The never-ending headache of packing

It’s day 95 of our Europe trip and we’ve sent three boxes of our luggage home. Clothes, mini binoculars, a spare headlamp, a spare camping knife, a tablet, a small backpack, a pair of shoes – that sort of thing. This was our third major unburdening so far after leaving a large suitcase and some clothes in Paris, and a small carry-on bag with a few bits and pieces in the Netherlands.

As well as slowly ridding ourselves of things we no longer need or never did, we are also operating a complex courier network across Europe – sending ahead things that we won’t need until we reach a certain place. Rowan’s mountain boots and some jackets await us in Austria, and our 14kg bag of rock-climbing gear is currently en-route to Barcelona.

Our rock climbing gear in particular is basically travelling on its own all around Europe, meeting up with us from time to time, before we go our separate ways once again.

We have used our rock climbing gear twice so far on it’s Europe travels, and I use the word ‘used’ loosely. Above left: we lugged our gear to this quarry in the Peaks District, England, where we stared at the wall for maybe 15mins until one of us was brave enough to announce the obvious: ‘it’s cold, raining, and generally bleak. I don’t want to climb’. And that was that. Later we did a few climbs (one day) in the Schwabian Alps in Germany. Next time we meet our gear will be near Barcelona, where we hope to do some Spanish climbing then travel together to France to be climbing bums for most of a month.

Here in Leon, Spain we are whittling down to hiking packs for our trek across the Pyrenees. Today and tomorrow we’ll be couriering another 2 boxes of stuff to the end of our hike to get our packs down to a weight we can actually carry.

A third of this has to go! (It just needs legs and it would be the same size as me. I wish it had legs.)

The way I see it, Rowan and I have two challenges, compounded. The first challenge is the universal travellers’ problem of trying to prepare for every scenario, and ultimately packing too much. The second is more unique to adventure travellers like us, and is having too many environments to pack for. The problems are compounded as we try to pack for every scenario in each environment. We need city clothes and mountain clothes and beach clothes and running clothes and spare clothes, and sleeping bags, mats, drink bottles, headlamps, first aid kit, laptop, kindles, a tent, and a kitchen.

The solution, we are slowly learning, has to be to compromise:

• Pack clothes that can be used in more than one environment.
• Pack clothes that are nearing the end of their life expectancy, so that when the season changes you can throw them away guilt free.
• Be prepared to give up on some types of activity, or hire gear (we didn’t bring our ice axes or crampons, which limits how high into the mountains we can hike).
• If you’re not travelling alone, share – we now are down to one computer/tablet, and can share a lot of our toiletries.
• Bring the smallest possible amount of toiletries – we brought way too much with us, but it’s all stuff we can buy as we need it.
• Opt to be slightly uncomfortable for certain scenarios rather than over-prepared. For example, put up with being somewhat underdressed for a night out; it’s one night of feeling inappropriate vs. weeks of carrying something you might only use once.

As we slogged through various cities (Munich, Nuremberg, Prague, Berlin, Madrid) with our 65L packs, we looked enviously at city travellers with their relatively small backpacks. My pack is 75% full of camping gear that I have no need for in the city. If I were travelling only in cities I could definitely do it comfortably with just an average sized day pack…a tempting proposition.

These words of wisdom, sent by an anonymous reader to the 1969 edition of Europe on $5 a Day, describe the kind of city traveller I would like to be:

“Every travel book advises us to take too much to Europe. For a 2 or 3 month summer trip, I do not take a suitcase at all. I take only the give-away airplane bag and my purse. I wear a dark, flared, lined, rayon suit, long-sleeved with a dark lace shell. This becomes an evening gown, train-travel dress, restaurant costume, or sight-seeing outfit, as the occasion demands. I DO NOT TAKE ANOTHER OUTFIT. I do not take a change of underwear – just what I have on. I wash it every night and blot it dry with a hotel towel. I wear very comfortable, dark pump-type shoes for dress-up. My travel outfit is completed with a packable veil-and-ribbon hat, dark gloves that live quite a bit of the time in my pocket, and a coat that serves as a raincoat and robe. My shoes are rubber-soled for damp sidewalks and a purse-size plastic scarf keeps my head dry….. I used to toil under the ‘white man’s burden’, but not any more. People who take a lot of stuff do not use it, anyway.” - Name withheld, Hollywood, California

The age-old luggage dilemma: In 1969 my mum and her friends ended up ditching all of the luggage stacked on top of their Mini…possibly just so they could get the car to the top of the hill. Should have read the guide book.

But for better or for worse, I am not just a city traveller. And in the Pyrenees, even though we don’t have to, we’re choosing to camp (both out of preference and because we can’t afford €40 each a night for the refugios). So the tent and our mobile kitchen are here to stay.

My life. To be carried on my back for 20km every day.

A test run in the scorching hot Picos de Europa national park helped me to whittle my pack down to about 9kg before food and water. Not bad, except that any weight is bad when you’re trudging uphill and it’s 30 degrees…

New, improved pack size.

Will I ditch more stuff at stops along the GR11 trail? Will we decide to give up after 3 days? Will we stop using our travel kitchen and just eat at refugios along the way? Will we run out of gas and not be able to find more of the right kind for our stove? Will I even miss anything that’s waiting for me in Barcelona or Austria, or just send it all back to NZ and stick with my new lightweight ideals?

I’ll keep you posted.