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| My Winning Photo: Bourinator 8a at Ceuse |
Lyon Equiptement are the UK importer and distributor for Petzl. The prize was a place on the Petzl Roc Trip in Antalya Turkey. I was super excited as this was somewhere I head head of but never been before. I'm keen to avoid flying and opted to make my own way out to the event using overland transport (train + ferries). Luckily I managed to convince my friend Jon Leighton that this epic journey would be a good adventure and he agreed to join me.
I'm writing this blog on day 1 of the trip, I'm currently sat on a Virgin train (with free fast wifi) from Bangor to London Euston, here's our travel itinerary for the next few days. Ravelling overland as opposed to flying gives us the opportunity to stop off on route, we plan to spend a week climbing around Athens which looks amazing (the new Kalymnos?!) judging by this new guidebook to the area
Day1:
Bangor to London (Train)
Day2:
London to Paris (Train)
Paris – Milan (Train)
Day3:
Milan Centrale – Bari (Train)
Bari - Patras (overnight ferry)
Day4:
Patras - Kiato (bus)
Kiato – Athens (climb for week around Athens)
Day4:
Athens to Rhodes (ferry)
Rhodes to Marmaris (ferry)
Marmaris to Antalya (car)
Fingers crossed everything goes to plan...good job I really enjoy train travel! Plenty of time to catchup on blogging, reading and a bit of work.
Lyon Equipment gave me a new Petzl Sirocco helmet for the trip, which incredibly light, no excuses for not wearing it! I also took the opportunity to replace my old broken head torch with shiny new Petzl Tikka-RXP. I choose this one as I like the fact it's got a built in lithium battery pack which can charge over micro USB, no more fiddling about with AAA's, this is also better for the environment as it was all too easy to use non-rechargeable disposable alkaline batteries in my old head torch. Battery life should also be much better than my old torch (Petzl quote 10hrs), and when needed charging the torch will be easy using my phone charger or USB battery pack I always take with me on trips to keep my phone topped up. The torch came packaged in fully recyclable packaging made from potato starch...well done Petzl :-)
The Tikka-RXP has got a 'reactive lighting' feature which I thought would be a bit of a gimmick. But after experiencing it in action when I went for a run and night time swim last night I'm actually quite impressed. The torch automatically regulates the light output depending on where I was looking and the ambient light conditions. For example looking down at the ground or at my hand (simulating a map) the touch ramps down the output to preserve battery life and my eyes night vision. The torch reacted almost instantly as I turned my head, very cool.
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| Packing for the trip....shiny new toys |