All Gloved Up

I have a problem... to be fair, like most people, I have many but I have a specific problem with a pair of gloves and I could do with your help.

It all started back at Kendal Mountain Festival when those lovely people at Blacks invited us along as their guests and provided us with a goody bag and film tickets - very nice indeed.  We had a fabulous time watching all the movies and Tweeting and blogging about the whole experience (we were going to be going anyway, this was just the icing on the cake - but I digress...)

The goody bag was comprised of a rather splendid Blacks City 20 Rucksack - to be honest it's not something I'd use on the high fells but it has lots of pockets and is very useful for low level short walks and absolutely perfect for work - the laptop slides in a treat. (I think the clue is in the name there - "City 20"....)

There was also a woolly hat which was wonderfully warm and toasty but sadly made me look like a Mekon - it's not that I'm anti Star Trek, far from it, but if I was going to look like one of the characters a Mekon isn't the one I'd choose.

Steve and Mekon

Me

Then there was the water bottle. Looks perfectly lovely but as we only take hot tea in flasks on winter hikes we've not had chance to try it out yet - will give it a whirl in the summer and report back.

The final item in there is where the problem lies - a lovely pair of gloves.  I popped them on immediately and commented on how cosy they felt but thought nothing more of it.  If I was shopping for gloves these wouldn't have attracted my attention - I'd have gone for something more "ourdoorsy"

I used them over Christmas and they were always warm and cosy but, to be fair, it wasn't exactly cold this Christmas was it?  Anyway, fast forward to last weekend when me & Steve finally managed to get out onto the fells to give all our new gear a proper try out.  We'd treated ourselves in Blacks sale to new outdoors jackets (our old ones were 5 years old and had a LOT of miles on the clock).  My new Acteryx jacket is like wearing a small personal sleeping bag, and Steve says much the same about his equally lovely though rather less orange RAB jacket - we were both very toasty despite the wintery conditions.

Anyway, back to the gloves.  I have genuinely never had such a wonderfully warm and cosy pair of gloves.  On the fell tops, when the wind was very nearly blowing us over, they were almost completely windproof - even my right hand was snug and warm and that's the one that usually gets very cold holding onto my walking pole.  So what's the problem with the gloves?  Well, all good product reviews should tell you where you can buy said items but the thing is I chopped off the price labels AND the washing labels (because they were itchy) and now I have no idea who makes them.  The only clue I have is the swallow logo.

I've scoured through Blacks Gloves but can't see them anywhere and it feels a bit rude to go back and tell them I vandalised my gloves and now don't know who made them, so my plea is this - if anyone recognises the logo and can point me in the right direction I'd be most grateful - I'd most definitely recommend them.  (And they certainly out performed my boots which I DIDN'T from Blacks and which leaked like a sieve - I'm really struggling in the boot department at the moment and would welcome any pointers.)

Oh - and if anyone's wondering where we walked - we took advantage of the free parking and kicked off at Grasmere, headed up to Easedale Tarn, up onto Blea Rigg, along to Swinescar Pike and back to the village - a short but perfectly lovely start to the hiking year.  Next weekend we have our sights set on something substantially higher and snowier...