UKC

Summer means swimming; but who wants to carry a beach towel up hills? Absorbent, quick-drying and incredibly packable, the Airlite Towel may be the lightest option on the market, says Dan Bailey. 

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I see UKC avoided a "doesn't leave much to the imagination" photo! :⁠-⁠) Now I'm interested - is that because it's not very big or that it's so fine it's clingy, like fine cotton or silk so reveals the shape of whatever it is covering!? 😱 

I've got a S2S travel towel from years and years ago - pretty good and comfy, works well and easy to wash/quick to dry. But over the maybe last 6 years for bikepacking and backpacking I've gone over to using one of the cheap Decathlon ones that it seems 90 percent of Europe's population own from experience on holidays. My big Decathlon one - "bath sheet" size maybe? Really big anyway - packs down to the same size as the S2S one, and the medium sized Decathlon one - probably the same dimensions as the one reviewed here is lighter and smaller than the more fluffy S2S one. 

But as these S2S ones aren't very expensive I can see myself being tempted to get one and go even lighter! 

I often use an absorbent sponge. The cheapest ones with only small cells aren't much good, some of the absorbent ones for cleaning floors are OK. Can be instantly "dried" by wringing. However makes the reviewed item seem positively modest. 

Well yes it's very thin, but I was thinking more about the size. Modesty not usually an issue round our way, because there's nobody to see. But in busier places it'd probably be a consideration

I have a couple of these - small for small persons hands when there is only a noisy hand dryer available and lives in my daypack. "Large" when there is a chance of said small person overdoing it in the local burn. They are pretty effective as towels and dry ridiculously quickly, especially if you hang them in the wind.