A pack strap let go on me at a stile a couple of springs ago. Not the webbing, which was fine, but the plastic buckle at the shoulder, which snapped clean through at the slot where the webbing threads. One second the weight was on both shoulders and the next it was hanging off one, swinging, with me halfway over a stile and one leg committed. I did not fall. I did have a slightly frantic ten seconds and then a lopsided two miles back with the bag hugged against my chest like a shopping bag.
The buckle that made me start paying attention
That bag had been a bargain. I had been quietly pleased with it for about eighteen months. And when I looked at the broken buckle properly at the kitchen table that evening, I could see how thin the plastic was across the load bearing part, and I could see it had probably been thin from the day I bought it. It did not fail because it was old. It failed because that was always going to happen at some point and I had simply been rolling the dice on the timing.
That got me thinking about where I had spent money well and where I had not, because after three years of walking most weekends I finally had enough evidence to answer that question instead of guessing.
The things I would pay more for again without hesitating
Boots, first and by a distance. Not the most expensive boots in the shop, but the ones that fitted properly and were built to be resoled or at least re-treated. The cheap boots I started in were not uncomfortable exactly, but they wore through at the flex crease within a season and there was no repairing that. Cost spread across the number of walks I actually did in them, the better pair worked out cheaper, and my feet had a much easier time of it in the meantime.
Socks, which sounds absurd until you have compared them side by side over a long day. Second, a shell jacket that keeps wind out reliably. Third, a pack that fits my back length rather than being a nominal size, because a pack that fits carries weight through your hips and one that does not hangs the whole lot off your shoulders regardless of what the label claims. Those four things share a common feature. They all sit against your body for hours, and small deficiencies get multiplied by time until they become the whole story of your afternoon.
The things where I honestly could not tell the difference
Base layers. I own a couple of expensive ones and a couple of cheap ones and after a year of alternating them I could not reliably tell you which was which by feel on a walk. The expensive ones smell better after three days, which matters if you are camping and does not matter at all if you are back at your own washing machine by teatime.
Water bottles. I have used a plain reused drinks bottle for most of this year and it holds water exactly as well as anything with a brand on it. Hats. Gloves, to a point, though there is a real gap between the cheapest gloves and the middle of the range and then almost nothing above that. And most of the small hardware, the whistles and the compasses and the little pouches, where the cheap version does the same job because the job is not demanding.
The middle category, where the answer is buy cheap first
This is the bit I wish someone had told me at the start. For anything where you do not yet know your own preferences, buying the good version first is not being sensible, it is guessing expensively. I did not know whether I wanted a big pack or a small one until I had carried both. I did not know whether I liked walking poles until I had used a cheap pair for a season and discovered that I use one on descents and neither on the flat, which is not what I would have predicted.
The cheap version teaches you what you actually want, and then the money you spend afterwards buys the right thing instead of a plausible thing. The two most expensive purchases I have regretted were both bought before I had any idea what I needed, on the reasoning that better gear would make me a better walker. It does not work in that direction. Walking makes you a better judge of gear, and then the gear follows.
What I actually regret buying
A gadget for tracking my routes that I used enthusiastically for six weeks, then charged less and less often, and eventually stopped taking. It was not a bad object. It just turned a walk into a measurement, and once every hedge and gate had a number attached to it, I stopped noticing the hedges. That one was a mistake about myself rather than about the product.
A vacuum flask that was too heavy for the amount of tea it held. A pair of trousers with more pockets than I have things. And a second waterproof jacket bought while the first one still had years in it, purely because it was reduced, which is a trap I now recognise and mostly avoid.
The way I think about it now
I try to divide any potential purchase by the number of times I will realistically use it in a year. Something that goes out with me every single week is worth being fussy about, even at several times the price of the basic version, because it will earn that back in comfort and in not being replaced. Something that comes out twice a year can be cheap and adequate and nobody suffers.
The other question, which I only started asking after the buckle, is what happens when it breaks. Not if. Can I repair it at the kitchen table, can I get a part, or is it landfill the moment one component fails. That question has quietly changed more of my buying than any review I have ever read, and it is free to ask.
The replacement bag, incidentally, was not expensive. It just had metal where the load goes. Three years on, both straps are still attached, which is a fairly low bar and one that the previous bag never managed.