Thursday 23 June 2011

It was an accident, cough.

Well, sort of. After The Challenge, I’d decided that my waterproof jacket needed a rethink. I love Montane, all three of my main jackets (waterproof, soft shell and down) are Montane and they are great, but I felt the Quattro didn’t perform as well as I would have liked. Mind you, they were challenging conditions, so I shouldn’t have felt too let down. I just felt a bit damp.

I think the  main issue was breathability, which actually could have been my own fault as I was determined to keep my Dynamo on underneath the Quattro. The Dynamo breathes brilliant, but when really, really wet, the Quattro, struggled, so between the two was damp, although my base layer was fine (merino, of course!) I should have taken off the Dynamo perhaps, but the strength of the wind made me feel cold (psychological, I’m sure). I came to the conclusion I needed to change something and as I love my Dynamo so much, it was the Quattro that had to go. At least into my day pack rather than for longer trips (if I get to do any more, honeybun…)

The plan was to try out David’s Paramo before buying one for myself. It’s obviously too big for me and that probably adds to it feeling so heavy, but I was lacking in wet weather, somewhat surprisingly, to really try it out. I had to make do with testing it’s breathability in warm, damp conditions and as it was, it seemed ok. Then, there came an opportunity and lo and behold…

SDC11773Oops!

I don’t know how that happened.

Fortunately, I still had my birthday money from mum to spend. It’s neutral, so it won’t clash with any of my black gear or any of the other stuff that, er, clashes with each other.

Obviously, the reflective stripe works. Excellent.

So long as I don’t fall into a drift of grubby snow, I’ll be fine.

I don’t do things like that. No, not me. Never…

4 comments:

Gayle said...

Is that the Velez Adventure or the Velez Adventure Light?

I was out in my Adventure Light for this week's trip. Absolutely ridiculous that I could wear it and not be too hot - it's the middle of June for goodness' sake!

Louise said...

Velez Adventure.

Typical, as soon as it arrives, the weather gets dry and warm. Off to Orkney soon, so I'm sure I'll get to try it out to its full there! Can't wait!

Phreerunner said...

Enjoy Orkney Louise, it's great. Pleased to see you got something to review, but did you put on a mask for the photos - your face seemed somehow different! Hope you won't need the new waterproof for a while...
Have fun
Martin

Louise said...

You may notice that photographs of myself seldom appear on this blog, I much prefer to post pretty photographs of scenery, so taking some for the review was tricky, particularly as TTS is darn sarf now. What I really should have done (and will now do!) is mention that I pinched those. Oops!

I can't wait to get to Orkney, it looks wonderful and it's going to be so good having some fun together as a family again. Two weeks just won't be long enough!