A Look At The January Issue Of The Great Outdoors & A TGO Video Review

The next issue of The Great Outdoors is out now. I have three reviews inside - Keen WK400 Walking Shoes, Columbia Mazama Trail Waterproof Jacket, and Shokz OpenFit Ear Buds. 

Also in the gear pages Kirsty Pallas and James Roddie each review four winter sleeping bags, and Fiona Russell and Peter Macfarlane each review three pairs of winter gloves. 

There are two big features on bothies. Juls Stobel writes about spending a night in each of the 104 shelters maintained by the Mountain Bothies Association while James Forrest and Jessie Leong spend a night in Warnscale Head Bothy in the Lake District.

In a superb photo-essay David Lintern shares a selection of a decade of images of winter in the Cairngorms National Park.

Far from the cold and the snow Ian Battersby describes a traverse of the length of the subtropical island of Madeira with his two sons. 

Creator of the Month is Phoebe Sleath, an artist and mountain leader who studies the language of landscape through field paintings. The Opinion column is by Jon Moses, organiser of the Right to Roam campaign, who argues that the right to roam can benefit everyone including rural communities. On the New Books page Kirsty Pallas reviews Mike Raine's The Mountain Leader. Jim Perrin's Mountain Portrait is about Yr Eifl in Eryri. 

In the Skills section Fell Foodie Harrison Ward gives advice on how to cook better backpacking meals.

In Scotland Wild Walks sees Richard Hartfield visiting MacCulloch's Fossil Tree on the Isle of Mull, Roger Butler using historic stalkers' paths on Sgorr a' Mhaoraich in the North-West Highlands, and Alex Roddie having day on Kinperney Hill in Angus. In Cumbria Ian Battersby visits High Cup Nick and in the Lake District Ronald Turnbull takes the boat to Aira Force for an ascent of Helvellyn, and Vivienne Crow walks the Scandale Round. In North Yorkshire Ian Battersby finds snow and relics of a bygone age on Fremington Edge and Calver Hill. In Eryri/Snowdonia Andrew Galloway finds a tale of murder in the Dyfi Forest while down on Dartmoor Tom Gent ponders another troubling event from the past on the Liberty Walk. Fiona Barltrop also steps back in time on a walk over Blackcap & Mount Harry Beacon on the South Downs.

I also have a review that isn't in the print magazine - because it's a video. This is the one I made with videographer Jordan Tiernan at the end of October. I wrote about the trip in this post.