When we moved into our house, amongst the very many kack-handed 'improvements' the person who had previously been living in it had made to the property was a complete gravelling-over, to the depth in some places of several feet, of the front garden.

This only counted as a relatively minor point for about the first five years, for there were much more serious problems with the interior of the house to be dealt with. Once we'd replaced the floorboards and windows throughout and had the sagging front wall stabilized - and all my life savings, incidentally, were gone - it was time to turn our attention to the blot on the landscape that was the great desert area of Church Street - namely, the sea of gravel at the front of the property.

This being a derivative of Cotswold stone, it had over the years developed hardened strata in many places. I don't suppose the heavy-duty scaffolding the builders were using - due to the effects of weighty compaction - had helped; nor the fact that the plasterers who had been working on the house (or whoever) had apparently been pouring any bits of left-over liquid concrete they had at the end of the day onto the surface of the gravel too. And the funny thing about this gravel was that although it was laid on a thick, thick 'weed-proof membrane', noxious weeds such as spiny thistles, great big ropes of bramble (and purple toadflax, although that's easy to pull up) were able to live in the pulverized rock-dust fraction quite happily.
The long and the short of it was that removing all this stony and unwanted vegetable nonsense was murder on my hands. The first pairs of suede-palmed / stripy fabric-backed 'builders' gloves' were not much use against the spiny thistles and bramble thorns; nor could I pick up the little bits of gravel very easily because the builders' gloves were so poorly-fitted about the finger part.

Next I tried heavy-duty ladies' gardening gloves. The particular pair I had were the "TGL200 -Professional -The Master Gardener". These are green fabric gloves with a thick, ridged plastic coating on the palm and all round the fingers that is described as being 'thorn resistant'. For the purposes I was using it - against thistles and bramble stems - I found it almost totally thorn-proof however (although I can see that you wouldn't for example want to take the thorniest part of a mature rose-stem while wearing the glove, and squeeze it as hard as you can, or you'd no doubt hurt yourself). The gloves have a snug-fitting knitted cotton wrist band - but it's not too tight-fitting, and are 'moulded' to the shape of a human hand very well. The gloves aren't particularly cheap - with an RRP of £5.99 but often they turn up with a less-heavy-duty fabric pair (like the yellow and green model shown in the product photo that accompanies these dooyoo reviews) added as a free gift or some such special offer. They are available at all good garden centres, and are well worth-while for heavy duty gardening.

These Town & County gloves, were a brilliant purchase, comfy to wear, and they made the horrible job of de-gravelling the front garden just that bit easier to bear. I effectively wore out a couple of pairs of these gloves during the de-gravelling job, but I'd say for 'ordinary' gardening, they should last at least a year (or more).

The product spec for the gloves is copied from the Town & County website: "The Master Gardener is the UK's best selling glove. It offers protection against thorns and other sharp objects and has an excellent grip in both wet and dry conditions. The outstanding fit, snug knit wrist included, means there is no loss of dexterity."

I would agree with all of that. They're telling the truth about an excellent product.