Vulpine Purchases

I was lucky enough last week to get a chance to visit the Vulpine sample sale. Vulpine are a British gear manufacturer that make stylish clothes that appear to rival Rapha in quality. When it was posted on the London Brompton Club Facebook page, I thought I’d get myself over there for a look.

Vulpine

I didn’t manage to get there until the evening. I got there about 17:00, having left work slightly early to see what was left. I’d been following on Facebook with how much things had cost etc with the other LBC members who’d been attending during the day so I decided to give it a go - after all, the rain jackets and the Harrington jacket I’d been keeping my eye on for a while were down from £195 to £60 (approximately a 70% reduction!)

As such, I wasn’t surprised to find that there wasn’t to much left! I browsed what was left but managed to find myself one of the last Harrington jackets in my size! Not the colour I would have chosen if all the colours are there, but I still think it’s a decent colour and therefore I considered it worth getting.

I also managed to purchase myself a merino wool, long sleeve polo shirt. I’ve bought merino wool jumpers before - I’d got one from Mountain Warehouse. However, I found it to be itchy and caused more irritation than I wanted and so I moved back to synthetic jerseys. However, I’d heard good things about the Vulpine ones and as they had some there reduced, I decided to risk getting one. Besides, I thought, I could stick in on eBay if I didn’t get on with it. However, I can’t show you an image of it as it’s in the wash! It’s been really comfortable and I’m surprised at just how comfortable it is! It seems that pricey merino wool is certainly worth the money (and as this was £25, that was a bargain).

I had been waiting to see if there were any bargains at the London Bike Show next week but I think this just solved that issue!

The benefits of having the Vulpine gear is that, whilst aimed at cycling, it’s a lot more laid back than wearing lycra. This means I can happily wear the jacket at work and casually and people don’t know it’s a cycling specific make particularly. It should come in handy if I do more touring this year.

Castelli Gloves

I purchased a while ago, a pair of Castelli neoprene gloves. I did a brief look at them here and I wore them for the Evans Ride It ride. However, after the ride, I took them back to Evans. They’d been used for probably about 100Km in total, but I noticed that there was already a hole forming where the thumb meets the main part of the glove. Considering the price of the gloves, I wasn’t to happy with that and I returned them to Evans. They sent them off for a warranty claim and I received a full refund the week after.