A Jacket Seam Gives Up
Rain from the moment I left the car to the moment I got back, which the forecast had been honest about. I went anyway because the woodland loop is the one walk here that is good in rain: 11 km, almost all under oak and beech, with the leaves down and the paths running like small streams. There is a pleasure in walking through a wood in heavy rain when you are dry inside your jacket. There is much less pleasure in it when you are not.
About two hours in, I noticed a cold line along my right shoulder, exactly where the pack strap sits. I assumed it was sweat. By the third hour it had spread down the inside of my arm, and when I stopped under the big holly to check, the lining of the jacket along the shoulder seam was wet through. The seam tape inside had lifted. I could see it hanging in a loose curl when I turned the jacket inside out, and the stitching was letting water straight through where the strap had been grinding on it for years.
The jacket is nine years old and has been reproofed twice, so I cannot pretend it owes me anything. But it is a useful lesson about where waterproofs actually fail. The fabric was fine. It beaded water perfectly well across the back and chest. It was the seam under the point of abrasion that went, and that is where I will look first on the next one.
Lunch was eaten under the holly, which kept perhaps half the rain off: a flask of tomato soup, a cheese and onion roll that had become soft on one side, and a boiled egg I had forgotten to salt. The soup rescued the day. Hot food in cold rain is worth any amount of extra weight.
Total time 3 h 20 for 11.4 km. Wet from the right shoulder to the right wrist, otherwise dry. I have since re-taped the seam with iron-on tape as a trial and will report on whether it holds. I am not optimistic, but it costs nothing to try, and the woodland loop will be there waiting either way.