The Great Outdoors latest issue - Backpacking in the Lakes, new gear, hats and gloves, first aid kits & emergency shelters

Camp on Grey Knotts in the Lake District

The November issue of The Great Outdoors is out now. In my backpacking column I've written about filming with Terry Abraham for the Backpacking in the Lake District video. Elsewhere my stuff in this issue is all about gear with reviews of thirteen pairs of gloves and ten hats - items that are needed regularly now the weather is turning colder - plus seven emergency shelters and eight first aid kits - items that are useful year round. There's also a run-down of the most interesting new gear I saw at the Outdoor Trade Show in September.

The issue starts with the now usual splendid double-page photographs - this month the Pinnacles of Liathach by David Lintern, Glaramara by Terry Abraham and Lose Hill, Peak District by Ed Rhodes. More photographs, some of them mine, follow in a feature on the Highlands in Autumn while photographer Nick Livesey shows some wonderful dawn and dusk images of Snowdonia in a piece entitled The Call of the Mountain. Ronald Turnbull praises Upper Eskdale in the Lake District and the possibilities for exploration there. Much further afield Ed Byrne takes part in the Fjallraven Classic backpacking event in Arctic Sweden. Away from mountains Lenny Antonelli exlores Ireland's western seaboard, which looks dramatic.

In shorter pieces Carey Davies writes about how history has shaped the nature of the Scottish outdoors and our experience of it. Staying in Scotland Roger Smith considers the implications for the outdoors of the fallout from the independence referendum while Jim Perrin recommends John Lister-Kaye's At the Water's Edge: A Walk in the Wild. Roger Smith also looks at fracking and its effect on the environment.