How much is not enough

After having done a test pack to evaluate how well we could cope with a miserly luggage allowance of just 16.5kg the cold hard facts have to be faced up to. We are using two Mountain Equipment duffle bags of 100 litres and 120 litres which have starting weights of 2.2kg and 2.5kg respectively. So straight away we are cut to 14kg of clothing and kit before the 2.6kg of boots leaves me with 11.4kg. The tripods we specially purchased for pack ability and weight feel awfully heavy at 1.4kg each. The list of clothing we have already prepared is starting to look a bit optimistic but we can but try. The first attempts at packing come in at a hefty 20.1kg and 23kg which even I admit is a lot better than I thought it would be. With two further rethinks and discarding what seems to me to be an awful lot of warm clothing and our only pairs of shoes the totals are down to 14.2kg and 15.87kg. These weights are well within the 16.5kg limit but we still need to fit the coats in at 1.5kg and 1.7kg each, mine will definitely have to go in but the Boss might just wear hers. Knowing what airports are like temperature wise I couldn’t wear mine without melting and there’s no way I would want to carry it around. We unpacked the bags and wrote down the revised inventory and realised we hadn’t taken any pictures of the piles of clothing we had to somehow get into the bags. So everything was laid out on the bed and the photos were taken, then everything was hung up and put back into draws and pods till it is used again. After updating the relevant spread sheet and much shaking of heads about the pared to the bone list of clothing thoughts of tackling the hand luggage were put on hold for another time.

Its now very real

Monday 8^th December and up pops an e-mail from Travelquest informing us the final instalment for the trip is due before the 17^th. This should be easy we thought, wrong! The Boss tried two cards and they were both declined with a misleading message about payments made. So the Boss fired off an e-mail to Jay at Travelquest about the possibility of a double payment. In the meantime she also contacted the CC Company to check that the cards were ok which they were. Jay did reply eventually to say that no payment had been made but to try again and if that failed just ring up and pay over the phone. So Monday evening the following week the payment was refused again so the Boss gave them a ring and it transpired that they were having a problem with the secure payment software and it would be quicker and easier to manually input the payment into their system. Bingo, job done and payment accepted. Later the same evening the final invoice arrived with a detailed packing list. As we are travelling on a scheduled flight from Newcastle to Amsterdam and onto Oslo we assumed our baggage allowance to be around 23kg which would be a struggle but it would stop Me from packing a load of stuff we might need, just in case! Upon reading the list of essential kit we would need we started to feel very smug as we had just about all that was on the list and the bits we were missing were very small and light so wouldn’t really add much weight. We read through the list again and noticed a section near the top which mentioned Charter flights (When packing, please bear in mind that baggage restrictions on our charter flights is limited to 36 pounds (16.5 kg’s) for checked bags and 13 pounds (6 kg’s) per person for carryon baggage.)  So that’s a 1/3 of our baggage allowance wiped out in a stroke. We needed a set of baggage scales as soon as possible. Upshot is the boots I’m taking weigh in at 2.6kg and the Boss’s are 1.6kg so this packing lark is going to be very difficult. The hand luggage isn’t going to be any easier as we had already decided to leave the computers at home and just take extra cards for the cameras. We had already ruled out any sort of telescope because of weight as well as size and the fact that we would need a sturdy tripod to carry a scope which is even more weight. Airline suitable tripods were purchased which will go in the hold luggage adding another 1.5kg each. Speaking of cameras raises another interesting dilemma, does a camera in its own case add into my carryon luggage allowance or will it be separate. As it is I’m probably taking three cameras with the separate batteries and chargers for each of them and the Boss is taking two but with an extra lens for her main camera along with batteries and chargers. These will have to go in the carryon luggage just for safety.  I imagine we will both struggle with these limits as we are taking a very scaled down kit list so as to be able to take the specialist clothing we will definitely need while up there. The next post will have to deal with what is and isn’t going to be in the bags and why.