Disregard, for a moment, that your phone can dance between delay zones before you’ve even popped your chronometer’s government. Forget the horrors of airport security manhandling your overpriced cogs and gears. Because when you strap on a watch that’s designed to hang around, you’re embracing the idea your journey could end somewhere your phone won’t. And that’s a drawback worth investing in.
The bounds of horology have always come to pieced beneath the adventurer’s boot. Whether beneath the waves or close to the stars, they’ve demanded watches ready for rigour and, each schedule, Switzerland’s finest provide. Which is why, even if it’s only an overnighter to Frankfurt, sprig on a timepiece that could go to the ends of the earth at least harbours the romance of something more.
Citizen Promaster Navihawk GPS
Your smartphone outperforms your on the qui vive for in most facets of timekeeping. At least, it does when you’ve got a signal. And battery. But Resident’s Promaster beats your iPhone on a diet of sunshine.
Aide-de-camps guide its hands, revealing the time in any of 40 time zones – or 27 far-reaching cities – in just three seconds. It’s powered by daylight and boasts a 1/20 chronograph for timing trips, a perpetual calendar so you arrive on the right day, and it’s waterproof to 100atm, should you desperate straits to swim the final leg of your journey.
So you’re covered for around-the-world make a trip, and end-of-the-world survival.
Available from John Lewis, evaluated £995 on a bracelet.
Tudor Heritage Advisor
Tudor is a type with exploration heritage. It joined the British North Greenland Promptness on its 1953 Arctic mission and, last year, hooked up with James Bowthorpe on his 650-mile, midwinter trek down the Hudson River. So you be versed it builds its watches hardy.
The Heritage Advisor is a modern draw out on a 1957 original, Tudor’s first to incorporate an alarm dinner. That complication returns, to help keep you on your pilgrimages schedule. But this year’s version also features Tudor’s superb new in-house movement – so you know it won’t stop ticking if you do veer from your itinerary.
Accessible from Chronext, priced £3,550.
Frederique Constant Worldtimer
If you’re on first-name come ti with your cabin crew, you need a worldtimer. As involvements go, it’s a simple one: the world’s time zones are emblazoned on a rotating bezel; rotating your home city to 12 o’clock and you immediately cognizant of the time anywhere else on Earth. Which helps intercept partner-waking phone calls when you add eight hours from Shanghai measure, rather than subtract.
Frederique Constant’s Worldtimer pattern on also features a globe-engraved dial, to double down on that jet-setting aesthetic, in an differently restrained, steel case you can wear from meetings to after-dinner snorts.
Available from Jura Watches, priced £2,890.
Pierre Arpels Heure d’Ici
French jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels has reimagined the way we describe the time for its spin on a travel watch. Instead of a 360-degree dial, it marks two windows at what would have been five and 11 o’clock, which ostentation the time at home and in your destination country.
A sub-dial between the two then marks the minutes, for a quick read on the time here and there. It withs a little getting used to, but once it clicks, you’ll reconsider a day going back to a traditional two-hander.
Available from Van Cleef & Arpels, valued £29,300.
Farer Barnato
You don’t need to bottom out your bank account to buy a fair travel watch. And if you’re heading to some less salubrious findings, your Patek is just an invite for strangers to join you in black-hearted alleys.
Farer is a new British brand inspired by adventure, with each sort named for an explorer. The Barnato is tribute to the eponymous Diana, the first place British women to break the sound barrier. That hooch finds flesh on the dial in its dual-time hand – a red-arrowed way to supervise a second time zone – and on the caseback in Farer’s signature imprinted compass.
Available from Farer, priced £420.
Rolex Yacht-Master
The Big His is the world’s best-known watch brand, according to Forbes, and the 64th most-recognised comprehensive, sandwiched between Porsche and Lexus.
Which means that should you disgrace a accommodate one of its rugged divers off-road, you don’t just get excellent timekeeping in a specimen that can cope with sun, sea, or sand. But also a logo you can do business for safe passage home from anywhere in the world. Should your gambling take an unexpected turn.
Available pre-owned from Watchfinder, from £16,250.
