Gear Review

Committed as I am to the doctrine of continuous improvement, I have been studying some of the proper outdoor blogs for ideas which I could appropriate.

Several options presented themselves
1. Walking long distances over hostile terrain, climbing to high altitude, and then writing about it in an entertaining, witty and inspirational manner. This option I discounted out of hand.

2. Walking with a small animal which can feature as a focal point in various amusingly captioned photographs. This I considered a real possibility, but a search of local pet shops for an arthritic sloth proved fruitless.

3 Gear reviews. Could this be the answer ?

Now , I'm sure most of you think of me as a flat-cap, ventile jacket and tweed breeches kind of guy. Those of you who know me better (something I naturally discourage !) appreciate that I am someone who does not shrink from "getting down with the kids". I have,therfore, recently purchased a jacket and trousers from the Emperor range of outdoor clothing. This stuff has the three-fold attraction of being ultra-lightweight, shockingly expensive, and hard to get in this country. It's made of the revolutionary new Goughtex fabric which uniquely functions as base layer, mid layer and soft-shell.

So,how does it perform ? Well I have to say that it's by far the best kit that I have ever worn. I'm not sure how many grams the jacket weighs, but you really don't know that you are wearing it. It certainly attracts favourable comments from people you meet on the hill. Lady walkers seem particularly impressed ! All in all a definite winner and it gets 4.5 stars out of 5 ( the only minor quibble is that small boys tend to shout at you, but thats not important)
I'm now looking forward to receiving the latest Emperor lightweight tarp, (hopefully free of charge!)


Postscript.
You know, looking back, it's hard to believe that I climbed over a hundred Munros without the benefit of wicking underpants or an HTML editor. Christ, we were hard in those days !

Just read that these guys are back together