Standing alone in a soaking wetsuit, middle of winter, miles from anywhere, knackered from paddling, and with a board under your arm - the worst time possible to discover your car's been nicked and you've got a long walk back to civilisation!

Where to keep your keys while surfing is a bit of a problem. I've seen people hiding them under rocks and things (not very secure). Some wetsuits have a special pouch near the chest for keys, which is fine so long as you don't have a modern key with electronics in it. And you don't want to bang yourself where your keys are (I've done this on my bike and it hurts!).

Extreme Horizon's Keypod tries to solve this problem. It is basically a combination padlock with a compartment to store the car keys in. You hang it on the car while you're in the water and the idea is it keeps your keys safe 'till you're done.

We've been given one to review and tried it out for a while. The box is pretty solid, there's no way an opportunist thief who looks for keys under rocks is getting into it. An organised criminal could probably get into the box with power tools, but anyone who comes that prepared to nick your car probably doesn't need the key anyway.

One problem we found is that we put the box quite far under the car so noone can see it, and it was a bit difficult to see the combination wheels in the dark. Our solution to this was just to hang a 99p keyring light around the lock bit, but it would be nice if the Keypod came with a small LED light built in.

Overall this is a nice product that saves a bit of worry, especially if your vehicle has an immobiliser and you can't get the keys wet. There's no reason you have to just use it for surfing, either.

Keypod page on Extreme Horizon's site