Breathability is just as important, because many man-made polymer fabrics can be waterproof (e.g. polythene), but if it doesn’t breathe at all then you’re just going to sweat inside and get wet anyway. There are however some methods that you can use to determine a product’s quality without needing to physically have it. I only recently discovered that Rab, the upmarket outdoor clothing design house, are based just up the road from us in Alfreton, Derbyshire. We are based in Birmingham. For some reason I had always imagined Rab to be a Scottish company, owing to their founder Rab Carrington being a proud Scot. I felt a little deflated – Derbyshire just doesn’t seem as glamorous as ‘the Highlands of Scotland’ to my impressionable mind. Their gear is still rather good though! The Kaon uses Rab’s ‘Slim Fit’– this sits snugger to your body than Rab’s Regular fit so you don’t get any extra weight, bulk or excess material flapping in the wind. It can fit a couple of thinner layers on underneath it but isn’t designed to go over bulkier layers.

The outer Pertex Shield layer is reasonably thin too. I have been slightly worried about catching the material on thorns and hedgerows in case it gets ripped. The fabric has rip-stop properties however and so perhaps I am being unjustly cautious. Something to bear in mind in any case. The downside to buying online is that you can’t actually get hold of the product to try it out first. Insulation is where it all began for Rab®. From the early days in Patagonia and Sheffield where Rab Carrington harnessed his knowledge of outdoor clothing and equipment design, through to present-day Derbyshire, our team continues to redefine the future of insulation technology. The zips are all-round excellent on the Ventus, with a great Aquaguard YKK zip on the front which zips right up to the top of the hood, covering your chin and protecting you from the wind. You can adjust the hood with the zip fully zipped up into a makeshift balaclava which is useful when the weather is bad. To give that price some context we then looked at all of the products available from Go Outdoors in the Christmas Gifts category. We found 172 items in total. What’s the price of Christmas Gifts?The Prosar is so lightweight as to almost make you laugh out loud. You cannot begin to fathom how an item of clothing so manifestly skimpy could ever profess to provide warmth – and certainly not in freezing, alpine conditions! In your hands it feels like it’s floating, and at a miniscule 371g it essentially is. The bonded box-wall design means that none of the main panels of the coat have any stitching or seam taping within the panel and so are remarkably waterproof. Each of the sleeves has cinch-able (is that a word?) cuffs using Velcro tabs to secure the end of the sleeve and make it as tight around your wrist as you require. I did further testing on subsequent days with the pit zips open and found internal moisture much reduced.

That got us thinking though, that we’re looking at every possible item from Rab so it would be good to narrow our search down even further and only look at Rab branded products within the Christmas Gifts category. The cost of Rab Christmas Gifts My next test was on the following weekend with rain forecast. We set off for a 7 mile walk in the Shropshire Hills and I wore a similar setup but with a Mammut Goretex waterproof shell over the top. By the end of the walk I had remained warm, but water had soaked the bottom of the Prosar as it is slightly longer than the Mammut shell. In addition, on removing the layers, I found that the Prosar was actually damp everywhere – I put this down to sweating internally as well as high humidity in the air. You can’t defy the laws of physics, but the Rab Prosar accomplishes it’s main goal of maintaining warmth in challenging conditions.I bought the Valiance at the perfect time for testing it – the nights had begun to draw in around November time, and freezing rain was hammering Sutton Park (my local stomping ground) on a regular basis. Size-wise, I went for the Men’s XL which fitted me well at 6ft3 tall and average build. The inner depths of the Valiance is where things get interesting. Rab have used a bonded narrow box-wall design for the Valiance, filled with 800 fill-power goose down insulation. These are just about the best down feathers that Rab supply (in terms of volume or ‘loft’), and they are from ethically reared geese. I’m really not sure why this is because if you study the specifications of Rohan gear (and in particular their Barricade technical fabric – i.e. their Gore-Tex equivalent), you will find it is head and shoulders above their competitors. The material the product is made from is often a sign of the quality for Christmas Gifts. Take a look at the product details over at Go Outdoors to get a feel for this. The cuffs are similarly excellent, using a hook and loop (i.e. Velcro) system to allow adjustment to a user-preference tightness.