is in here so i just used the um msr pocket rocket i've got a lighter in there i think i took about four lighters because every bag i went into i found another lighter i just have this paranoia because i've had lighters break on me before that like i've got all the food i've got all the water i've got the stove and i get somewhere and i've got nothing to light any of it with like it renders the whole thing useless if you haven't got any fire so anyway that was a long story um i've got like the oat oex like one person pan set thing this was the big gasp yeah the msr um always put a cloth of some sort it's one of them sponges in there because i can't cope with all rattling about when you're walking so obviously yeah obviously take that again and then the thermos part is definitely a contentious one i love this pot it's got my spoon on the top so this is the only spoon that i took this fold up spoon but i definitely didn't need to take this part but would i take it again i didn't really think about it because i always take it so even when i was like stressfully lobbing food out of my bag just before i left because it was too heavy and i didn't have enough space my brain did not go through out the thermos which seems a bit ridiculous right now but the thing is right here we go here comes the excuses so in the morning i want to have a coffee and i want to have a porridge i sound like a right princess now don't i the thing is you can tip your porridge sachets into there you boil up one pot of water you pop the water in and you put the lid on and that just does its little thing and then you can have your coffee in the saucepan side here so make my coffee there and then within a few minutes this is all ready to go and you don't have to put your porridge in there but that's not really necessary is it so let me just think about the logistics of this for a sec so imagine i didn't have that right so i boil the water like this okay water's in there coffee bag is in there so we pour water in there so we've only got this left then with water already in it so we have to tip the porridge sachet into the already boiled water don't know how i feel about that mix it and then you need something to cover it otherwise it's not gonna ah i could do that kinda works to be honest it's not a full seal but my porridge would probably be okay like that okay turns out as being a slight pleb if i actually put the handle up it fits perfectly that way up on there i suppose you could stick the heat back on you could put it back on the stove and boil it and stir okay it works fine fine we don't need the thermos probably just broke it anyway so i didn't send myself a food resupply parcel which i know a lot of people do so that they don't have to carry as much from the beginning i think they usually send it to kinlochu post office which is the village shop as well i didn't do that mainly because i'm not organized enough to get that sorted beforehand so what i did was i carried enough evening meals to cover me for the entire trail enough breakfasts or so i thought but actually i changed that but we'll come on to that in a sec for the entire uh trail so the only thing i intended to resupply on the trail was the snacks that i was eating throughout the day and what i did was i wrote myself a list in the front of the guidebook which i took with me ultralight packer over here took the guidebook and i also marked it on the maps because i had the maps as well obviously the places where i would hopefully be able to resupply food and i'm going to go through them because some of them did not come into fruition and i also wrote myself a list of places where i hoped i could stop for an evening meal because i did plan to stop and have a few pub meals on the way as well and i can tell you something i'm so glad i did because i hiked so much better the day after a pub meal so i do recommend stopping for food on route if you can so my evening meals were the firepot food meals i absolutely love these fire pot food cook the food and then dehydrate it so it's proper meals it's not like processed horrible stuff it's really good and they do it in this compostable packaging which i love because it's plastic free so i don't feel as guilty about it the only difference is you don't cook it in the bag you cook it in your pot which is fine so i took 15 of those with me and i was aiming to complete the trail within around 16 to 18 days i ended up doing it in 17 days and i did actually have meals left at the end so i'll tell you in a second where i stopped for food i took porridge sachets for breakfast and i think i took 20 of these because i was thinking one a day plus if i got really hungry in the day then i could knock up a porridge on the trail however from the first day i decided that i needed two every morning but i decided that was fine because i knew that at least at lapool i would be able to get more porridge sachets so yeah i had two of those every day plus a little peanut butter sachet and this was one of the things that got sacrificed when i was stress packing last minute so i didn't take enough to have one of these every day so i was short the last few days which was horrible because i absolutely love peanut butter but hey there are worse things in life than not having peanut butter with your breakfast i mean not much worse things in life but a little bit worse i took enough coffee to cover me on the whole trail so i used these purple coffee bags i wasn't going to faff about with a coffee maker or any of that stuff i mean i was packing heavy enough as it was i wasn't going to take off aeropress as well but these are great they're completely plastic free percola is the coffee brand that i usually drink so yeah i took tea bags plastic free ones can't remember the name of the brand for some reason but they're in a green box and i use them like every day of my life i'm not sure why i can't remember that and then there's my snacks which i was eating throughout the day which i can't remember exactly how much i started the trail with but it was enough i hoped to get me to the first point where i thought i could buy more so obviously depends what route you take because there's a lot of root variations on the cape wrath trail but for me these were the places i had written down i'm just going to stop myself there because i really waffled this so in order of appearance on the trail numero uno the cafe at the glen finland visitor center if you're lucky enough you'll see the harry potter train whilst you're eating a burger please note it is a visitor center so probably shuts about five o'clock grief die there's a b b and t rooms at the head of lochhorn when i got there it was shut shattering my dreams of pie and chips i've heard it's not very reliable so don't rely on it shield bridge was meant to be my first resupply point there's a shop on google maps that i can assure you is not a shop and the guidebook tells you there's a petrol station on the north side of the loch which is probably fine if it's not a sunday and in covered times it was shut however i got an amazing evening meal in the kingtail lodge hotel bear in mind i think they didn't start serving till about five and i also stayed in the shielbridge campsite that night for my first shower no more vl sounds like no more fear number four in german strathcarin is another tiny place with a post office that opens for about an hour a week and looks like something from carbon fever so obviously that was shot when i got there so i raided the chocolate bar selection in the strathcarin hotel and waited two hours until they started serving food after 6 p.m worth it numero apparently that's italian hinlaku is the first place where i got to do a proper resupply the service station does really good food i was there by four in the afternoon but according to a quick google search it shuts at hapa 6 and is not open on a sunday so watch out for those sundays i'm pretty sure the cafe shot earlier as well you've also got the village shop and post office which is where i said people send their resupply parcels to and the hotel which does food after 6pm and you need to book it's busy there's also a campsite there which i didn't stay in but i met a couple of people who did and i don't think they booked nom your shiest apparently that's russian anyway urlapool is your biggest and most reliable place to resupply and get food that's if you choose to divert to it it's like a 12 kilometer diversion off the trail which i did choose to do by definition it's a village but it's like a typical small town you've got a big test goes there which is great for resupply a boots an outdoor shop loads of places to get food and a campsite which i did stay on no more zeva that was dutch alt oyckelbridge has a hotel which apparently you can get food at i can tell you nothing about it unfortunately because i didn't stop there sorry she's slow awesome sounds like she's so awesome that was slovak they know see they know this is the london stores naked loch verde i didn't actually need anything but it's kind of a rite of passage for cape ross trailers to stop here very interesting shop pretty cool if you wanted a proper meal you could divert to kinloch baby i didn't do that i wanted to push on and get to sandwood bay for my last night of camping and have time to get naked and run in the sea as you do right this is my power supply this is way more than you would need if you were not gonna film the entire trip these are the power gorillas they're from a company called power traveler so these are flippin expensive these are like a hundred quid each um but they're pretty meaty i think they do about 10 phone charges each i'll i'll put on the screen what capacity they are but yeah i took two of those because obviously i was charging my phone and also mainly for the gopro battery so that i can actually film it so you would not need this much power as a normal human two of those man that is a lot and also oh this is a funny one so this is the power traveler solar panel which works with these power gorilla things i did not use this so in the weight that i'm gonna do after which you could take if you take out all the stuff that i took that you don't need i'm gonna take all of this out and i'm just gonna replace it with the weight of like one of those ralph power like 20 000 milliamp hours or whatever it is and for recharging right so the bothies are amazing and some of the estate ones so not the mountain both the association run ones but some of the actual estate bathes have power in them twice i managed to charge my phone in aborty the one at glenn finnen uh just after the viaduct via duct has power supply in it one of the sockets doesn't work the other one does at this current time so the barrisdale one is another uh private estate bothy they asked for like a honesty box donation of five pound in there but it's got water it's got a toilet and it's got power so i charge my phone in there so i had two phone chargers without having to use these and but yeah when i got to liverpool i stayed on a campsite on the ellerpool campsite and although they don't officially have places for you to charge stuff what i did was once i felt like most people have gone to bed on the campsite because it's quite a busy campsite it's not the type of place you want to be leaving stuff around especially when these battery packs are worth 100 pounds um but i did i snuck into the laundry room which by the way i washed my clothes so i was like 10 days in i think at that point when i got to lapool i literally washed my clothes but yeah i snuck into the laundry and behind the washing machines i didn't unplug anything i didn't unplug any washing machines but there was plugs that weren't in use so i hid one of these plugged in behind the washing machine and just really hoped for the best fully kind of accepting that if it got robbed as my own fault and then i set an alarm for 4 am so i could go back in and swap them over because obviously i only had the one lead so i managed to get complete fully charged on both of these when i was in liverpool and i knew that would see me through to the end then and so yeah if you do go to other pool and you go to the alabama campsite it's at your own risk but you can hide stuff in the laundry room right clothing um there's definitely a couple of things i would take out of here but not a lot um right stop oh my god look at that face what the actual anyway twice i filmed this bit about clothing right and i waffled so much both times that this video would be like four hours long this has been such a lesson in how to do a kit video if nothing else so here's what i wore on the trail here's some labels so you know what they all are you can pause the video now if you want to have a look at what each thing is and then here's the relevant and useful bits of waffle hat this isn't the hat i started the cape raft trail with i lost my hat um on on like a few days in i was absolutely human but um so i was hatless for like quite a few days anyway i bought this hat another pool and i really like it um i think hayes outdoors actually had this on his video and that wasn't a conscious thing like i didn't go in there and go oh hey that door's had this but this one is so light and like so foldable and so dryable and it was really comfortable as well it's just like really soft on your head that i was like nah mate i'm definitely getting that so it looks like i i'm a haze outdoors carbon copy with this but actually his green um but no yeah good good hat like that and then these leggings oh my god these are amazing flora arvin can you even see me i don't know i can't tell um fjallraven uh abisco trekkin tights i think they are i bought these literally like the week before i went because usually when i go hiking i just i don't wear actual hiking leggings i just wear like my 2xu um like gym type leggings that is going to change because these are amazing they're not cheap but i tell you what they're flipping with it they're amazing um so they have like these kind of bits on the knees so that you you know so you don't wreck them same on the butt um and the main thing with them is they just dry so quickly so like they're warm enough um they're really comfortable they've got pockets so my phone goes in that side and then there's a little zippy one there and there's one on the inside i keep i'm jumping all over the place here aren't i anyway the main thing is they dry so quickly um which my like gym type leggings just would not have dried like these did this was the only pair of leggings i took um apart from just what i wore in a tent which i'll come on to in a second um but yeah so when they got wet they needed to dry um they were occasionally still a bit wet the next day but just nothing like what my gym leggings would have been and also they don't hold smells like my gym leggings would like my gym leggings feel like they're so tight and like up and about yeah that they like you know you ain't showering that much like you do smell all right like you smell but these just don't seem to hold the smell um so i did these are amazing these are amazing and i absolutely love them um and if i can afford it i'm gonna buy another pair oh yet boots these are my absolute favorite things in the world but what i would say about footwear it's quite a bone of contention some people go for trail shoes some people go for boots the thing is your feet are going to get wet anyway so on the cape raft trail i don't care if you're wearing thigh high waders you're still going to get wet feet well maybe if you wore those you might be okay but that wouldn't be the comfiest so the number one thing you need to think about when you're thinking about your footwear is are you gonna be okay in them when they're wet and the thing with these bad boys is they were absolutely as comfy maybe even more comfy when they were wet as what they are when they're dry because these are a minimalist footwear they don't have like a really thick foam inside them like normal boots so they don't soak up any water so they don't feel minging as soon as they're wet they don't get any heavier because they're not holding to the water they're super lightweight the grip is amazing they're brilliant for crossing rivers and any kind of rock work because your foot can actually curve on the rock rather than just being like a platform on top of it your feet can't move and yeah i could honestly go on like all day about these boots because i absolutely love them yeah wouldn't choose anything else but like i said when you're choosing footwear for it just think about how you're going to feel when they're wet next up this is what i packed again you can pause it if you want to read all of the labels and here's what i wouldn't take if i did it again at the same time of year i ditched the mid layer because i didn't need it it wasn't cold enough i ditched one of the pairs of underwear because i didn't need two spare pairs if i wanted to get really lightweight i could ditch the spare t-shirt and just live in the one to be honest i could ditch the spare sports bra as well oh cold wet stinky sports bras anyway yep ditch that as well jesus there's nothing left but then that is how you be lightweight and i could have done it without these things easily right i know what you're thinking sarah why are you not ditching that thin base layer top i have a rule that i always keep one full set of base layers for 10 and tent use only that means they can never come out in the day so if i'm ditching the mid layer i don't have any other long sleeve options for in the day apart from my goaltex jacket so i'm keeping that thin base layer in don't judge me and speaking of smells obviously my pants were on the front line and i got these new pants right they're called booty absolutely hate the name but loved the pants i loved them for similar reasons to the leggings they dry a lot quicker than cotton does and they just seem to stay cleaner and even if you want to just dip the under under cracker how do i how do i how do i explain this if the under bit if you want to dip that in a river and just give it a little bit of a rub preferably not upstream of like someone filling their water bottle down the bottom but if you want to do that just to give them a little fresh nip they dry out quite well by the next day obviously they're still a little bit damp but like i don't mind wearing dump i don't mind wearing damp pants apparently um but compared to you know like damp cotton this type of material is just like yeah it's kind of like when you have to put wet bikini bottoms on like it's not as bad as putting wet pants on do you know what i mean this is my waterproof jacket it's a gore-tex rab jacket and some people use like more like trail running type jackets for this to be ultra lightweight clearly i'm not ultra lightweight so didn't um love this jacket i've had it for like i don't know a couple of years now i think the reason i love it so much is because it has a massive hood it's actually helmet compatible but my head is helmet sized so i love this because you can get like fully encased in it and like have my cap on as well so that like no water gets in my face um yeah this is awesome i'm so rambly right now it's unreal okay my rob down jacket it's like the rab electron or whatever i've had it for years it's absolutely battered it's got tape all over it um but it's fine um i still use it so it's great and yeah if time gets wet it's gonna stay wet but i just didn't let it get wet this was just for in my tent at night like this didn't come out in a day i knew i wasn't gonna need it in the day i'd got other stuff plus it was like warm enough anyway so this was literally just for in the tent if i needed it okay socks so i obviously had the bridgedale ones that i've got on and then i had another pair of bridgedale ones exact same pair so both of those were for hiking and this pair were for hiking and then my final pair was a tent slash emergency pair i didn't massively need to wear these in the tent to be honest because i wanted to air my feet didn't really want to enclose them in anything if i could help it but if i was cold i would have i did put them on a few times um but they were mainly like emergency socks i always feel like you need just one one pair that are completely dry throughout so that if you were like getting towards the end and everything was like soaked and stinking and horrible and like just life was a dry pair of socks i just feel like could be a lifesaver so yeah emergency socks yeah so so three pairs of actual hiking for in the day that's excessive probably but i wouldn't change it because you can't dry stuff like if you want to give yourself any chance of having like less than 70 percent soap and socks every day then you need three pairs and because i was hanging it looks ridiculous but i was hanging them on the outside of my pack and if it was pissing down i was having that them underneath the um cover thing i feel like there's midges here have they bloody followed me from scotland do they just come out of something they've just come out of my back we don't have majors in whales what the hell's going on you don't need to come and be in the video just because i'm talking about scotland oh jesus i'm gonna have to go soon anyway um so yeah it's two pairs of bridgedale ones and then these which i bought just before i went they're the 1000 mile ones and they're supposed to be like um guaranteed blister free and obviously i didn't get blisters but it's not down to these socks at all they're like the double layer ones which i just find kind of weird and i wouldn't take these again they were worse at drying out just because the two layers i think and they kind of look weird they look like like look at them they look like some kind of weird granny's like stocking so when i hung them up on the outside of my bag they just look weird anyway it's not really that important but i no i wouldn't take them again i just take another pair of these ones to be honest so i would take three pairs of day hiking socks again shoot me but i would oh i also took these um vibram five fingers had them for absolute years these are what i used to wear before the days of the viva barefoots stop wearing these really because you can't just wear these in life because they look a bit weird um but i took these really for the river crossings i only used them once for river crossings because other than that i just kept my boots on um so because your feet are wet anyway so what's the point um but they were handy like when i was in other pool and stuff because i went you know i left the campsite and went to the chip shop and the big tescos and stuff so they were handy for that but like were they necessary not really like you could just wear your boots and to be honest i was thinking of like when i came home but i ended up coming home with my boots um because i managed to dry them out a bit like when i finished so i'm gonna put them on like the don't need them pile and poo shovel you need that because you know people don't want to be stepping in your turd so for my navigation i had a combination of the paper maps which are the harvey maps specifically made for the cape rath trail so that you only need two so i actually looked into how many of the um os maps that i would need you know the one to twenty five thousand ones i counted them on amazon it was something like 14 maps or something i was like i'm not carrying 14 maps so i got the harvey ones you only need two they literally just show like the little sections that you need of the maps because obviously you'll go in like that you don't need like that for just that bit does that make sense that makes sense to me but yeah these are really good they're 140 000 and they are waterproof i took a map case as well and i don't really know why i wouldn't take that again i don't think and before i went i also marked all of the potential food stops and potential restock points on these and also what i marked on here was a few camping spots so some i'd seen on other people's youtube videos and some were from the guidebook as well so just so i could have a rough idea of where i might want to aim to camp but it's not something that i planned out at all i kind of don't think you can well maybe you can i'm just not that type of person i'm not gonna plan exactly what i'm gonna do every day because it'll never work out i just don't have that much foresight and then i had my phone also as my gps and i use the os maps app and i've got to be honest i absolutely love it i think it's brilliant the guidebook will constantly say like oh this bit would be really hard to navigate if you know the weather came in or this bit's really hard to navigate blah blah and i know relying on an electrical device is never the right thing to do hence where i had the maps i had my compass i could take bearings if i needed to but i did not need to like my phone was fine i had plenty of power i used the the maps app a lot because it's just quicker and you don't want to be fanning around but obviously you need the skills and the maps as the backup and there were certain days where i just used the maps but for the like the hard navigation i was just using the os maps app i'll be fully honest with you and i'm not someone that's like oh you know quite old school you should never use apps because you just gotta move with the times as long as you're sensible and you know you've got other options and skills to deal with it if your phone dies or you lose it or whatever then there's nothing wrong with it it's just another tool in the toolbox if you're a plumber like would you not bother having a spanner just because like it might break do you know what i mean that was a amala do you want it but yeah i just it's a tool and i think they're amazing and why not as long as you've got the other skills and the other things then go for it so yeah i used everything why not pads because i have a uterus i've started using period pants now in normal life but because i'm not far into the journey with those i wasn't prepared to take them because of the whole like trying to wash them and stuff so i did take disposable pads took a comb um this is the toilet roll the like ones that don't have the center they sell them to you as like camping toilet roll but i swear to god you could just pull the center out of a normal toilet roll so i don't know why i bought that and i ended up with some left because we're gonna get personal again but in the beginning i was keeping this in the side of my bag so every time i was having a pee i was using this because i didn't want to make the pan smell of piss too quickly um but yeah i i gave up on that after like maybe about halfway through i was just like screw it so i ended up not really using that much of the toilet roll because when i was having a poo i'm just using the wipes too much don't care um just what you're here for right bamboo tiff brush again i'm not one of these ultra light people so i didn't cut it in half i ain't got time for that in my life and then i've got things like oh i've got toothpaste like normal mini toothpaste um hair bubbles like um lip lip stuff after bite i use that there's another lighter in there like i said i'm a little bit paranoid about it eye drops and then right little mirror i'm rustling the bags that's probably really annoying small mirror um which i took because of like checking for ticks and stuff i probably wouldn't take i don't know if i'd take that again because i just use my phone ah stuff is definitely biting me god they've come with me how am i gonna do i i need to finish this tonight but i'm going wait just put the smith on oh my god why am i saying put the smidge on and they won't get you took a pocket hand wash didn't use it took a pocket body wash i did use that because i had two showers once at shield bridge and once at uh pool so i did use the pocket body wash um leafs they're like super light um so they are worth taking fabric wash leaves because i was thinking if i needed to swill anything in the camp sites i didn't need them and because when i actually washed stuff at a la pool and they had a machine that you could get washing powder from so i won't bother with those again oh and i had shampoo ones which i've used all of basically they're kind of crap because you need to use basically like a third of the pack to actually wash your hair but that was fine because i washed it once at shield bridge once at other pool and then once after i'd finished at durness so it was fine i actually don't have a first aid kit never carry a first aid kit for anything so i bought this tiny little ultra light watertight medical kit it was off like ultralightgear.com or code uk something like that um it's it's a token gesture to be honest like it's got like plasters and like tape and like some bandages and you know those kind of general like first aid bits that if you had like a cut or something um would stop infection i don't know why my voice is going oh yeah wait cause i've talked rages i hope this isn't this is getting a bit long isn't it i'm sorry hopefully it's useful though um if you're doing the trail then i'm hoping that this is useful um yeah it's a bit of a token gesture but obviously i felt like i should have something especially because i was on my own but like if you're having a heart attack there's no defib in there do you know what i mean if you break your leg what the hell is that gonna do but you should take something didn't use any of it oh tick tick tick things definitely use the tick things i actually only had three ticks which i don't think is that bad ticks generally don't like me i've never had ticks literally until this hike um i had two on my arm and one under the strap on my sports bra and so yeah definitely the tick things you need those um oh these right these i didn't need these i did not need these so i got really paranoid about the whole blister thing and like literally about two days before i left i bought these weird like gel things like i feel like my head could go in there [Music] oh god this is kind of weird it's getting weird this is ow it's stuck oh god what have we done just uh let's move on foot care is massive this is like the number one thing i was worried about and it's something that i've like practiced for years i've done quite a few like long distance hikes never anything this long so that's why i was quite paranoid about it but it meant that i really really focus on it and i literally treated my feet like they were made from glass like if anything was gonna probably stop me getting to kate wrath it was my feet falling apart so i just knew that from the start i had to be so on it with the foot care and as a result i actually came back from the trail with not a single blister whoa rewind shall we just say that again i came back from the cape raft trail without a single blister whoop is that even a thing and it's not because i'm lucky or never get blisters in fact i'm really blister prone my heels are like the knobbliest things you've ever seen like i swear there's some kind of bone deformity there these days or like heel bunions or something doctors let me know if that's a thing anyway why am i talking about like my knobbly heels on the internet um let's move on like we kind of accept that when you're going to go and do the cape route trail your feet are going to fall apart and be annihilated let me tell you it doesn't have to be that way so prevention is always better than cure i've always taped up my heels because i know they're a blister prone area for me i've always taped them on every long distance hike that i've done but what i decided to do on this because i was so worried about it i actually used compeed from day one so it wasn't cheap i had a lot of comped with me you know the big kind of well the medium ones are called but i put comped and blister tape on my heels every single day from day one and i reckon that was a lifesaver because as soon as you get that tiny little bit of hot spot or bit of rubbing you're screwed like it's just gonna progress so the longer you can stop that happening or completely stop it happening the better off you are i kept washing my feet in cold water every single day at least once preferably at the end of the day if i could before i was getting into the tent because then i could air my feet out and stuff but it wasn't always possible because it depended where i was camping and if there was midges and blah blah so quite often i did wash them in the day as well and it's quite a nice way to have a break anyway like stop at a nice river and have a foot wash but again it depends on the weather and stuff but yeah washing my feet in cold water every day was a big one drying them off completely and then using talcum powder and i can't express to you enough how good talcum powder is on stuff like this it's not something i use in life but for trails i definitely do i also put on again in the morning before i go hiking just on my dry feet and i also sprinkle it into my socks and that's something i learned when i was in the office training corpse and it's a it's a really good tip as much as i could i was trying to air my feet out so at night i wasn't putting socks on in the tent unless i really needed to and then in the day as well if i was stopping for a bit and it wasn't raining i would take my shoes and socks off and just like air my feet out and dry my socks out as well my boots obviously played a massive part as well i would say about 40 of it was the fact that my boots are so comfy but also how i treated my feet when i was putting my boots on and off and you wouldn't think that would make that much difference but trust me it does so fully unlaced in my boots when i was going to put them on no cramming my healing and scrunching my sock off i would place my foot in as if it was made of like cotton wool push my heel towards the back of the boot and sit it in comfortably and then start lacing up tightly from the bottom and then the same when i was taking my boots off i didn't just yank them out i unlaced the boots completely and then just lifted my foot out and it is literally just treating them like they're the princesses because they were the things that were going to get me to kate ralph so and then also using the poles i think this made a massive difference because when i'm fatigued obviously my gait pattern changes and also carrying a pack changes my gate pattern and i i'm convinced that having the poles kept me more upright and by not leaning forward it was like maybe not putting as much pressure back on my heels i don't know i don't know what the science is but i just felt like having the poles kept my gate pattern and my posture more upright and just better and i'm convinced that helped me as well and also you're taking a little bit of the pressure off like your feet and stuff so the last thing i'm going to do before i finish the video which i feel like has been really long i'm sorry if it has but if you are going to do the cape left trail i think this has been quite useful says the person that made a video but i don't know let me know if it's been useful the last thing i'm going to do is answer the final questions i had on instagram so i've actually answered a lot of them already but some that i haven't so someone asked me about um travel like to and from the trail so quite luckily for me my brother lives in east kilbride which is just outside glasgow so i drove to there and left my van and then got trains up to fort william started from there obviously and then when i finished getting back from cape raft is a little bit harder but it's not as bad as you think by the way if you've not already read this i'm sure you have but if you are going to do it you need to check the firing times of cape rath because it's a live military range so you need to make sure that they're not firing at that time so you can check on the government website just google like cape raf fire end times or something it's a dot gov site um and they can decide within like 48 hours notice that they're gonna start firing but that's just like a risk you have to take when you get there when you get to the fence there's flags like if the flag is there the red flag don't go is it red i think it's red yeah so there's many buses that run from cape wrath lighthouse down to the kyle of dearness it is a bit hit and miss like you don't know what the times are going to be but because the last day is quite a short one you'll probably be at cape wrath depending on what time you leave um sandwood bay you'll be there by lunchtime or mid-morning or just after lunch or whatever but they stopped running those little mini buses probably like mid-afternoon but to be honest because i had the time i kind of wish i hadn't gotten that many bus because when i got on it and saw how stunning some of the beaches and stuff are on the cape itself like from the drive i wish i hadn't got on it because you couldn't obviously walk off if you want to and i had the time so i should have just done that so that is a bit of a regret to be honest so you do have the time maybe consider doing that but yeah it's a bit hit and miss with the mini buses like you just turn up and see if they're going to come and then you just have to see if there's space as well because obviously they're bringing people from like the kyle of dearness and they those people need to go back so it's only if there's space and it was only just about space for me on the one that i got on and i had to sit in the front like with this like old guy talking to the bus driver about their like gallstones and stuff which is great but anyway yeah like i said i kind of wish i hadn't fitted on it because i'd rather just got like i'd rather count on walk in there's an amazing bothy apparently on that north coast of cape bras so i kind of wish i'd done that i'm going to have to go back and do it and then the little ferry which goes across the carla duna so say fairy that's quite loose like it's a tiny little boat um but i think that's running as long as the mini buses are running but if you couldn't get on that you'd have to walk inland around the kyle um which would be another mission but at the end of the day like you've walked that far like if you had to do it you would do it that's how i looked at it if i had to do that i would have just done it i suppose it just depends on time anyway and then from there there's a bus called hang on a sec i forgot to say that from the other side of the ferry i walked to dearness and then stayed in the campsite for a night the far north bus i think it is i'll put the name on screen but basically they're not huge buses they're kind of minibuses and they go to either uh leg which is where i ended up going to cause it depends what day or inverness so all the way down to inverness to get the train so i went to leg and then got the train from leg to inverness and then inverness down but like i said it depends what day and you need to ring and book and i didn't know this and you can't really do that until you get up there anyway because you don't know what like when you're gonna get there and so i camped on the dearness campsite after i finished and i rung from there someone asked how did you cope with all the water if scotland like you just accept it like accept it from the start like before you go just imagine that it's going to piss down for the entire time and then any days when it doesn't it's just a bonus and to be honest i was so happy to be there like it didn't it just didn't work in to be honest like maybe if it had hammered it down for the entire thing yeah it would have been annoying i think what's the worst thing is if it's like loads of consecutive days person down which is kind of what happened to me in noida um because you just can't dry anything then which is a bit of a pain in the ass but yeah just accept that you're gonna get soaked and it's fine someone asked did anything work against the midges i think i've already gone over this but yeah the midge net isn't like a physical barrier is the only thing that like fully works and someone else said how did you cope with images same as the rain really like i just expected it i knew they were gonna be bad and because i'd watched um someone else's video eddie fitz i watched his video and he did it in august like a couple of years ago i saw how bad the images were for him so i just had that in my head so if you're gonna do it in august as well watch my videos this is not a plug for my video well it is a plug for my videos watch my videos because then you'll just expect that and then you'll just you'll just get on with it like get off me where is the bag how much fun did you have like so much i absolutely loved it and i'm not joking like there was literally only one little period of time like one afternoon where i was like get me to the lighthouse but the rest of the time i did not want it to end which again you'll see in my videos especially at the end you'll see in them people asking for tips on reducing unnecessary weight i am the wrong person to ask i'm going to tell you now actually what the reway is so currently in this moment in time i don't know what it is because i need to go home and do it but i'm going to put it on screen so this is the potential weight that my kit could have been had i not been videoing it so have like loads of battery packs and taken out all the things that i've said in this video that i don't think were necessary so this is the weight that it could have been hopefully it's quite a good number but i don't know someone's asked me about research and resources so literally just the guidebook which i read some of some of before i came um the maps just looking through the maps and knowing the route and all the both someone asked me about bothies as well like were there many bothers on the way yeah lots of both ease um and they're all marked on those cape wrath ma cape raf that's hard to say on those maps i have already answered this but i'm going to read it anyway if you wore boots and big heist manta gators do you think you would still get wet not into trainers yes you'd still get wet like i said earlier unless you're wearing like full waders you're still going to get wet so just choose something that you're going to be comfortable in i cannot hammer that home enough choose footwear that you're going to be comfortable in when it's wet someone asked me how i look after my cat i've got two housemates so if they're we kind of share they're like looking after the cat and otherwise i've got cat sitter as well and other than people asking me why i got naked at sandwood bay that's pretty much it and why did i get naked at summer bay because it was sandwich bay and it was like the last camp before kate wrath and i was buzzing and like why not so on a naked note rather than a poo note for a change i'm gonna end the video hopefully you've enjoyed this hopefully it's been useful i'm going to drop a couple of links in the description obviously in no way obliged to do this but if you have enjoyed this video or find it useful and you want to say thank you in some way i'm going to put a link to my fundraising page because the cape rath trail hike was actually part of a bigger challenge that i was doing across the whole of scotland this summer so i actually cycled paddleboarded and hiked from the bottom of scotland to the top and i was doing that for charity so i would love a little donation on the charity page if you can obviously no pressure with that whatsoever and also i've just set up a buy me a coffee.com or whatever it is account thing so if you want to drop me a little coffee that would be amazing as well but again no pressure mine is a black americano sit delicately through a midge net when i'm on the trail otherwise frothy oat milk you didn't need to know any of that i'm going to shut up now because i'm rambling thanks for watching bye and we've got a plane going over right now like should i stop okay let's let's stop i'll have it i'll be back have an interlude go get a cup of tea have a pee rush where's it going do you want to be in my video there's a plane and it's ruining my video why is there constant noise of planes like surely they're going somewhere they're not just floating about above you you off just off to spain or whatever you're doing

Channel: Fit for Adventure

Views: 5,247

Rating: 4.9832635 out of 5

Keywords: Cape Wrath Trail, Scotland, Hiking, kit, tips, how to

Id: j4V6NdwUGA8

Length: 65min 20sec (3920 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021