Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Author: Geoff

Scarpa Boots water tests

After the recent walk where my Scarpa ZG65 XCR boots let me down by leaking, after a morning walking in heavy rain. I returned them to Open Air who agreed they were faulty and supplied me free of charge with a new pair.

I thought I would be smart and test the new boots before walking in them. I quickly made a test rig to hold the boots down in the sink to a depth of 120mm. Before immersion I weighed the insoles (about 28gm apiece), then repeated weighing after various immersion times. Here’s the results:-

As you can see the boots were pretty water tight for around 8 hours or so, after this the right boot leaked noticeably more than the left. Obviously this was a static test, in practice when walking you will get a pumping action so it will be interesting to see how they fare in the next rain walk.

Primark in Cambridge

The Cambridge Primark opens tomorrow in Burleigh Street (the revamped John Lewis building ). To promote the opening of Primark they used today ten walking billboards as part of a targeted marketing campaign from Look Media UK. I thought it was highly effective and looked rather cool.

From Primark in Cambridge

Here is a little slideshow:-

Primark is the first major (Over 50,000 sq ft) new store in Cambridge since the opening of the Grafton Centre. There website for a job is here

Rougham Circular walk

Yesterdays walk with the Cambridge Rambling Club was a good test for our foul weather gear, mine failed abysmally 🙁

We 11 started from St Mary’s Church car park at Rougham, in very wet and windy conditions, so it was heads down for the first 9 miles to Bradfield St Clare and a spot of lunch in the shelter of the church porch, followed by a drink at the Fox & Hounds in Bradfield St. George. The afternoon cleared up a little so we started to dry out.

From Rougham Walk

Very disappointing for me in that the left boot of my brand new Scarpa ZG65 XCR boots sprang a leak. So it’s back to Open Air with them today! My RAB Bergen jacket (QWA-05-RDB) was as useless as ever with little streams inside the arms and the pockets filling with water. It’s time has now come – I will return it to RAB. A quick survey of the other 10 people in our party  showed the Karrimor & Berghaus as highly effective, the Paramo did OK too but they are really heavy to lug around on extended walks.

Here is the walk and photographs:-

Rougham circular walk

Widget powered by EveryTrail: Share GPS Tracks

Update 021109 – Open Air agree boots are faulty , should have new pair by Friday 🙂