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 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. When buying Christmas Gifts, the quality of the product is going to be one of the factors that you really scrutinise before you commit to buying.

The downside to buying online is that you can’t actually get hold of the product to try it out first.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. 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!

As well as their down insulation, Rab have also used Stratus synthetic insulation in areas that are prone to getting damp and compression – that’s over shoulders, cuff area and hips. The cuffs are similarly excellent, using a hook and loop (i.e. Velcro) system to allow adjustment to a user-preference tightness. 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. 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. There are however some methods that you can use to determine a product’s quality without needing to physically have it.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 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. Rohan are a UK outdoor clothing brand with over 50 stores in the UK and yet are not really talked about in the same way as other brands such as Arc’teryx, Mountain Equipment or The North Face for example. 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.