Overshoes

These overshoes from Craft are like little wetsuits for your feet. Made from stretchy neoprene, they are designed to be both super warm (the clue is in the name) and water and road grot proof, protecting your delicate road shoes from the nasty bad salty winter muck.

The GripGrab Hammerhead Winter Overshoes have been rock solid in winter weather with their coated neoprene construction doing an unbelievable job of keeping the weather on the outside, and not in my shoes where it usually ends up after a couple of hours in the wind and rain.

The Castelli Diluvio 16 overshoes are warm and a touch taller than usual, and they do a good job of keeping water out.

These are made from 3mm thick neoprene that's stretchy enough to pull over your shoes really easily. The neoprene wraps around the sides of your feet and round to the soles with just holes for your cleat and heel, so you get good insulation here.

The Castelli Toe Thingy provides a little extra warmth on days that are cool but not so cold that you want to go with full overshoes.

First of all, the name: Toe Thingy. That's class.

Quite a lot of brands do toe covers (as they're more commonly known) and they're usually variations on a theme. They're mostly, although not always, neoprene – essentially, the end of a pair of neoprene overshoes. You get a cutout for your cleat and that's what holds them in place.

Defeet's Slipstreams are are a solid pair of oversocks (figuratively and literally) and you get to feel just like a seasoned pro of yesteryear by having to manually cut your cleat holes. Whether that's cool or not is a matter of taste.

DeFeet were one of the first to create specific oversocks. Frequently seen covering shoes in the pro peloton, Slipseams must be good – or is it just because money has changed hands?

Waterproof gaiters are not exactly a new concept in the walking market, and cyclists have been wearing overshoes for donkey's years. But these Georgia In Dublin Leggits are proper long, waterproof gaiters for cyclists, exclusively female ones, and a pretty innovative idea. But is it useful and do they work?

Oversocks seem to be everywhere at the moment and these Cover Sock ones from dhb are a decent option, providing a little extra warmth and adding protection for your shoes.

The dhb oversocks are made from polypropylene (65%) with nylon (31%) and elastane (4%) making up the remainder. Polypropylene doesn't absorb water and it dries super-fast, so even if these get wet with road spray, the air blowing over them as you ride means they're soon back to normal.

The Northwave Blade 2 overshoes, or Shoecover as Northwave like to call them, fall into the neoprene camp for overshoes. If you haven't come across this style of overshoe before it is basically like a wetsuit, water will eventually get through but the material should trap warmth and keep your tootsies toasty.

'Pioggia' is the Italian word for 'rain' and that tells you what these overshoes are all about. They're made from a polyurethane-coated fabric that won't let water through. And when I say that it won't let water through, it really won't. I scrunched one of these up and left a pool or tap water in the fabric and it was still there a day later. Of course, that's not real-world testing but, believe me, water doesn't soak through here.

These Galibier Shoe Shields are handy for keeping your toes warm on days when it's not quite cold enough for full overshoes, and also for adding a little extra insulation underneath overshoes on really cold days.