My current ‘day watch’ a Citizen Skyhawk has been great, but in the last few months the analogue dial has started getting out of sync with the ‘real’ digital time display. This shouldn’t be that annoying on a watch that has dual time zones – but to my surprise, I realised that the analogue dial is the one I used most. Faced with a costly repair bill of £85, I decided to see what other watches took my fancy.

I currently have a Tag Heuer and was thinking about getting another, probably one of the ‘Link’ series. However, this is basically going to be a ‘day watch’ so it seemed silly spending that sort of money.

Doing some investigation work I was told about the British Watchmaker, ‘Christopher Ward‘. I’d not heard of him before, but he makes some really nice watches. Borrowing heavily from his website, he says:

“Christopher Ward of London is the English watchmaker with the simple aim of wanting to make luxury watches available to everyone.

The watches use high quality Swiss movements and some of the watch designs are simply stunning, with some really elegant, quality looking timepieces. I was tempted by a few of them, but finally plumped for a C4 Peregrine Chronograph with a black face and silver bracelet. It’s not dissimilar to my Citizen Skyhawk (spares anyone?!) but has a lovely weight and feel about it. Its certainly an equal to my Tag, but for much, much less money. It’s doesn’t have the badge prestige of course, but when you’re saving up to a £1000, things like that don’t matter! Looking on their forum, loads of owners seem to own more than one Christopher Ward watch, and now I’m an owner myself, it’s not hard to see why – this could become addictive!

Visit the Nice Watches website for reviews and information on quality watches.