Links to useful websites
The only UK charity working to help research a very debilitating and painful condition. We’ve worked with the charity to supply warm packs to their users for many years. If you’ve ever suffered from frozen painful extremities, this website is really worth a visit. It provides many practical and educational resources that are hard to find on the internet.
We love all winter sports. Wheelchair Curling is one of the slightly more niche of these! It operates on similar lines to the able bodied sport and is full of the same tactics and drama. We’ve supplied toewarmers to our team over a good number of years, even when isolated from the ice by the wheelchair, our athletes still suffer cold feet.
Snowheads are a discussion forum and ski club with a large selection of lively chat to work through. As with all forums, there’s a certain amount of ‘opinion’ > facts but its really worth spending some time there. They do run a few trips and ski tests through the winter.
SLIDE is the home of the UK’s wintersports tradeshow. It’s highly specialised towards the needs of the snowsport industry and an annual pilgrimage for all of us involved in the trade. All major brands exhibit here so its very much a one stop shop for all retailers counting winter sports as a part of their offering .
The Ski Club of Great Britain have their roots in historical racing, but are so much more during modern times. With nearing 30,000 members it is a very important special interest group.
Racer Ready is a dedicated news service for Winter Sports athletes and fans. Often discovering stories that are not covered in any other journal, Racer Ready has been a stalwart supporter of both grassroots and higher level ski racing and other disciplines.
What3words is the best navigation tool since the GPS was invented. Yup. This is a gamechanger. Previously when we planned routes, we advised our location with a long string of numbers. Very easy to transpose a digit or three, miscommunicate over a bad phone line or radio or get the eastings and northings swapped round. This system has so many flaws when humans interact with it. Enter the 21st century and what3words. What3words automagically converts the tricky numbers into three simple easy to communicate words. And every coordinate is mapped down to a three metre square. Accuracy and simplicity in a user friendly package. Now you don’t need to be a navigation expert to find yourself.
Alastair is an outstanding writer and Blogger, an adventurer, a raconteur and an all round nice guy. His website is packed full of juicy reads and interesting factoids all written in a unique style. So, if you are lacking inspiration to go find an adventure, just have a wee read of this site, get enthused and go find something weird. Alastair is one of the countries leading exponents of Microadventuring, as well as writing about the grand scale adventures.