Built to Endure

It wasn’t supposed to happen quite like this. When Scotland gives you sun, it throws you, especially if you’re building a trip around a new waterproofing material. So instead of testing it under water falling from the sky, we decided to test it under the waterfalls of Glen Feshie. Allt Fhearnagan is a fast-flowing mountain burn in the Cairngorms National Park. There’s a series of falls, pools, and cascades tumbling down over the granite slabs.

In the end, Scotland proved to be predictable: it was raining, but we still decided to put our two new Ortlieb bags – the Daypack 23l and the Duffle 40L zip – through a comprehensive baptism. Inside the bags were a wide selection of very expensive camera equipment. This was a high-stakes test. As Jenny threw on the duffle, she started to wade through the fast-flowing water. If you’ve ever done a mountain leader course, you may want to look away now – we’re not suggesting you ever do this unless you’ve got an over-enthusiastic photographer, a willing participant, and are on a deadline, but as she tip-toed across the river, the pool dropped away. The river crossing went from ‘wading’ to ‘fully submerged’ much quicker than planned. We were soaked, but the camera gear was completely dry. For the duffle, this was the ultimate test, and for the backpack, well, if it survives a fully submerged river crossing, it’ll handle a commute in the rain.

Ortlieb was registered in Germany on April 1st, 1982, by Hartmut Ortlieb to build waterproof cycling packs. It’s now a manufacturer synonymous with waterproof bags for all manner of activities from paddling to hiking. They are exceedingly well-trusted thanks to their manufacturing base in Germany and excellent QA. If you want to drop a bag filled with expensive camera equipment into a pool under a waterfall in Scotland, you want it to be in an Ortlieb bag.

Introducing TIDURA®

Autumn 2026 sees one of the biggest shifts in its almost 45-year history. With the launch of TIDURA®, a new material designed, developed and made in Germany by Ortlieb, we spoke to Falko Schott, Ortlieb’s Head of Production Management, to get the inside story.

‘It was Hartmut’s idea to get more control over the ingredients of the materials we purchase,’ he says.

However, Ortlieb wasn’t starting from the beginning. GDS, the sister company of Ortlieb, makes the TIZIP and TIDURA® products. That’s the company that makes the tight waterproof zips you’ll find on the duffles.

‘TIDURA® is a completely new world for us to produce, but there’s a similar technology underneath it,’ Falko explains. ‘Years ago, Hartmut’s genius brain and the team started thinking about fabric. The fabric makes the quality of the product, makes it waterproof.’

With high-frequency welding and precise specifications, Ortlieb now controls every element of the production process and the ingredients. It also means innovation in the material can happen right there in the factory. The TIDURA® range, is also set to expand in the future with both stronger and lighter variants on the way.

The stats speak for themselves: 100,000mm hydrostatic head rating (a typical outdoor fabric is 10,000–30,000mm). It uses a high-tenacity, solution-dyed yarn, meaning the colour is in the fibre, not just on the surface, reducing water, chemical, and energy consumption. There’s also a high flex resistance, with no cracking or delamination after 100,000 bending cycles according to Ortlieb.

‘Simply put,’ Falko adds, ‘no water comes through the fabric; whether it’s heavy rain or light rain, it doesn’t get inside.’ Where the water can get through, however, is the closure.

Ortlieb’s roll closures are IP64; which means your gear is protected from light rain, accidental spills and daily dust and dirt. Ortlieb’s rule is three to four tight rolls gives you full protection. Ortlieb’s zips are IP67. Falko admits that most waterproof zips just aren’t very waterproof, but the TIZIP is different. ‘You’ll feel it when you open and close one; it takes real force, because the teeth need a lot of pressure to close the gap between them. That’s the reason it’s harder to open: it’s sealed to IP67, so you can fully submerge it, to a depth of one metre, for half an hour, so it’s genuinely, extremely waterproof.’

While we didn’t remain submerged for an hour and a half, we can vouch for it. You do have to ensure it is properly closed.

At Sidetracked, we’ve been using Ortlieb products on productions for years, and it seems so have many others.

‘It’s really astonishing to see customers send us bags that are 15, 20, even 25 years old. They say, “The product has a hole because I’ve used it hard, but I want to keep it because I love it. I’ve had so many good travels with it; it’s my companion now. Please repair it.” And we make the effort.

‘We ran a questionnaire through the webshop over one winter with more than 600 customer responses. “How old is your bag? How often do you use it, how often have you repaired it?” The average product age came back at over 11 years, and many of the bags had been repaired two or more times.’

TIDURA® has another advantage in that it’s much easier to repair – in short, because it can be more easily patched, unlike some fabric bags that require removing all the elements and repairing them inside out. TIDURA® has coatings on both the inside and the outside, so it can be heat-repaired much more easily with much less handling.

In the falls of Glen Feshie, we were having fun, perhaps type-two, but fun nonetheless. Some products just take the stress out of the trip. A footnote is that one of the team had a similar – less plungy – experience in the Lake District the following weekend, and not using an Ortlieb bag… wet clothes for the next four days wasn’t even type-three fun. Live and learn. Oh, and don’t cross rivers, people.