Scotland - why in winter of all times?

Scotland. A country that conjures up an incredible number of images for us. Well, admittedly - Braveheart with William Wallace Mel Gibson is probably not entirely innocent in our head cinema.

Highlands near Braemar A few months ago, we wrote down and published a to-do list of things we wanted to do this year. Almost everything is ticked off. Of course, we're not just interested in ticking off tasks. With every bag we produce, with every new model, we want to do something special for you out there. When we announced that we wanted to make a "leather-free" bag, we received very motivating feedback from you. Of course, we don't want to use just any old material as an alternative. Synthetic leather is out of the question for us for several reasons. We came across waxed canvas some time ago. A material with a long tradition, which is also very popular in situations where compromises are absolutely unacceptable, such as canvas.

Vitalis went to a textile fair in London in the summer to talk directly to potential suppliers of ours. He came back with a whole load of samples... Long story short. We tested different thicknesses, surfaces and colors, which means that we had our camera bags produced in this material. What sounds so easy here is not quite so straightforward in practice. Waxed canvas requires much more effort to process, and the sewing machines that work well with our leather reach their limits with waxed canvas... Anyway, at some point we decided on a certain thickness and two colors and ordered the material from a company in Dundee, Scotland. The delivery time of around eight weeks was not particularly short and we then realized that we wouldn't receive the waxed canvas until the beginning of December. Unfortunately, this made it clear that we would definitely not be releasing the waxed canvas bags this year. However, we are expecting them around February 2015.

Cambridge, our first place to sleep - next to a rugby pitch

Our road trip

Right from the start, we wanted to strongly link the Scotland theme with the new camera bags. That's why it quickly became clear to us that we would pick up the waxed canvas in person from the factory in Scotland. You know Scotland in summer, but not many "continental Europeans" travel to Scotland in winter to hike around in the Highlands. But that's exactly the point, if nobody else does it, then we'll do it... Vitalis' father-in-law was kind enough to let us use his Volkswagen T4 van, which is not a matter of course given the distance of around 3500 kilometers ahead of us - so once again a big thank you. The great thing about the van is that it is so incredibly versatile. On the one hand, it doesn't really look like we're carrying around €20k of equipment for filming and photography. On the other hand, it's wonderful to spend the night in a sleeping bag on the loading area. It actually has a parking heater, but if it doesn't work somehow, then you can imagine how Scotland feels at night in December in an uninsulated van... :-) but we had a good time eating... We were on the road for a total of five days. We started in Pforzheim, then took the ferry across Calais to Dover. We spent our first night in Cambridge, right next to a time-honored and historic rugby pitch on the side of the road. On the second day, we illegally went through the gate of Kings College and nothing happened. Immediately afterwards, we continued straight north with a detour to the coast, past Edinburgh and on to Dundee. There we spent the night again on the edge of some cottage. We spent the whole morning of the third day with our supplier, visiting the production site, filming and, of course, packing our waxed canvas, which had been specially produced for us.

From Dundee, we then headed into the Highlands in the rapidly approaching darkness, where we got weak and took a room in a nice hotel at short notice... But that was the only civilized overnight stay on our road trip, the next night we spent the night again at a freeway service area near Birmingham, next to passing trucks and friends of the cultivated car tuning. I once read somewhere that the British are a bit more relaxed when it comes to tuning and exhaust pipes without silencers... ;-) To get back to the Highlands... We chose a hike that was marked gray on the map. Supposedly the longest and most strenuous - why? If we wanted to go for a walk, we only have to go out of our front door, because that's where the Black Forest is... :-) Anyway, we realized why this was the most difficult route, simply because it wasn't marked. At some point we followed the mountain deer and snow hares to find the mountain peak with the best view... If you're carrying enough weight, you can work up a sweat even when it feels like -10°C and the wind is blowing at 20 knots. (I've just come back from a kitesurfing vacation, where you learn to measure the wind) only to freeze again after a few moments because it was simply extremely "fresh" up there...

Coast off Calais Oops, I'm now at almost 900 words, that should be enough for now - there will be a movie soon, you'll see more... :-)