These are my hiking boots.
They’re battered, bruised, leaky and nearly defunct - so now I’ve got to throw them out, which I’m a little sad about doing. They took me up Mt Kilimanjaro, among the Atlas mountains, through the Andes and to the top of Mount Sinai - not to mention Snowdon and a few substantial hills in the Lakes.
I hated the boots at first because they’re men’s boots. They’re big and chunky and you could probably also use them as weapons if you had the time to take them off first before throwing them at someone. Why, I thought, must I wear men’s boots? My feet don’t look particularly huge. But they’re long and narrow and unfortunately the guy in the hiking shop didn’t have women’s boots my size. All the variety you can get with women’s boots and I ended up with a pair of big, brown beasts that look not unlike what you see the Alpine hikers of old wearing in the 1930s.
So I went to get myself some new boots recently, and, guess what? They’re men’s boots again. But actually I don’t care as much this time round, as long as they keep my feet warm, dry and relatively blister-free. I’m going on another trekking adventure soon, the longest one I’ve attempted yet - the full Annapurna Circuit in the Nepalese Himalayas - which is up to 145 miles long. If you don’t have the right sized boots you might as well give up and go home.
Comments
Post a Comment