Wintertime on the farm is the hardest time of year, it's always wet and windy but the job must go on. And this means that you need good foul weather gear. Accordingly, Andrea had treated herself to some of the best waterproofs that money can buy: a Seastorm jacket with matching bib-and-brace trousers, in bright yellow 1000gsm PVC. These clothes are made for North Sea fishermen and are both super tough and completely waterproof.

Like all of the new clothing and footwear purchases that Andrea makes, the Seastorm kit had (of course) to be "inaugurated"; and there's no better place to do this than down in the local river gorge. Andrea walked across the wet fields and splashed her way down to the river's edge; she then rather ungracefully proceeded to fall in! Wading and swimming, she felt the cold river water filling her boots and running inside her PVC suit, soaking her jeans and the Underarmour shirt that she was wearing, in the process.

The river gorge is a narrow rock channel, perhaps 300m long, with vertical cliff sides; it funnels the river water into a raging torrent. Half wading, half swimming, Andrea struggled her way upstream against the flow, really enjoying the experience of the torrent plastering her wet clothes against her body.

After a relaxing bit of floating on her back she turned for home, but on her way along the river bank she encountered some very muddy puddles. There's more than one way to inaugurate a waterproof suit, she thought, as she rolled about in the sloppy mud, letting it run inside her waterproofs and cover the clothes that she was wearing underneath. She emptied her long black rubber gauntlets and then took off her wellies. Standing in her socks in ankle deep mud she removed the mud-plastered bib-and-brace before plunging her mud covered feet back into her Lincoln Armasol rubber boots. She then splashed into the ford that crosses the river and rinsed all of the mud off her jacket and salopettes in the knee deep water. She washed her jeans as best she could before putting back on the now clean, but very wet, PVC jacket. Wading through the crotch-deep water of the last few yards of the ford, she smiled to herself thinking of the fun that she was going to have this coming winter in her now-properly-inaugurated Seastorm waterproofs.