Hats

We have an open top car so we need hats.

I've decided to take two, both supplied by Dents of London (see earlier posts):

 

First, a trappers hat for cold mornings and high mountains.  I've tested this in my convertible and it works a treat.  Also can be worn in bed.


Second, a drivers hat for keeping the sun off.  This one hasn't arrived yet and I'm not quite sure how it stays on if there's a wind blowing.  We shall see.

Gloves

My everyday car is a BMW M3 with a lovely thick leather covered steering wheel.  I never really understood why steering wheels were leather covered until I started driving Rhubarb and Custard, which has a wheel made of some kind of hard plastic or Bakelite.  It's quite an unpleasant thing to hold in your hands for long periods and tends to get slippery if your hands sweat.  Very quickly I found that it was much nicer to wear leather gloves when driving,

The trouble with gloves is that your hands get hot if the sun comes out. On our last trip I tried to overcome this by wearing finger-less cycling gloves but these aren't leather they are some kind of technical fabric and didn't give me any grip on the wheel.

As a result I've been doing research on gloves and have found a firm called Dents, which is based in Wiltshire in England and has been hand making gloves since 1777.  They made James Bond's driving gloves for Skyfall - how cool is that!

I bought three pairs of gloves from them:

Finger-less unlined driving gloves for normal driving. I tried these out on a roof down drive on a cold spring day last week and they were most excellent.

Full fingered, string-backed and lined driving gloves for cold weather. The string backing stops your hands getting too hot.

Full fingered, string-backed but unlined driving gloves made of peccary leather which is supposed to be the best possible leather for gloves.  However I found that the lack of lining exposed the seams internally and that they were not comfortable and so they went back to Dents for a refund.