What to...? Eat

The next instalment in my mini series is focusing on what to take with you to eat on a long walk in the mountains. This is a very subjective topic, but here are a few tips we’ve learned the hard way over the decades.

Sandwiches : We always used to take sandwiches with us, but as we’ve got older, we try to reduce the amount of bread we eat. It would always be brown bread and we used to usually have fillings like ham or ham and cheese or something fairly bland, but a long, possibly hot morning with them crushed at the bottom of our pack in either tin foil, cling film or a plastic bag made for either a really dry or horribly sweaty, unappetising and utterly disappointing lunch.We neither looked forward to eating them, or enjoyed them while we were. On a cold day, it was all we could do to force them down. Avoid tomatoes as they turn the whole thing into a wet mess, and egg which smells evil on a hot day.

Wraps : Moving on from sandwiches, I thought wraps would be a better idea as they don’t go dry like bread, and I thought a stronger tasting filling would be more appealing. That worked for a while, but they were messy to eat and the filling kept falling out. We found the tortillas themselves tasteless and hard to swallow, especially on a cold day. Sweet chilli chicken was our choice of filling, but after I mixed that with a hideous selection of other foods, I felt very nauseous coming down from Red Pike and had to sit down for half an hour to let the feeling pass.

Sausage Rolls : We once bought home made sausage rolls from a little bakery to take on a long walk, which looked lovely in the shop. Only fairly small but thick, they were still warm, stuffed full of meat and very juicy looking. Three hours later, in the cool chill of a March morning, they had solidified somewhat; the pastry was incredibly dry and flaked all over us and the by now very dense, cold sausage meat seemed to lodge in our throats as we struggled to force it down. Not our finest meal and never repeated.

Hot Food : As mentioned in previous blogs, we’re not fans of Thermos tea or coffee but appreciate it’s nice to have something warming on a cold day. We have recently started taking soup which has been wonderful on cold wet days and really gave us a boost. We once tried noodles in a flask, only to have them congeal into one huge, greasy lump that we couldn’t even shake with force out of the flask…In an effort to reduce weight, we don’t carry a Jetboil or burner, but we have either brewed hot drinks (which we do often) or rehydrated meals from the back of the car (less often), but the thought of a pub is much more appealing!

Sweet Treats : In the early days, we always took a chocolate bar and a bag of crisps as well as things like Jelly Babies to snack on, but over the years, we’ve replaced these with healthier options, trying to pick things with a little more protein or energy giving properties, whilst cutting down on sugary snacks. We find a small square of Kendal Mint Cake is a really good quick fix energy boost if we feel we’re tiring, and we do very occasionally take a small Wispa, but we much prefer the savoury snacks like dried fruit - we take mango and apricots - nuts or Graze. Don’t forget you’re carrying chocolate on a hot day, or you’ll end up with what looks like a terrible accident in the bottom of your pack.

Solutions : Having discarded wraps and chilli flavoured fillings, we thought about what it was we would look forward to eating. We decided (as we don’t really get that hungry when we’re walking) that small, easy to eat things would be better for us, so we take a boiled egg (sometimes two), some chicken breast chunks, nuts, dried fruit, an apple or banana, perhaps some Soreen and occasionally a small chocolate biscuit in a wrapper, like a Penguin or a Club. We can then eat little and often, it’s tasty, we look forward to it and we can eat it standing up if necessary. There’s very little mess, nothing is dry or squashed and it doesn’t make us feel queasy.

Everyone has their own favourites; be that a pork pie, scotch egg, pasty or a bacon butty, but the main thing is to take enough to sustain you throughout a long, physical day.

Bon Apetit!

YES!

No!