Independent buying guides
For walkers in the UK who need one shell that copes with rain and wind. One buying question per guide, hydrostatic-head and price figures with check dates, and a cost-per-season calculator that shows its formula.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Pick a waterproof from the wet days where you actually walk: Met Office rain-day counts, what BS EN 343 covers, and the fit details that end a day early.
Photo: ROBERT ALEXANDER WILSON ra_wilsn · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Divide the price by the days you will wear it, add reproofing and VAT, and a dearer jacket often costs less per day. The arithmetic, with the sums shown.
Photo: Jason Hollinger · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Maintenance
A shell that feels cold and clammy is usually dirty, not broken. Wash at 40°C, tumble 20 minutes to reactivate the DWR, reproof when beading stops.
Photo: Олександр Майоров, Майкл Ендрюс, Світлана Буланова · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Adds up a kit list against a weight target and a body-weight guideline.
total = base weight + consumables (water litres x 1 kg + food days x food per day); share of body weight = total / body weight x 100
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Turns a price into a cost per use, so a dear item used often can be compared with a cheap one used rarely.
cost per use = (price + consumables over the whole life) / (uses per week x 52 x years)
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
1
Photo: Олександр Майоров, Майкл Ендрюс, Світлана Буланова · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Weight, volume and what gets left behind.
0
Photo: BLMUtah · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Temperature, weather and terrain, with real numbers.
0
Photo: BLMUtah · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
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Photo: BLMUtah · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Intervals, parts and what they cost.
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Photo: BLMUtah · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Standards, warnings and the checks worth doing.
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Photo: Jason Hollinger · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
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