HELLY HANSEN Odin Huginn

RRP: £160 Target price: £110

The Odin Huginn (women’s Muninn) are pitched at ambitious hikes in the colder months: they’re heavy, reinforced in sensitive places, and there’s a soft, warm lining around the waist. But I also wore them in the middle of the heatwave on a 13-mile hike through the Pennines. And guess what? I’d do it again. They are weirdly versatile, with heat management that belies their weight and thickness. To try them in colder conditions, I took them on a chilly, windy night-time hillwalk, and they were still superb. They’re stretchy, they’ve got useful-butslimline pockets where you want them, and the DWR fabric deals with rain very effectively. In fact the only thing I can fault them on is the high price – but at least you know why you’re paying it, because this kind of adaptability is rare. And in a test where names have been peculiarly interesting, they don’t drop the ball: in Norse mythology, Huginn and Muninn are a pair of ravens who fly across the nine worlds bringing information back to big boss Odin, risking every weather and terrain along the way. You have to admit that’s better naming than ‘Stretch Bags’.