Packed up!

It's 12:10 and I'm sitting in the Old Black Horse in Houghton-on-the-Hill, enjoying a creamy pint of Everard's Old Original.

Today I put my new backpack through its paces. It took me the best part of an hour to get ready this morning, piling four towels in plastic bags to represent the clothes that I'll be taking. Add to that a pair of old shoes, some lunch, a full (2 litre) Platypus and the whole pack came to 9.5kg (21 lbs).

It felt really heavy to carry until I slipped it (hauled it, more like) onto my shoulders. The fit was rather snug, though the design means that the pack stands off my back by about an inch, to reduce overheating and the dreaded sweaty back syndrome that I've heard others describe.

Most of the weight is carried on the hips, which is the way it's meant to be. I was surprised that this seemed to happen around the small of my back (the back of my pelvis) rather than just on the sides.

I set off and the first thing I noticed was the way that the top of the pack nudged the back of my Tilley hat every few strides. It was as irritating as the child in the dinner queue at school that flicked your ear. I had visions of trimming the Tilley but within an hour I barely noticed it.

The snug pack reminded me of carrying Jon and Phil on my shoulders when they were small. To begin with, they were uncertain but light, so I carried them for short distances with one arm curled round my back to support them.

As they grew stronger and heavier, they were able to hold on for themselves - sometimes clasping my eyes shut! The back pack has been behaving much more predictably but now that I've sat down after a couple of hours, I can feel some soreness in my back. Let's hope things improve.

Just after I arrived at the Old Black Horse, a woman arrived to collect the cash from the gaming machines. She and the landlord talked about the dramatic fall in takings through the machine in this economic crisis (officially, as of last week, a 'recession'). Such is the times.