Generally speaking, I try to avoid walking in the rain. So given a forecast of rain and a choice I’m likely as not to stay at home. But sometimes wet-weather walking is unavoidable as many a day on the Cambrian  Way or Offa’s Dyke or just about any other long-distance path walking over several days has proved. So having decent waterproofs is essential.

I last looked at these on this blog almost exactly 8 years ago. Here’s a link.  At the time my preferred waterproof trousers were from Outdoor Research and they have served me well. But they are over-trousers to be worn on top of my usual walking trousers.  Most over-trousers are a real pain to put on when you are already part way through a walk and don’t have a convenient, dry place to stop and put them on; you usually have to take your boots off to get them to go over your feet. Not what you want to do in the rain. The Outdoor Research ones are great in that they have waterproof zips at the side of the leg that go up to mid thigh so can be put on standing up (as long as you can balance OK on one leg).

But I have often wondered if it would be better still to have walking  trousers that were simply waterproof so that come the rain all I would need to do is to get a jacket out if I wasn’t already wearing one.  So I was very pleased when the people at Trespass invited me to try their Mens Waterproof walking Trousers. 

For a walking trouser I was slightly surprised that one of the labels describe them as “The Ultimate Golf Waterproof” and another as the “Putter”.  I don’t subscribe to the view that golf is “a good walk spoiled” (popularly attributed to Mark Twain), but apart from brief periods of striding anxiously on the fairway to try and find your ball, walking seems to me a secondary aspect of the game. So as a selling point to try and attract those walking for leisure I think Trespass may be slightly wide of the mark.

However, studying the specifications for these trousers they are certainly ticking the right boxes for walkers. Their waterproofness is given as 10,000 mm.  Now for most people that probably means next to nothing other than a big number. Cribbing  the Target Dry blog, a waterproof garment is judged by two statistics. The first one measures how waterproof the thing is. This is counted in millimetres of water. For example, if a coat were 5,000mm waterproof, a test is conducted where a long tube is placed over the fabric and the tube is then filled with water. 5,000mm or 5 metres (16.4 ft) is how far you could fill the tube before it would start to leak through the fabric.  So my Trespass trousers  ought to be able to have a 30 foot tube of water resting on them without leaking. Imagine that.  Quite how that is relevant to the experience of walking in a persistent downpour for hours on end is difficult to see but I can tell you that when I wore them recently on a two mile walk in heavy rain they didn’t leak!

The second number relates to how breathable the garment is. It is expressed in terms of how many grams (g) of water vapor can pass through a square meter (m²) of the fabric from the inside to the outside in a 24 hour period. The larger the number, the more breathable the fabric. For example, if a coat were 5000gsm breathable, 5000 grams of water would be able to pass through a square meter of the fabric in 24 hours.  This number is often referred to as the Moisture Vapour Transmission Rate or MVT. According to the Berghaus website (a brand that I rate highly and whose jacket I am modelling in these pics) an MVT of more than 8,000 will give a good level of breathability for general outdoor use and more than 20,000 will give you a good level of breathability for more active use.

The Trespass trousers claim a MVP (same thing as MVT, the P standing for permeability) of 10,000 which may be on the low side for the hill climbing hiker.  Me, I take the whole breathability thing with a huge pinch of salt (always a good thing to do if pursuing vigorous activity as a lot of salt is lost through perspiration). In my experience you are always going to get a damp patches though perspiration if you are wearing  a waterproof and walking quite hard.  And most of us don’t sweat that much from our legs anyway, though I suppose the nether regions do get rather clammy.   So far all I can say about my Ultimate Golf Putters is that I have experienced no crotch discomfort.

One of the main differences between the Trespass trousers and the Outdoor Research ones is that the Trespass ones are lined and that the fabric used throughout is slightly stretchy.  The lining is Polyester so quite cool to the skin. Now I prefer the feel of cotton next to my skin (my bamboo fabric tee shirts feels very similar), so on a cool autumn day I found the feel of them on my legs a little, well, cool. I think if I was wearing them in winter I might feel a bit put off – at least at first. On the other hand this might be quite nice in summer. The fit of of the trousers is very generous, baggy even. Not very flattering.  But the Outdoor Research over-trousers fit is very similar as are all other over-trousers I have had. With such a generous fit I am not sure that fabric stretchiness adds much; I guess if your legs are very stocky it might be good to have that extra give.

The trousers are generous, too, in length. My “large” measured 114 cm (4cm longer that the Outdoor Research ones). This meant that they pulled up comfortably to well above my belly button. Which means that even if you were wearing a relatively short jacket there should be a good overlap of jacket over trouser. This is really important in you want to keep dry!

The trousers have two nice and deep zipped side pockets…

… which are actually lined with a “soft tricot” lining which feels nice.  They also have two rear pockets with decent flaps and velcro to secure them.

Of course if it is raining hard you don’t really want to use your pockets at all as anything taken out and replaced will soon become wet/soggy/inedible/illegible. Over- trousers tend not to have zips so peeing involves rather inelegantly lowering your outer pair in order to get at your inner. These ones have a (short) zip protected by a velcro-secured flap.

The legs also are zipped from the bottom up to 38cm, which makes for a just about  good enough opening should you wish to take your trousers off but leave your boots/shoes  on. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to why you might want to do that.

At the boot end there are also velcro pads to close the bottom of the trouser; I might have wanted a little longer Velcro strip here so that you could ensure a close fit of the trousers around tour ankle (not liking any flapping of material in the wind if it could be avoided).

Keeping ones trousers up and comfortable round the waist is fairly important and these cover all bases with a stretchy pleated band, a top button  and two cord adjusters that are a decent size.

Of course as with any walking gear, its only in the regular use of the things do you really find out their strengths and weaknesses. These weigh 422 grams  (my Outdoor Research ones are 291 ) so even if I didn’t want to make them my default trouser for a wet-weather day it would be no hardship to pack them in the rucksack and wear them as an over trouser.  So all in all, a very well designed and well specified pair of waterproofs. And in the wet I’d rather be dry than admired for the cut of my pants.

These trousers are currently on sale at the Trespass website for £79.99