Stove & Water Filter Suggestions for a 12 Month UK Hike?

12 months is very different from a weekend. You will get a LOT of 'weather'.

For the stove I would recommend either the Snow Peak GST100 (Gigapower) or a very light remote canister stove. Alcohol might be OK in fine weather, but we have had snow in mid-summer. Forget white gas/petrol – obsolete for your sort of need. Note: one can usually manage to operate a canister stove in a hotel/hostel/home without causing concern, but not the others. People understand a 'gas stove'.

Water 'filter' – if you need to handle chemical pollution, then my best suggestion is a couple of 1.25 L PET water bottles, and fill up in the towns. Nothing handles chemicals. I would be very wary of the lesser-known brands: they come and go. A Sawyer Squeeze would be a light option.

Cheers

I have the Caldera Ti-Tri with an Evernew 1.3L pot. I then made a UL pie pan insert steam baking in it. Works great! Since it gives you 3 options for fuel including wood I think it is the most versatile stove/pot combo out there. Even if that pot size didn't work for you the Ti-Tri seems the way to go. Here are some links to show some steam baking tricks and Ti-Tri (I'm sure you've seen the Ti-Tri, but here's the link anyway).

http://www.traildesigns.com/stoves/caldera-sidewinder

http://www.trailcooking.com/thefauxbaker

http://www.trailquest.net/simring.html

I have been using wax paper instead of plastic bags for baking muffin cakes and omelets and it works amazingly. Here's a video I saw and got the muffin cake idea from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b26VicLPVuo

I just saved weight by not using the silicone bowl and using the fauxbaker with wax paper. No mess and no way to burn anything on the bottom of the pot.

Good luck on your adventure!

I think you might have to accept a water purity compromise. Drinking river water downstream of a human settlement is far more risky than drinking from any backcountry water source. I use a Sawyer Squeeze filter when I backpack, but I backpack in the mountains. There is no practical way for a backpacker to remove some of the contaminants in urban effluent. Enteroviruses (ie Norovirus) are less than 30 nanometers in diameter, and many industrial, agricultural, and household chemical pollutants cannot be removed by any readily available filter media.

You could use a very fine pore pump filter with a large carbon cartridge on the outlet, then irradiate the filtered water with a Steripen to inactivate viruses. The carbon cartridge would have to be changed very regularly to be of any benefit. This migh be the best solution if you want a high level of protection.

>"Nothing handles chemicals."

Actually, I handle chemicals in drinking water. It's my day job. But before I go further, I'm going to second Roger's suggestion: a few lightweight bottles and you mostly fill up in town or at people's houses ("Excuse me, I'm cirumnavigating the UK on foot and it would help me a lot if you could fill up my two water bottles from your tap." In a city, it will have been tested for coliforms, a variety of chemicals, been chlorinated to kill pathogens and flouridated for your lousy Celtic teeth (which I share). Even if it's a farm house and they haven't done the chemical analysis, it will be groundwater which is typically much safer than surface water. AND you meet locals and half the time you ask just for water, the housewife will send you on your way with a sandwich, some fruit, and some homemade biscuits!

Okay, pathogens first: Chlorine. Works for the city. Very cheap. There are little BPing kits but you can also just use a small bottle of laundry bleach. Refill it at a laundry ("Could I buy 30 ml of bleach from you?" "Good grief, you can have it!") or you can make your own iodine solution from crystals and that will last for months on end. Or you could do the UV Steripen thing and replace your batteries as you go.

Moving on to chemicals.

There are traditional water quality issues like salinity (you're screwed, find fresher water), turbidity (let it settle overnight and you can speed the process by adding alum (in the spice section of the store), taste/odor (aerate by pouring vigorously from one container to another – if you can smell it, it is volatile).

Then thinking about toxics pragmatically, there are those which can be treated by activated carbon. There are some suck-through-the-straw BP versions, but you're going for a YEAR, not a weekend, so step up to the home-level stuff. Brita is a brand in the USA that sells GAC (granular activated carbon) in plastic cartridges to fit in their pitchers. You fill the top, it dribbles through in a few minutes, and then you're good. So you'd need to adapt that somehow to your water bottle but a lot of shopping for the right bottle size and maybe some epoxy, and you're set. Another approach would be to use an in-line GAC filter such as is used between the wall tap and the freezer ice-maker. Then adapt it to tubing, put it below a 2-gallon water bag and let it filter through in 10 minutes as you take your lunch or tea break.

What does GAC take out: hydrocarbons (known carcinogens such as benzene plus toulene; xylenes; chlorinated solvent like TCE, TCA, DCE, Perc, etc; pesticides, most drugs and hormones mimics, and it has a lower efficacy for heavy metals (lead, Arsenic, etc).

What does GAC not take out? All the metals, any highly soluble chemicals like salts, alcohols, ethers, etc.

I can't imagine you going to an ion-exchange scheme to deal with heavy metals. If you know you're downstream of a lead mine or Arsenic deposit, just fill up back in town.

Summary: get what you can from a tap. Use chlorine or iodine on everything else. That's about all I'd do. But set up a GAC scheme if you're concerned about industrial pollutants and you'll address about 80% of the risk.

I respect your expertise, David. But I didn't claim that nothing handles chemicals. I made a remark that may have given that impression in a first draft of my post, but I explained my meaning and I suggested using activated carbon.

I handle microbes. It's my day job. Iodine and chlorine won't inactivate some waterborne pathogens. Cryptosporidium is a major concern everywhere, and it is not inactivated by inoffensive concentrations of iodine. Chlorine is only effective after very long exposures at warm temperatures. In practice it provides imperfect protection from Crypto because people find it problematic to wait four hours (or more at low temps) for inactivation.

Toxoplasma is a concern after a rain. About 400 people acquired Toxoplasmosis in Canada several years ago after a single infected cat contaminated the municipal tap water supply. Toxoplasma is not affected by iodine or chlorine. An hour in 20% bleach doesn't harm it. We tried it, then fed the oocysts to mice, and observed fulminant toxoplasmosis. We wash them in sulfuric acid and acetone to get other organisms (bacteria and fungi) off, and they don't seem to mind.

In humans, toxoplasmosis sometimes doesn't cause clinical disease, but bradyzoite cysts can form in the brain and affect neurological function. Like cryptosporidiosis, it is very difficult to treat. We also modelled the environmental burden of Toxoplasma oocysts in a small coastal town in California. On average, in and around the town, we found that there were roughly ten Toxoplasma oocysts per square foot of ground. There are millions in terrestrial watersheds after a rain, and you only have to ingest one to get infected.

These were my reasons for suggesting a fine pore filter and/or a steripen.

Colin,

Sorry, I used "nothing handles chemicals" as a segue only, I didn't take it literally, but when I've tried to include less-than-sign-grin-more-than-sign, the system scrubs it.

Thanks for the feedback. My day job is much more on the chemical side. My biological purification choices are, I realize, not perfect and likely biased by my High Sierra and Alaska locations – not exactly the nastiest stuff.

If you've done the fine pore filter, what would the steripen be treating?

Would you do anything on the biological front for water you were going to boil for tea or dinner? I never have, but again, there's my bias.

Have you looked at temp x time for heat treatment? My data on that is from a friend I knew long ago. Newer data would be great.

-David

Quintin

its not my expertise so i wont bother repeating what is known re water treatment…but i will say that for a project like this one (12M!!) i would pick up the phone to some better known UK based hikers (Chris Townsend, Peter Mcfarlene, Paddy Dillon, roger Turnbull, Bob cartwright form bpl.co.uk are just some people i consulted when I went over) which frequent this site and more so http://www.outdoorsmagic.com talk through plans and routes and such.
Im not sure if you are trying to do some special thing (longest unsupported something or other) but the UK is well mapped and well travelled and with local help im sure you could plan your trip to the standards of a special forces operation with respect to details

i didnt hike the coastal areas but generally speaking the UK is obviously a very developed country so tap water should be fine anywhere. In lieu of complex filtration systems I would opt for careful route planning (get local advice for every stretch of the route re water sources) and carry just much more water with you from safe sources.

Now if there is a stretch where you know there is an issue with carrying enough or sources on the trail you can mail/ship your filtration system to the closest village and pick it up instead of lugging a filter where i assume 90% of the time you wont need it

RE stove – agree with Rog – canister would prob be fine – you can usually find them in hardware shops and some local supply shops in villages and if your stove breaks just get to the next town, get on the web and buy and ship a new one to the next town (sometimes you will also find canister stoves locally) and i would carry some backup solid fuel that can keep you going for a couple of days

YMMV
Mike

I'm based in the UK. Did the South-West Path a few years ago (a mere 33). I didn't bother with a filter……the ignorance of youth. I didn't get sick either though.

Now I'd take something like a drinkSafe inline filter….no good for the (considerable) pesticide runoff from UK farmland though.

I'd also take a Caldera as it is now my preferred stove. Gas perhaps – canister availability might be a question. The Evernew DX is a thirsty beast in my experience and woodburning on it is 'interesting'.

Have you read John Merrill and others who have done what you intend? What did they do?

I agree with the above comments on filters and getting water from towns…there's not much point in carrying a filter in just about any densely populated European country. Getting water from people's homes or villages is easy. Given that most of the filters on the market with carbon weigh a ton (well, not literally, but around 1kg+ with all the attachments) you may as well carry the extra water when you have a long stretch ahead. Lets face it, the areas with the highest likelihood of having industrial/agricultural chemical loads in the water are also likely to be areas where your longest stretch on the coast between villages isn't going to be more than say 40km max. In Northern Scotland where the distances are greater, the land use isn't going to cause a water quality issue for you. (If you are really there are a plethora of spatial data sources online for land use in the UK).

Cycle touring through mainland Europe last year, we carried a 1.3L Ti Pot (A BPL 1350), and two stoves, one a canister stove, the other was a home made cat can to run alcohol. I was glad I took both, as in Eastern Europe it was hard to find canisters. Having the cat can stove (haven't weighed it, maybe 10g) was a good backup and proved useful. Having multifuel operability is handy on long tours through unfamiliar countries. In Africa we had the cat can stove (managed to find alcohol most of the time) with a titanium woodstove backup-which we needed on a few occasions.

These are much simpler, lighter, cheaper multifuel options than traditional white gas/petrol/diesel multifuel stoves, though they have their place too.

Personally, if I was walking (or cycle touring…I'll probably do that sometime in the next ten years) around the UK for a year, I'd have the same canister stove, pot, grippers and cat can stove (it will still be working then), and probably take my bottle of polar pure for water up on the peaks and munros in heavy use areas. I'd have about 5L of water carrying capacity consisting mostly of one light bladder. Grab a random PET bottle from the last town before a big stretch to boost capacity.

Well, half of the coast is around Scotland so my 2c:

Some of the Scottish coast is quite remote, with only v. small villages. You will find availability of gas canisters somewhat variable here but you will certainly be able to obtain meths, so definitely take an alcohol stove.

12 months so you will have a winter somewhere. Winters have cold spells but are mostly wet and windy. A remote canister stove would be a good option for the cold spells.

You won't need water treatment in most of Scotland. You may want to consider something for urban and agricultural areas eg tap or bottled water or boiling.

Many thanks for you replies. Especially on the scientific side of water filtration and the availability of fuel especially in scotland – it helped a lot.
For the stove I've opted for a Ti-Tri ULC paired with a MLC 0.85 running on meths. and for water Filtration the travel tap or Waterstraw from Drink Safe Systems here in the UK. I'll be putting both through extensive testing the next few months and will report back with my findings.
Cheers
Quintin

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Walk-Around-England-Bob-Croucher/dp/0902830384

http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Small-Island-Bill-Bryson/dp/0380727501/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_11

Will you be writing about it?

Good question, I’m wrestling with the logistics right now, working out a realistic route and daily mileage before thinking about what I may produce creatively. There are about a dozen books on various people’s walks, probably the most a famous being John Merrills, Turn right at Lands End. None features any interesting photography.

I’m a published photographer, so yes I would certainly like to produce a book and I need to fund the trip somehow. But I need to be realistic and perhaps a travel book or an exhibition may generate more income than a fine art photo book – these are things I need to work out in the coming months. I’ll be carrying a laptop and photo-editing and uploading to a blog as I go. I’ve done various sponsored walks in the past including a solo winter bivi from Lands end to John o Groats but I won’t be raising money for charity this time – the objective is an artistic documentation of the British Coast.

Heres an example of my work – from last years Travel Photographer of the Year Greenland Portfolio

I’m very open to any ideas or suggestions as I’m very much in preliminary planning stage……….