I bought this barrow a few years ago and I thought that I would do a write up about it telling a few of the good and bad points.
Firstly it is not a cheap barrow. There are others that will cost less but as I take a fair bit of kit sometimes, such as in the winter on sessions of three nights or so, I thought I would go for the biggun so to speak. The barrow comes in a big box and you have to put it together, which is not hard and in no time at all you are looking at quite a substantial piece of equipment.
Most of it is adjustable; side and front rails, handles etc. can all be moved to suit your height and arm length and this does need doing. A bit like when you sit for ages at your computer and you need to adjust your workstation, because if you don’t you will end up with all sorts of aches and pains. The barrow is no different.
You have to have the arms adjusted so that when you lift the barrow you are not stooping and that the legs are not going to drag along the ground. Talking of the legs dragging, this is the one real pain about this barrow. I have, a few times, bumped into something hard on the pathway and when I looked down one of the small black feet had gone missing. Not too much of a problem as Prestige kindly sent me a couple more but it does seem a shame that the design allows it to happen so easily.
Right, so we have the barrow all assembled. Now if I were you I would put it up at home and get all your gear and try to load it up. You will find that it takes a few goes to get it right. Not only does it obviously have to be balanced for ease of use but you may find it easier to get proper barrow bags to aid with this. You can get away with using other luggage but if you have bags that fit neatly on the barrow it does make it much easier. When I bought my barrow I was given a bag free, which clipped into the middle of the barrow. It was useless, and I later found out that they all were, not just mine. They didn’t fit.
Since then, though, a new version came out and it fits very nicely indeed and it is not only useful as something to put things in, it helps to make the barrow much easier to push by lowering the centre of gravity. I put the two water bottles, that come with the bag, in it and that makes it much more stable. I am still not sure if the bag is totally waterproof in a real downpour but I have used it in modest showers and it seemed fine to me. I would advise getting one if you use a barrow often.
Once you have got the hang of loading the barrow up and you know where everything is going to fit on it, then I would advise resting your rods carefully on the top and then using some sort of straps to hold everything on. I use one of those spider elastic type things as it has six or eight elastics, which can be pulled round near enough everything to hold it all on safely. Make sure you don’t have anything sticking out of the sides as you WILL be dragged off into the undergrowth as blackberry bushes and suchlike grab you and pull you in there. This might be funny for other anglers but it's not funny for you.
The front wheel has a sort of suspension that really does make things easier. When barrowing over roots and other bumpy things it takes the jarring out of you hands and makes things much less likely to move on the barrow and therefore makes things again more stable. This barrow has its faults; it doesn’t fold completely flat but saying that it is smaller than a normal barrow, which I had before. It isn’t light, but then again a lot of our tackle isn’t either. On the plus side though, it is much easier to push and wheel around than a normal barrow and you can get a lot more gear on one too if you load it up carefully.
You can get other bags to clip onto it but I haven’t used those and to be honest I have enough gear as it is without having more things to clip and unclip from the barrow. I have bought a heavy duty rain cover from a camping place to wrap the whole lot up in if it's pouring down as I am about to go off to a swim and that’s a good idea to have. It saves things being soaked before you even set up and can get wrapped over the barrow once emptied too.
All in all, I like the barrow very much and wouldn’t be without it. I haven’t tried any of the others around but this one suits my needs as at present I tend to do at least a 24-hour session. Maybe if I did shorter ones I would purchase a less substantial barrow as this is a bit of a beast. but I would give it a good 8 out of 10 though.
