Pack up your back troubles

My first rucksack looked as if someone had taken one of those shopping trollies beloved of women of a certain age, removed the wheels and attached a couple of straps to hold it on to my back. Not only was it an aesthetic nightmare, but anything more than two pairs of socks inside would cause the kind of muscular contortions sure to end up in backache even in a young man (as I was at the time).

Thank goodness things have moved on. Rucksacks may still look simple, but these days designers and engineers are carrying out extensive research to ensure that the final product is a far cry from a sack on straps.

The latest in backpacks, the Berghaus Bioflex C7 sac (winner of an award for outdoor product design at the Munich ISPO Expo), has been developed to provide a solution to the problems I experienced with my first backpack.

The work behind the Bioflex system was derived from military research undertaken by the Design Innovation Group at Qinetiq, to develop backpacks for soldiers in the field. The project involved looking at new concepts in load carriage and weight distribution for maximum efficiency (and comfort) and had built up a huge knowledge base that was only applied to field kit.