Training Walk: Gore-Tex doesn't keep your feet dry if you get water inside the Gore-Tex
I planned my own route for today and it was an absolute triumph: one mile of road walking, five miles of woods and golf course, a dead sheep, one mile of clinging to barbed wire fences and praying that the bog didn't take one or both of my boots, and ten-and-a-bit miles dragging the weight of half a field of mud with me.
I swear, it was all going quite well up until the dead sheep. Then there was "oh God this is very muddy", then "huh this has stopped being muddy and started being boggy" and then an awful lot of "surely this cannot carry on much longer" while I got mud up to my mid-thighs (I don't think they'd take a return on any of my kit any more, somehow) and tried desperately to remember that you get out of quicksand by going horizontally, not vertically. This was followed by a footpath that more closely resembled a stream, but which at least had clearly visible stone not very far below the surface of the water, a bit more trucking through mud and what I strongly suspect was slurry, a helpful farmer who pointed me in the right direction (having come out to investigate as I was about to climb over one of his gates) and then a bridlepath which once again very strongly resembled a bog. Then a path which was quite a deep pond - like I didn't even dare put my feet in it because it was quite clearly going to come well over the tops of my boots and I actually don't particularly like being wet.
Anyway, I escaped with both my boots still on my feet and quite literally squelched the rest of the route. It was meant to be 12 more miles but I cut it down to just over 10. I also broke the Cardinal Rule of All Walking, namely: never, ever take your boots off until you know for sure you are done wearing them for the day. I did this in the hopes I could wring some of the water out of my socks. I could, but only a couple of drops, and then I remembered that this is not a loophole for the Cardinal Rule of All Walking because putting wet cold socks back onto your wet cold feet and then trying to put said wet cold sock-encased foot back inside your wet cold muddy boots is...well it's what Hell would be like if Dante had been English rather than Italian.
I also managed to walk into a tree stump which was most inconveniently right in my way and also had pointy bits where branches had broken off, which managed to make a hole in my skin but not my clothes, and the bruise is already pretty impressive - putting my left hand in my pocket was painful for the latter half of the walk because my hand would touch said bruise. I look forward to seeing how it develops. I also seem to have a recurring bruise on the inside of my left ankle which looks suspiciously like it lies directly over the insertion of one of the tendons and gives me cause for concern, not that there's anything I can or will do about it.
As well as keeping both my boots, and more recently learning how to care for said boots after they have been thoroughly soaked inside and out in all kinds of horrors (Hanwag have their own guide online, hurrah, which explicitly bans the use of newspaper so here I am changing the kitchen roll inside my boots every half an hour as per their instructions), I also got to truly test the water-repellant nature of my new trousers (water-repellant, yes, but not very - a few drops from washing your hands might roll off but if the tap sprays water at you, it'll soak in) and the major selling-point of my base layers, namely: quick dry. They did indeed dry quickly. Like, I got them soaked in mud up to the knee and they were dry despite the walking trousers remaining wet over them in probably fifteen minutes. A success!
In case you were wondering, proper care of your nearly-£200 boots demands that you rub off all the mud after each trip without using anything abrasive which in my case meant my hands under running water which in my case meant in my kitchen sink which has since been scrubbed itself, and then allow to dry thoroughly and quickly by stuffing them with paper but not newspaper which you change every 30 minutes. I will be back off to the outdoor shop tomorrow for my new pack and I suspect also some waterproofing treatment and wax for said boots. I think I love them more than I've ever loved anyone I wasn't directly related to.
Blister count: 1 new one, which isn't bad considering I was walking in wet socks for most of today. Some of the dry/hard skin on my soles has also rubbed off, but that doesn't count because a) there's no fluid b) there's no pain and c) it happens in the bath if I stay in there long enough...
Boot cost per mile: £3.46
Blood? Yes
Sweat? Yes
Tears? NOT YET
I swear, it was all going quite well up until the dead sheep. Then there was "oh God this is very muddy", then "huh this has stopped being muddy and started being boggy" and then an awful lot of "surely this cannot carry on much longer" while I got mud up to my mid-thighs (I don't think they'd take a return on any of my kit any more, somehow) and tried desperately to remember that you get out of quicksand by going horizontally, not vertically. This was followed by a footpath that more closely resembled a stream, but which at least had clearly visible stone not very far below the surface of the water, a bit more trucking through mud and what I strongly suspect was slurry, a helpful farmer who pointed me in the right direction (having come out to investigate as I was about to climb over one of his gates) and then a bridlepath which once again very strongly resembled a bog. Then a path which was quite a deep pond - like I didn't even dare put my feet in it because it was quite clearly going to come well over the tops of my boots and I actually don't particularly like being wet.
Anyway, I escaped with both my boots still on my feet and quite literally squelched the rest of the route. It was meant to be 12 more miles but I cut it down to just over 10. I also broke the Cardinal Rule of All Walking, namely: never, ever take your boots off until you know for sure you are done wearing them for the day. I did this in the hopes I could wring some of the water out of my socks. I could, but only a couple of drops, and then I remembered that this is not a loophole for the Cardinal Rule of All Walking because putting wet cold socks back onto your wet cold feet and then trying to put said wet cold sock-encased foot back inside your wet cold muddy boots is...well it's what Hell would be like if Dante had been English rather than Italian.
I also managed to walk into a tree stump which was most inconveniently right in my way and also had pointy bits where branches had broken off, which managed to make a hole in my skin but not my clothes, and the bruise is already pretty impressive - putting my left hand in my pocket was painful for the latter half of the walk because my hand would touch said bruise. I look forward to seeing how it develops. I also seem to have a recurring bruise on the inside of my left ankle which looks suspiciously like it lies directly over the insertion of one of the tendons and gives me cause for concern, not that there's anything I can or will do about it.
As well as keeping both my boots, and more recently learning how to care for said boots after they have been thoroughly soaked inside and out in all kinds of horrors (Hanwag have their own guide online, hurrah, which explicitly bans the use of newspaper so here I am changing the kitchen roll inside my boots every half an hour as per their instructions), I also got to truly test the water-repellant nature of my new trousers (water-repellant, yes, but not very - a few drops from washing your hands might roll off but if the tap sprays water at you, it'll soak in) and the major selling-point of my base layers, namely: quick dry. They did indeed dry quickly. Like, I got them soaked in mud up to the knee and they were dry despite the walking trousers remaining wet over them in probably fifteen minutes. A success!
In case you were wondering, proper care of your nearly-£200 boots demands that you rub off all the mud after each trip without using anything abrasive which in my case meant my hands under running water which in my case meant in my kitchen sink which has since been scrubbed itself, and then allow to dry thoroughly and quickly by stuffing them with paper but not newspaper which you change every 30 minutes. I will be back off to the outdoor shop tomorrow for my new pack and I suspect also some waterproofing treatment and wax for said boots. I think I love them more than I've ever loved anyone I wasn't directly related to.
Blister count: 1 new one, which isn't bad considering I was walking in wet socks for most of today. Some of the dry/hard skin on my soles has also rubbed off, but that doesn't count because a) there's no fluid b) there's no pain and c) it happens in the bath if I stay in there long enough...
Boot cost per mile: £3.46
Blood? Yes
Sweat? Yes
Tears? NOT YET
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