A fire starter of some description will be needed to light your chosen cooking stove. whether it’s a Trangia or some other type of appliance it will definitely need lighting!

A fire starter will be required when you get to camp, you will no doubt be in need of a good meal, the long day walking will leave you tired and hungry and the quicker you can get your stove lit, the better. There are a couple of different options for this:-

• Matches
• Lighter
• Fire Steel type fire starter

Matches are cheap and you can purchase the wind proof, waterproof style from most outdoor shops (Click here) but they only give you a limited number of times that you will be able to light your your stove, once you run out of matches you have no way of starting a fire!

A lighter will last much longer as it will still produce enough spark to light your gas even when it has no gas itself, it will need to be kept dry at all times as it will cease to function if it gets wet. Keep it with other stuff that you will want to keep dry (like your phone)

A Fire Steel type fire starter is a quick and effective way to light your stove, it will even continue working after it has been submerged with no more effort than a quick wipe. This would always be my first choice for lighting my stove but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t carry a lighter and/or matches as well as it would give you more options if you needed them.

It is worth practising with your chosen method before embarking on your expedition, I recently supervised a group where around half of them had no idea as to how to strike a match. I must admit I was quite surprised, I’ve been playing with fire from a very early age!