Just bought a Regatta Barbrook from www.outdoormegastore.co.uk, despite a stupid mistake on my part in which I ordered something else and had to email them to correct it - so good service for them and I reckon I owe them a mention. It arrived two days after I'd first ordered the wrong thing, so I guess if I hadn't messed up I would have got it the next day.
The Regatta Barbrook is a very light waterproof that coat covers me down to about my knees, packs up small, and is pretty cheap. You can get a similar one from Millets, but the Millets version doesn't have a back vent. I decided to get the Barbrook after thinking up all the things I wanted a good waterproof jacket to do and deciding that I wasn't going to get any single jacket that did all of them, at any price. So I've decided to go back to the days before goretex when you had a jacket you didn't really trust to be waterproof and something to put over it that was. So far I've established that it's reasonably comfortable to walk with this over my current jacket, whose main sins are being too warm for summer and letting water into the pockets (my summer jacket finished off last summer with a well-earned trip to my washing machine so I now have doubts about its proofing too). There is a little bit of extra noise with the Barbrook on, but not much; in rain it would probably be drowned out by the sound from the rain.
The Regatta Barbrook is a very light waterproof that coat covers me down to about my knees, packs up small, and is pretty cheap. You can get a similar one from Millets, but the Millets version doesn't have a back vent. I decided to get the Barbrook after thinking up all the things I wanted a good waterproof jacket to do and deciding that I wasn't going to get any single jacket that did all of them, at any price. So I've decided to go back to the days before goretex when you had a jacket you didn't really trust to be waterproof and something to put over it that was. So far I've established that it's reasonably comfortable to walk with this over my current jacket, whose main sins are being too warm for summer and letting water into the pockets (my summer jacket finished off last summer with a well-earned trip to my washing machine so I now have doubts about its proofing too). There is a little bit of extra noise with the Barbrook on, but not much; in rain it would probably be drowned out by the sound from the rain.
