Spending £200 at DECATHLON! Ouch!

Yesterday was spending money time..

As I am planning to do more proper hiking (adventurous one, with proper camping, etc..) in the future, I went investing in equipment. DECATHLON, if you do not know it yet, is a French brand of sport shops which provides good quality/price products. Not because they discount famous brands as SPORTWORLD does for example. They just produce their own products, within their engineering office (Decathlon Creation). Then you get proper sport articles, for every sports, at good value because you do not buy a brand! They also sell normal brands but without discount. DECATHLON is more specialised in hiking: they have developped a massive range of product from -10°C sleeping bag to camping showers.. In London, there is a DECATHLON store in Canada Water (Jubilee line).

My first hiking trip should be for easter weekend. Planning work is still in progress. I will go with Craig, my British friend and perhaps other. We try to plan walking along the Thames Path from London (Richmond) to Oxford in the 4 days weekend. The Thames Path, as its name says, follows the River Thames and crosses small villages and towns all along it. A national proper path has been created for hikers. It is not a very difficult track, I reckon, but to join Oxford in 4 days (and take there a train back to London), we are still planning walking 10h/day. Will we be able to do it? Let's see. It is a good challenge anyway for a first hike, before trying more difficult ones: mountains, etc..

Now, I have the equipment though: good hiking shoes, a backpack, rain clothes (sexy!), a proper sleeping bag and a proper hiking tent (not a massive pop-up 2" tent! convinient though, I must admit)