Van life, hiking and outdoor adventures across Europe
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Category: Hiking
Hiking routes, gear, and practical guides from someone who actually does this – multi-day backpacking in Europe, trail days with two large dogs, and everything in between. Routes tested in the Pyrenees, Alps, and beyond. Gear lists with real prices.
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A shakedown hike is a one to two-night test run with your full backpacking kit, done in real terrain with real elevation, before a longer multi-day trip. It’s not a walk around the garden with a loaded bag. It’s a real hike, a real night, a real morning. This is what we found out. tl;dr…
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A standard backpacking filter – the kind inside a LifeStraw or Sawyer- works by pushing water through a bundle of tiny hollow tubes, each with microscopic pores measuring 0.2 microns in the walls. Water passes through the pores; anything larger than 0.2 microns gets trapped inside the tube and stays there. That catches bacteria and…
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A complete backpacking sleep system for summer mountain routes in Europe costs between €200 and €350 for one person – sleeping bag, inflatable mat, liner, and pillow, with the bag and mat together accounting for most of the spend. I spent weeks researching this before our first multi-day Pyrenees hike and came home with a…
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How much does it cost to start backpacking in Europe? For two people heading into the Pyrenees for seven days, our total spend came to €1,342.87 – split across two of us, mostly from Decathlon and some bits from Amazon, with a stove and head torches we’ve owned for over a decade. The short answer…
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I read every article I could find on how to choose a hiking backpack and still bought the wrong size. If that sounds familiar, this is for you. I took it as a personal mission to figure this out once and for all, and after all the research I did, the way I look at…