By: Blonde Two

At the beginning of this autumn/winter Dartmoor season, the Two Blondes have discovered that they share a rather irritating and somewhat dampening problem.  Both of them have waterproofs that have decided to leak.

I don’t know if it just us, but we seem to wear our outdoor kit out rather quickly.  I guess we do a lot of walking and most of it seems to be in the rain.  I have waterproof trousers that have been held together by gaffer tape since June – now they are totally past it and even the tape has admitted defeat.

Since I hate buying anything that is required to fit around my bottom, we plumped for an intense jacket discussion/investigation whilst on our perambulation of Exeter’s outdoor shops on Saturday.  Blonde One’s focus was mainly on finding something that would stop her shivering in her sleeping bag.  She has tried almost every jumper possible and down jackets seemed to be the next option.  I was trying to find a new waterproof jacket that would last more than a year and help to keep my previously referred to bottom dry.

It all got a bit silly (no surprise there) around the down jacket rails.  As ever, I managed to reach for the most expensive one first – lovely colour, did up around my bottom, deep pockets – I was in love until I looked at the price.  I was trying to convince myself that I could afford it when Blonde One (to help I think) pointed out that you could see funny dark colours in the down through the outer fabric.  My (completely Blonde) response was that this must have been because of the really posh sheep that the jacket was made from.  We discussed this possibility for a while before I registered that down comes from geese and not from sheep!

After that, Blonde One got stuck in a strange down/not down loop of indecision which was probably not helped by me telling her to try all of the available jackets on.  I discovered that we have a different approach to shopping – I try things on a lot and put them all back.  She can’t allow herself to try things on because it will almost certainly lead to her buying them.

After failing miserably to make any useful decisions about either down or waterproof jackets, we took a quick trip to the sale rail.  This is almost always a mistake and was proved to be so today.  There was a lovely red Paramo jacket that fitted me perfectly and had been reduced by quite a lot.  Although it fitted the Blonde Two bill really well, I couldn’t buy it for two reasons;  1.  It looked very similar to the Dartmoor Rescue jackets.  I definitely don’t want to look like a groupie!  2.  Blonde One has wanted a Paramo jacket for approximately a million years and I wasn’t sure that she would still speak to me if I turned up wearing one.