St Davids Walk-equipment

The St Davids Walk
St Davids to Bangor
Equipment Page

Updated December 2010

Obviously you will need all normal walking equipment: waterproof outer shell, warm inner clothes, a good pair of boots, a rucksack, suitable maps, a waterproof map case, a compass or GPS or, if you can afford it, a Road Angel or equivalent - see below The notes which follow deal with special equipment particularly relevant to this terrain:

Maps

Do not consider trying this walk without a set of appropriate Ordnance Survey 1:25 000 maps or their digital equivalent (see the next section for details of this option) The Explorer 25 000 maps show lots of extra, useful information like field boundaries and are much more suitable for the walker than the 50 000 series. These 25 000 maps used to be very expensive but all the sheets you will need are now available either as Explorer or (for the most popular walking areas) the Outdoor Leisure Maps

You will need the following sheets::
Outdoor Leisure 35 North Pembrokeshire (double sided)
Explorer 185 Newcastle Emlyn
Explorer 186 Llandeilo & Brechfa Forest
Explorer 187 Llandovery (double sided)
Explorer 213 Aberystwyth and Cwm Rheidol
Outdoor Leisure 23 Snowdonia: Cadair Idris Area (double sided)
Outdoor Leisure 18 Snowdonia, Harlech and Bala (double sided)
Outdoor Leisure 17 Snowdonia and Conwy Valley (double sided)

These cover the whole walk. They may be obtained on the web or from any reputable bookshop. But do consider an Adventurer 3000 GPS, or similar (see below) You carry a single, small device which shows you where you are on a built-in OS map covering the whole route at 25 000 scale

I have iust re-walked the whole route with an early model Adventurer and a complete set of paper maps. I never used the maps! And the new Adventurer is much improved.

Using GPS and digital maps

Navigation can be tricky in parts of rural Carmarthenshire where rights of way are exceedingly indistinct; also in the Elenydd between Llandovery and Machynlleth if you are unlucky enough to have very low cloud.

The availability and cost of small devices locating your position and placing you on built-in OS maps is changing so rapidly that any information given here is likely to be out of date very quickly. The best thing I can do is to point you to the top web-sites and advise you to be careful before spending money. You can find yourself with a device which will not display the OS 25 000 Explorer series (almost essention for walking as they show on which side of a field bounday a right of way runs)

So start by comparing Memorymap and Getamap (use Google) At present (Feb 2015) Memorymap are selling the Adventurer 3000 with 25000 maps of the whole of GB for Ł349.

Footbeds

If you are one of those lucky people who never get sore feet, skip this section. Otherwise seriously consider getting a pair of Superfeet insoles. These fit inside your boots and, if custom-made (by an amazing process involving having plastic bags fastened to your feet and all the air sucked out) result in your body weight being divided equally between all parts of the soles of your feet. I have personally never been so comfortable and will now never wear anything else. There are now about 30 places in the UK where you can get the custom-fitted ones. Try the web site of anatom where the Superfeet section contains a list of the stockists offering the custom footbeds (called insoles on the site).

A Brasherstick

You will be aware of Brashersticks which are designed to reduce the load on your knees (and hips) and are intended to be used in pairs. Nevertheless, a single Brasherstick, carried collapsed in your rucksack, could prove extremely useful as a third point of support when crossing ice or turbulent streams.

Mobile phones - Gosim

We were always able to contact friends, taxis, etc during the middle of the day when we had achieved some height. but cover is terrible lower down. Gosim offer a roving sim card which searches different networks for the strongest signal - invaluable in Wales - but it is not ideal for general use. If you get a Gosim card, you can swap it with your normal card in a few seconds and it may save a lot of aggravation.