My two new best friends

It is possibly not so unusual - when your life starts to revolve around when, where and for how long you are going to walk each week-end - for one to be somewhat pre-occupied with feet and footwear!

I have, when walking the South Downs Way in stages, worn training shoes and not suffered too much.

Conversely, I have walked the Downs Link in the same type of shoes, and cut my feet to shreds, quite literally.

Now my feet are somewhat wide ('G' width fitting), and when buying new shoes have often found the shoe-box a far better fit that the shoes themselves. In addition I seem to have prominent ankle bones.

So, to date I have had some difficulty in "breaking in" my new boots, which has resulted in my feet being "broken in" rather than the boots!

So having undertaken much research on the 'inter-web', stretched my "new" boots within an inch of their lives, it was with some trepidation that I put them on last Saturday with a 50km walk ahead of me.

Well the boots, and my feet survived the 50km well, and a further 25km the next day, until I changed into trainers for the final 15km.

So I have a pair of new "friends", and whilst I still have some work to do on them, I know that they can protect my feet in July.