It usually starts in the kitchen, ten minutes before you leave. Who's coming? How many cups do we need? With the Expedition set, that question was already answered for you: four cups, or five, packed into their waxed cotton bag, and you took the lot whether you needed them or not.
We thought their might be a better option, and we've been working on the idea for a couple of years now, and been through dozens of iterations to get here. The cups themselves never needed changing. What we kept coming back to was how the stack is held together.
An adjustable strap, not a bag
The Wanderer uses a natural cork lid and an adjustable webbing strap with a Fieldtrip buckle. The strap is the whole idea. Two of you heading out for a coffee and a walk? Pack two cups and cinch it down. The whole gang coming down the beach for a picnic? Let it out and take a five cup stack.
Same cups, same strap. You take what you need and leave the rest on the shelf, which is not something you could do with a bag cut to a fixed size.
The top cup becomes a storage pot
The cork lid does a second job. Fill the top cup with your teabags, your coffee, a couple of sugar sachets, or your secret stash of shortbread, push the cork in, and it all travels with the cups rather than loose in the bottom of your bag.
When you get there, tip it out and use the cup as normal. On the way home, the same cup takes the used teabags and the coffee grounds and the cork goes back in, so your bag stays clean and dry for the drive back.
The same insulated cups underneath
Nothing has changed about the cups themselves. Each one holds 10oz, which is about half a pint, and they're made from 304 stainless steel with a vacuum between the two walls, so the outside stays cool while the inside stays hot.
They're tapered so they stack without rattling, they're dishwasher safe, and the opening still takes the head of an Aeropress or a V60 if you're brewing a fresh coffee.
Why it costs less
We love the waxed cotton bags the Expedition sets come in, and they're not going anywhere. But they take a lot of work: Halley Stevensons cloth, cut and sewn, then finished by us in Tynemouth with a drawstring and a wooden slider.
The strap system is a good deal simpler to make, and we'd rather that showed up in the price than in our margin. So the four cup Wanderer set is £59.95, ten pounds less than the Expedition set. Three and five cup stacks are available too, in navy, khaki, or a blue and white stripe.
Engraved gifts for people who love the outdoors
Every cup in the set can be engraved in our workshop here in Tynemouth. Names, initials, a date, the hill you walked up on the morning it happened.
About half of what leaves here goes out as a present, and engraving is the difference between a set of camping cups and their set of camping cups. A name engraved on steel doesn't fade, chip or wash off, so it will still be there in twenty years, by which point the cups will have been to a fair few places.
It settles arguments, too. Nobody has to ask which cup is theirs.
The Wanderer set is available now.
