These are great motocross boots. Provided you don't expect waterproof.
That is my only gripe with them. Other than that: great.

They were bought after my return from Argentina where a GS footpeg had tried to mate with my tibia. No broken skin, but bloody painful.
So after that I decided: biggest, strongest.

I hunted about and opted for the Aplinestars as, despite the acres of polycarbon armour, the felt like well padded socks: very comfy! They are also very warm.

In addition they are tought: they stopped my ankle getting crushed between the same GS and a crash barrier after a lady in a Fiesta felt I'd look better on the far side of the barrier. The boots survived remarkably well. The GS did not.

So if you want security and don't need your boots to blend in, get these and a few pairs of goretex socks and you'll be warm dry and safe!

Estonia is cold, and wet. My Alpinestars Tech 3 are warm, but not waterproof. Nor are they discreet, so I decide to investigate a replacement goretex boot for the old HG ones I had had back in the UK.

Although, my income was not what I would have liked, I decided to apply the same logic as I did in the UK: "Don't skimp on kit, you'll appreciate having good quality, even if the invoice hurts initially"

This is very true of these boots. They have been entirely waterproof through an evil winter last year, and blazing summer this year and everything in between.

They are comfy and fit like tall, heavy slippers. These boots certainly appear to be very sturdily built with no signs of seams or joins weakening, despite two years now of use and abuse.

The sole is very robust and grips well, and they have padding and reinforment in all the right places. Adjustment is plentiful and effective.

In a word, these boots are great.

If you like the style and are comfortable with the budget, you will not be disappointed by the performance.

This tent was a gift but was bought on our advice. We did not specifically want to get a JW tent, but they seem pretty good and this was on sale, down from about £230.

We wanted a tunnel as they are more spacious than a geodesic of similar specs and this made travelling as a couple with our dogs more convenient.

The tent seems adquately put together. Perhaps not top of the range, but solid and dependable so far, even if we've not had so much experience of it.

In terms of build quality, all seems good. It has proved waterproof in bad weather. The only disappointment was that the flexible tangs on the plastic clips used to secure the tent to eyelets inside the flysheet snapped. The result if that now they are hooks, not clips and so make no real difference to the tents structure once erect, only that they may slip out on disassembly.

The advantages:
These are plentiful. LOTS of storage in the main atrium, where you can both sit out of the elements, with your stuff and dogs, without soiling the sleeping area. It is also a tent that can be set-up with the inner and outer already joined, meaning the inner can remain dry in crappy weather. The slppeing are is not overly big, but is spacious with yet more sparoom in the nose of the tunnel at the far end for your clothes, a bag, a dog etc...

Fortunately, the footprint I had made for my Robert Saunders tent (also reviewed) fits fine and it packs down to a similar size and weight.

The disadvantages:
Only on entrance. Not a major deal, but if the wind direction changes over night, you may find you're facing the rain that had been falling the other way when you turned in for the night. A little more troublesome and a trait of all tunnel tents is that pitching surface is important. This is not a stand-alone structure. A tunnel tent relies on solid pegging points at the two ends of the tent to keep the mid section taught and hence the roof out of your face... So no pitching on rocky ground where pegs can't be forced in far, unless you have paracord and convenient trees/shrubs nearby as peg substitutes. Similarly, if pitching on sand you'll have the additional expense of buying sand/snow pegs.

That aside this tent has been dependable and comfortable for us and the dogs on several occasions and if you don't have a particularly big budget, JW would seem a pretty sound choice.

I like camping. Wild camping if possible. However, I'm no expert and my taste came rather late in life after our trip to Argentina on the bike. It was for this trip that we bought this tent.

Design: a two man geodesic mountaineering tent with a fairly straightforward 5 min (working alone) tent first, fly second set up.

We wanted a sturdy, waterproof and galeproof tent and we got it.

It seems to be an accepted convention that for MC touring go one size bigger. This tent is no exception. It is too small, storage wise, for two people on a motorcycle tour, given all the stuff that includes. If you're alone, then it is fine. It has an entrance at each end, meaning one of the small atriums can store some bits and bobs. For two up touring we now opt for something bigger.

We've had the tent now for 4 years and I now use it when I go camping alone with our two dogs. That includes summer, spring, autumn and winter.

It doesn't pack down exceptionally small, but will fit inside a Give E45 topbox. It is not desperately light either at 4.5 kg, but I'm on a bike, not a bicycle and the components are sturdy.

I have a couple of gripes that I can live with:
Flysheet condensation seems quite high, despite leaving ventialtion flaps open. It can drip onto the tent from the exterior and from there into your eye if you're unlucky!
Secondly, the groundsheet seemed veeeeeery thin from the off. Waterproof, but it seemed fragile so I made a footprint out of opened up and ironed together rubble bags. This has worked fine.

Gripes that I am less comfortable with:
In the four years that I've had it, I have fortunately only had to endure really heavy, night-long rain once. It was in France on a summer trip. I woke up to find substantial water in the tent!!! Most of my stuff was wet. I was not happy. It seemed to be the ground sheet. However, was it my pitching or faulty components? I had not used all the pegs, so the fly hung closer to the porous tent sides, and my footprit was quite big: extending passed the fly in places. So was my groundshhet just leaky or was it a combination or splash back from the ground up under the fly, during the course of the night coupled with water pooling on the footprint so the tent effectively sat in a puddle all night?

Either way, I found that the groundsheet was a little leaky and so asked about and then treated it with a Nikwax spray, and cut the footprint down. Since then another rainy night gave me no issues.

Biggest gripe!
Customer service. The times I have actually reached the company (emails, even strongly worded complaints, went unanswered) the guy on the phone was pretty rude and condescending: making me feel he was doing me a huge, undeserved favour by talking to me, an amateur speck on the face of outdoor pursuits.... Doesn't seem shrewd when you're a small company relying on word of mouth rather than advertising space.
That is a personal experience. Many have said the opposite...

In conclusion it is a good tent, but needs a well cut and sturdy footprint. A bit small for two on an MC tour, but great for one. It is not cheap, but is cheaper than some of the factory made bigger names, but let down by the customer support.

Perhaps not the loudest, but much cheaper than other aftermarket horns. These twin horns were easy to wire in, using a relay (more so than I expected). The only pain is locating not one, but two horns. Thank goodness for spacious underfaring space on Transalp 600s!!

They are plenty loud enough and more so than any OEM effort, and then some. Perhaps not quite as loud as the benchmark Nautilus, but not far off and a fair bit cheaper.

Don't want to get squashed, but a bit strapped for cash? Get these!!

We bought these for our R1150GS and trip to Argentina/Chile.

They are very spacious, exceedingly solid, and well thought out. Price is quite high, but no worse than other similar styles but with superior built quality in my opinion.

They have detachable lids, tapered lower edges for those stuck in mud moments not getting any worse. They are well mounted and the mounting brackets are very strong, and allow for access to any seat locks.

Only downslides are that after a particulary horrid day of rain there was a little water in one pannier. But only the once. The other shame is that, as far as I know, the guy who makes them only does so for BMWs.

However, if you want ally panniers, have a BMW and can afford to buy Touratech ones, don't. Get these instead: infinitely better.

I bought this stove partly on a whim and as an alternative to the all-singing, all-dancing Primus Omnifuel and it has become my stove of choice for most weekend camping trips.

It is basically a squre cross-section cylinder that you fill with twigs in order to have a fire in a controlled area. The stove is made of sheet stainless steel and it is hinged so that it collapses. It burns wood, paper and pine cones and the like.

It is not particularly light, but is only about 7mm thick when packed, so is still a very tidy apparatus to slide down the back of a pannier.

It is easy to light, cook on and put away. It is also environmentally sound and has a far nice feel to it than a gas burner jet engine. It is the only stove I will light purely for the feel of it, rather than because I want to eat or drink.

Advantages:
Fuel is free and can be near endless if you camp near woodland. It is easy to set up and pack up and boils a kettle of water almost as fast as my mutlifuel. Add it to a quicker set-up time and it's almost the same. On top of that it is cheap(ish). It also has no loose parts: it's all in one piece so nothing to loose, unless you buy/build accessories. It also barbecues, which is hard on an unleaded fuel stove!!

Disadvantages:
It only burns wood, paper and pine cones. By that I mean there is a simlarly priced wood-burning stove that comes with Trangia meths burner accessories, as well as a storage pack. However, that alternative is made of pieces that you need to assemble together each time and lose one and you're a bit stuck, as well as not looking as sturdy, if pics and vids are anything to go by.
Also (and this is true of any wood burner) it leaves cooking pans sooty, but a rub in the sand or grass soon sorts that.
Otherwise, that is it.

In order to make it more practical and an even better Omnifuel alternative I fashioned my own trangia meths burner platform for inside the FS100, as well as a pot platform and barbecue grill, all packed in a plastic A5 document wallet from a stationers!

I really like this stove, even if I would not RTW with only this to cook on!

I have a minor obsession of being prepared for all situations and this is a large part of the reason I bought this stove. The other is that I was lucky enough to find it on sale with about 25% less.

What is good about it?
Build:
All metal build, easily dismantled, and packs small. All the joins are also metallic which seems more sturdy an option than the plastic valves, pumps and couplings of the MSR range, such as my old Whisperlite (despite that also being a great stove).

Features:
With three interchangeable jets and a fuel bottle, this stove can run on unleaded, white gas, parrafin, kerosene, diesel as well as running on the gas cannister isopropane-butane mixes.

Performance:
In a word it is volcanic: very powerful and easy to light.

Downsides:
Only two for me. Firstly, the price. I wouldn't have bought it if it had not been on sale.
Secondly, if you use the bottle and don't keep the bottle in the "valve off" position (there is a valve in the pump head: bottle horizontal one way: on, the other: off) when tightening the fuel-line, it can leak a few drops at the coupling which is of course not good!! So you have to wait for it to evaporate. It doesn't leak once sealed. If you are careful though, it won't leak and all is well: boiling water from snow only 3 mins away!!

I bought it as a full length mat for when I go camping with the Ural and space is less of a premium.

The airic has been totally comfortable, easy to pack with the straps and sack provided.

Based on purely on feel one could think Thermarest inflatables are a tad more robust, but by no means think this suggests the Alpkit mat is flimsy: Not so. The quality seems really good, with a nice finish: it's only a relative comparison and the price makes it far better value. On top of that the Alpkit crew are really friendly as well as knowledgable.

A big thumbs up.

We bought two of these mats as they packed down very small: two big cans of pineapple slices type size.

They are comfy and easy to inflate as well as re-pack. You only need to think about what to put under you feet and calves: a back protector did the trick there.

Despite also having a full length mat too, I still take the shorter version on bike trips for the benefit of the space saved.

The only problem was that my wife's mat started to blister as the surface polyester pulled away from the air-bladder material below. This was replace FOC by Thermarest, based on their Lifetime Warranty, even though we were now in Estonia, not England where the original was bought; no questions asked. Nice service!!

All in all a great mat for keeping you warm, comfy and not packed to the gills on the bike, or rucksack!