A lightweight windproof jacket or smock is an incredibly useful addition to your pack. On dry days this will reduce wind chill without the overheating caused by full-on, heavier waterproofs. Sometimes called windshirts or windbreakers, these take almost no space in your pack – usually squashing down extremely small. They are most usually worn by runners, and often mountain bikers, but are actually a great addition to a walkers’ pack too, keeping the wind off whilst you are working hard heading uphill. As usual with Walkhighlands reviews, as we don’t sell gear we give the manufacturer’s recommended retail price –…

Waterproof jackets are one of the most important (and expensive) bits of outdoor kit. We’ve put a range of jackets through their paces during an increasingly wet Scottish spring and summer. All of them are made from layered fabric, basically an outer woven layer, usually treated with a water repellent coating, bonded to waterproof membrane (Gore-tex is the best known brand here; many of these products contain PFC/PTFE “forever chemicals”) – this construction is referred to as 2-layer and will normally have a liner to protect it. On 2.5-layer fabric an additional coating is applied to the membrane itself to…