One thing I won't skimp on

And that is outdoor clothing, I have felt the full force of nature on a few occasions in my life, and it's only been the fact that I have had the right equipment and clothing and experience that I didn't end up as a statistic in a mountain rescue log book, my first experience of how frightening the weather can be, even here in the UK was when I had just joined the Army in 1979 ( I was 16 years old) and we were out on a cold weather survival course in the Lake District, we were camped on Green Gable, and were in one of the worst blizzards the area had ever seen, it was the first "white out" I had been in and it's very disconcerting, and very disorientating, you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face.
Anyway, our troop had just come off the Gable and we were approached by the Mountain Rescue team of the area, to assist in the search for a woman who was snow holed on the Gable, apparently she had broken her leg and her husband had snow holed her and put her orange rucksack over the top so she could be found easily, unfortunately in the blizzard conditions her rucksack was covered over in a matter of minutes, and he hadn't been able to take an accurate location in the blizzard, so he only knew "roughly" where she was, even though he knew the Gable like the back of his hand

We spent 5 hours out in bitterly cold biting wind conditions and complete white out along with the Mountain Rescue team, doing criss cross search patterns, shouting, screaming, probing the snow, needless to say we didn't find her, and we were eventually pulled off the mountain for our own safety as some of us were starting to show signs of hypothermia and there was a real danger of one of us simply walking off a precipice....and this man, this husband, lost his wife that day, her body wasn't recovered until the snow melted a month or so later, 40 extremely fit and properly clothed young men, and 18 experienced Mountain rescue volunteers failed that day to find her, she had basic clothing, completely inadequate clothing for the day out on the Gable......a broken leg ended up killing her.....that was 28 years ago on a bitterly cold November in 1979, and to this day, I remember it like it was yesterday......just how helpless a person can be in such extreme weather conditions.........they estimated she probably only lasted about 1 hour in her snow hole after her husband had left her to get help, mainly due to hypothermia and shock.

which is why I never skimp on outdoor clothing, always get the best you can afford, you never know when it might mean the difference between life and death, and NEVER underestimate how powerful a force the weather and nature is