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  • The Great Outdoors

    BEHIND THE SCENES: HOW WE TEST THE GEAR

    Dec 04, 2020 1 minute
    By Chris Townsend

    Equipment editor

    FOR THE TGO GEAR OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2020 we tested gear in different places across Britain, from the Cairngorms to deepest Lincolnshire.

    My testing was mostly done in the Cairngorms with occasional and knew pretty well. Others were new and were tested in the autumn, sometimes in rather more severe conditions than they were really designed for. Happily for me, nothing failed. I took gear on several wild camps and into the first snowstorms of the season high in the mountains as well as locally. The corner of the Cairngorms National Park where I live has woods, rough pastures, a steep rocky ravine and heather moorland for trying out gear close to home. My house is at 300 metres too and faces south across Strathspey to the Cairngorm plateau. Sometimes the weather is wild!

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