Supplies at SJPP

[Crawley, Jeffrey]

Hi, Doug (and all others of course),

As you can imagine, with SJPP being a favoured jumping off spot, there are a few shops that cater for out needs from staffs to Basque berets - much favoured by the Quebequois. Even more in Bayonne and Biarritz.  The French LOVE the outdoors and it was they that revolutionised camping after WW2 with lighter, roomier tents and the widely available CampinGAZ stove etc. Outdoor gear is very easily available at reasonable prices too (excepting the poor dollar/pound to euro exchange rate of course).

For a cheap and cheerful knife try a French Opinel brand, a folding, wooden handled knife with a locking ring to stop it closing up on your fingers.  The number 4 size is probably best (about 100mm long blade they go up to three times as long for Rambos and jungle guerillas!), mine is about 15 years old and still in good order except I scraped the varnish off the handle to prevent slipping.  Oh and if you find it hard to peel the blade out you're supposed to tap it on the table to start it off. Nothing fancy, only one blade but so useful on a picnic.  I usually carry a Victorinox Huntsman SAK too - BTW did you know Victorinox guarantee their knives for life? Break a blade - or two or three - and it'll be sent back to Switzerland for complete refurbishment including toothpick and tweezers - now there's service!

On trail food, we're not exactly wilderness walking here but the ubiquitous bread/cheese/ham/olives plus fruits can hardly be beaten for lunchtime. Spreadable cheese can be bought in tubes - look for Primula brand - flavoured with hame or herbs and garlic as well as plain and it doesn't leak all over the place either.  Snack foods such as GORP are good too: look for Frutos Secos signs (supermarket sections and dedicated shops) where you can bag up divers nuts and dried fruits but take a few ziplock bags to hold these as the supplied bags are very thin and fragile.

In Europe you can find quite a variety of tinned meat products like pate and rillettes (rendered down meat product, pork, duck etc) which are high fat/high protein - don't buy the very cheap ones though, more fat than protein - come in small tins and make good emergency supplies/picnic food as do tinned sardines.  They often have ring pull tabs to open them so no need for an opener.  Usefull too for refugios in places where there's no store (S. Juan de Ortega for instance). The empty tin weighs less than it did when full so we won't have any problems carrying it to a trash can either :o)

Booked my flight from London to Biarritz to arrive on 3 September so it looks like I'll be walking this year after all!

Enjoy the long shadows.

Jeffrey

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Tustin [mailto:pelicanaINNERCITE.COM]
Sent: 15 June 2003 04:57
To: GOCAMINOaPETE.URI.EDU
Subject: Supplies at SJPP


I'll be starting at SJPP about September 4th or 5th. I would like to carry
my backpack on the plane so will not bring anything not allowed on board.
In SJPP are there stores which have aluminum trecking poles (I think I
would prefer this to a walking stick) and small knives for cutting cheese
and fruit? Has anyone had trouble bring his/her pack on board?

What are the most popular and available kinds of trail food?

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