Scott Leap Full-Frame Sunglasses

Somerset poet and author Laurie Lee might have walked out one midsummer morning, but he wasn’t wearing these Scott Leap ‘sunnies’ when he did.

If he had, he might’ve stopped grumbling about how the car has changed the landscape to admire the multicoloured reflective lenses. Or appreciated the subtle change in the tint from blue at the edges to a warmer brown in the middle.

If he decided to take up mountainbiking – unlikely as this seems – he might have noticed how the cunning ‘ACS’ ventilation system (a couple of holes in the sides, really) did a pretty good job of preventing condensation and fogging after he’d been going hard. He might have appreciated the sharp looks, or, because he was a man of his time, he might have appreciated the fact that they are available in a range of colours from ‘smooth and tasteful’ to ‘ERK’.

But he didn’t. He died in 1997.

I, however, liked them rather a lot. Our examples hurtle towards the ‘ERK’ end of the spectrum – as does much MTB clothing these days – but they have great optics, excellent peripheral vision, adhere to your face without interrupting your eyelashes like some glasses I’ve tried, and the rubberised arms don’t mark the lenses on the inside when they’re folded up. They’re not so dark that you have to take them off when the sun goes in, or you ride under tree cover, although if you do they fold up reasonably small for such wide lenses. They came with their own soft case and cloth, too. They’re supposed to be for small to medium sized faces, but they seem to occupy an acceptable acreage of my massive swede, so I guess they work for all sizes of bonce.

Overall: An exuberant and functional pair of specs. I like.

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Barney Marsh

Barney Marsh takes the word ‘career’ literally, veering wildly across the road of his life, as thoroughly in control as a goldfish on the dashboard of a motorhome. He’s been, with varying degrees of success, a scientist, teacher, shop assistant, binman and, for one memorable day, a hospital laundry worker. These days, he’s a dad, husband, guitarist, and writer, also with varying degrees of success. He sometimes takes photographs. Some of them are acceptable. Occasionally he rides bikes to cast the rest of his life into sharp relief. Or just to ride through puddles. Sometimes he writes about them. Bikes, not puddles. He is a writer of rongs, a stealer of souls and a polisher of turds. He isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks he is.

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