Dragging up an old-ish thread, I know.
I've just bought a Paramo Pajaro jacket. All my other jackets have been either Harkila, Seeland or Barbour. I've lost some weight though and they make me look like a half empty sack of spuds (instead of a full one) so I needed something. It wasn't cheap (north of £300 nowadays, got it from Go Outdoors) and I've only used it to walk the dog, but here's my initial thoughts:
I'm not going to moan greatly if Paramo donate to anyone. That's their right, it's their dosh although obviously I retain the right to disagree. On my shoot there's a few that have them, which I can only think, with that being replicated around the country it must annoy them terribly. Yet they still make them in dark green (mine says it's "moss") that suits field sports aficionados. Although they sell them as twitchers jackets, which have to blend in with the scenery, since birds can see in colour. With that, I guess they are caught in a rock and a hard place. Although they do make more garishly coloured jackets for the walkers amongst us. Anyway, enough of the politics. Perhaps if I was the Rachel from accounts at Paramo HQ I'd shed a tear or two on the front bench.
It's pretty light to wear and is certainly comfortable and warm. I haven't been out in the rain yet, so can't comment on that directly, but by all accounts so long as you have your pockets/vents closed it's waterproof. Treating it with Nikwax annually or more often if you give it a lot of use is the thing to do. It feels hardier than it looks, but perhaps not the jacket to be crawling through gorse bushes. As for it's breathability, all I can say is that my dog walk was on a 18c day and I didn't get sticky. So perhaps not up to the likes of Gore-Tex garments, but it doesn't seem to be a worry. It's well equipped with pockets, with two bellows pockets for the likes of shotgun cartridges, two cavernous front pockets for maps and suchlike, two handwarmer pockets and inside, two drop pockets that are pretty big too. In fact there's 8 pockets altogether, more than enough to play that game of hunt the car keys! There's zipped vents too for when things get a little warm. They have a fold-away hood that comes out by undoing a few poppers which has a wired peak and a back adjuster that moulds it to your head (or cap if wearing one) so that when you turn your head, you don't just see the inside of the hood.
Apart from how they might fare against gorse and barbed wire (sorry reader, I don't intend to test that), the only thing I wonder about is the main zip. It's a fairly thin plastic affair, so time will tell, although it's in keeping with the lightness of the jacket, so possibly fine.
I'm going to use it on my outings in the field over the winter, see how it goes, but I do wonder if I perhaps need a more robust coat for when things might get a bit rough as a stable mate. Maybe. I'll have to wait for that until the piggy bank gets replenished a bit if I want that. Maybe wait until Mrs Pedro visits her sister for a week or so. All those green coats look the same after all.
