The last few days/water matters

As usual, in the few weeks before setting off I've done my typical thing and assumed I had everything covered. "Don't overplan it, everything's set!" I think - I even stop checking the weather, which has been hovering over sunny spells and light showers (fine by me, especially if I can avoid the heatwave affecting southern Europe - apparently pushing 39C in Madrid this week, while northern Spain remains a pleasant 22C).

Naturally this leads to a mini-panic the week before as I realise there's a million little annoying things I overlooked. After a comical day last Friday where every inanimate object managed to elude me (starting with basic tools, moving up to padded shorts, and culminating in a show-stopping encore by losing Caroline's only set of car keys which had us both searching the house and the road outside for half an hour) I think I finally have it down.

A few things have been whittled down, and I've resisted the urge to add to my load. One cool new acquisition is the Lifestraw Go water bottle. For someone who is paranoid about running out of water and often has to carry serious (heavy) volumes of water distances to wild camping sites, this really does have the potential to be a game-changer. The original lifestraw was very clever - through it you could essentially drink safely from puddles or bogs, powered only by sucking up the water - but not so practical for bike touring where you'll want to carry water with you. The "Go" incorporated this into a bottle so essentially you purify the water as you drink. I never realised how much these had come down in price - always assumed they were very expensive.

The Lifestraw Go looks to be an ingenious design. It's unobtrusive and natural to use that it has the potential, in any areas with streams, to make hunting for drinking water a thing of the past.

It doesn't filter viruses or mineral contamination - so you might not want to drink from heavily contaminated water in undeveloped parts of the world (or Cornish mining areas) - but for drinking from mountain streams, fast flowing rivers etc it should be fine. It means I don't have to chemically treat water (which tastes a bit like drinking from a swimming pool) or boil everything (eating up fuel) when drinking from wild sources - though I'll keep these methods on standby if I have to.

The hope is that - in Green and often wet Spain - it means I have to be much less excessive in how much drinking water I carry around. Drinking from a stream should now become easy; I've already tried it out with no ill-effects by drinking from a puddle in my garden. Fingers crossed I don't get dysentery!

The Go is basically the same size as a standard water bottle, and I'll carry it in my existing holder. You can detach the filter completely and use it as a normal bottle, and then fit the filter when you want to drink wild water.

I've thoroughly checked out the tent and sleeping setup. I did discover a hairline crack in the one of the ultralight (possibly too light) Alu poles. After fussing about with it, I had a brainwave - my old tent used the exact same type of (very hard to obtain DAC) poles! I've never tried to disassemble a pole before by taking out the shock cord, but it isn't too difficult and I soon was able to substitute out the cracked pole for an intact one of the same length. The crack would probably have been ok, but it would be sod's law for it to break under bad conditions in the mountains.

These little cracks have a tendency to spread. I have experimented with cutting off the cracked section with the Dremel [what else?!] but am not convinced of the results.

Substituting in an intact pole section from my old tent. Despite being a much less fancy tent, for some reason it came with very good quality DAC poles

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