I have always treated water. I'm sure I have treated LOADS of water that would have been perfectly OK to drink without, but I reckon this have to be the lesser of two evils as compared with drinking without treatment water that needs it.

Yet more allergies come into play here, though. I have to steer clear of the chlorine tablets ... so I always used the Iodine ones. But they've banned them now and you can't get them any more!

So my new toy for this Challenge is a UV sterilisation system called a SteriPen. Complete with batteries, it tips the scales at 195 grammes.

I think I can live with that

195g

That is very nearly a packet of



I couldn't live without that.

Good on you and good luck, Frederic.

Drink tea, you have to boil the water which kills most bacteria. In over 40 years of camping in the UK we have never felt the need to use a filter for ourselves. The one time we tried filtering water for our son to drink the filter blocked with fine peat particles after filtering just a few liters!
The code for this post is M GUT!

It does depend to some extent on how used to wild water your digestive system is, I think. If you've only ever drunk tapwater or filtered water, I would have thought it would be best to filter or boil or otherwise chuck tablets in. Streams in spate after heavy rain carry a lot more bugs than they would otherwise do and I would always boil water or use sterilising tabs for those times, but otherwise I'm happy to drink most peaty gunge, whether or not the fabled dead sheep in languishing upstream.