Good Old Fashioned Outdoor Shop (wildtrak.com)

Member Name: LaptopAcidX

Product:	wildtrak.com
Date:	05/07/09 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent staff, great range of clothing and climbing, everything discounted.

Disadvantages: Small range of non climbing footwear.

Wildtrak is an independent outdoor equipment shop (or in their words and adventure sports shop) in Newcastle. It has been around a long time, I've been shopping there for at least fifteen years. All the top brands are stocked and Wildtrak is a Paramo approved retailer, lesser known brands such as Montane are also in evidence. Supplementing clothing, rucksacks and tents is decent book and map section and a wide selection of walking and climbing DVDs is also available.

As well as the usual range of outdoor gear there is a wide range of climbing equipment, possibly the biggest North of Leeds and comparable to any store in the Lake District. Particularly impressive is a small section of climbing wall for testing climbing shoes which is better some climbing walls I've visited.

The main attraction of Wildtrak is that pretty much everything is discounted, being one of the cheapest shops around with items in store as cheap as many web retailers. Wildtrak is no bargain basement box shifter though and possibly as important as the low prices is the knowledgeable, patient staff. This is particularly important when buying climbing shoes as it's not something to be rushed and being climbers themselves they know this.

On the downside is that there is not a great range of footwear for hiking and approach and GPS devices seem to have disappeared off the website although I'm not sure about the shop itself. If I was being really picky the discounts aren't as great as they used to be. Not that they're particularly bad either and I guess this is more a factor of the outdoor market over the last fifteen years.

It's fairly obvious I think Wildtrak is a great shop, if I'm after a bit of kit, it's usually my first port of call, and if I'm not in Newcastle I usually give the excellent website a bit of once over. Consequently about half of my gear is from there.

Summary: Best outdoor shop in the North if not the country.