Wednesday 15 July 2009

These boots were made for walking....

Check out these boots!!!

I went to Cotswold in Betws y Coed and asked for advice - not even as a child in the Clarks shoe shop were my feet so carefully measured. A young man called Paul served me and not only fitted my feet perfectly but also coped with my mother and my daughter nattering nineteen to the dozen as well.
The boots are Scarpa Womens New Trek GTX - I reckon with a name like that they could walk the whole of the South West Coast Path on their own. Even the socks were carefully considered and tried until the right ones were chosen - and I liked the comment that red socks would make me look like a real walker! (He had seen me walk around the shop a few times by then and noted my less than elegant gait).
Now I need to get out there and bed them in. The dogs looked excited - think they thought the boots looked business-like and likely to engender some good walks. I'm very lucky living where I do. I can walk to the beach, drive twenty minutes to huge sand dunes and forest, drive forty minutes to the heart of Snowdonia or just a few minutes more to high moorland.
I'd like to walk more in the mountains but had an experience as a child that makes me wary of 'getting it wrong'. I've also spent several spells in our local hospital, where if you're lucky and get a ward on the right side, you get a fantastic view of the mountains; you also get to watch the helicopters bringing in the people who either have genuine accidents or who treat the mountains with such a lack of respect they are an accident waiting to happen.
My experience involved the very Clark's shoes I mentioned earlier. I was eight, my brother was ten. Our father walked up Snowdon whilst in the army and so foolishly considered himself a bit of an expert. We set off on foot halfway between Nant Peris and Pen y Pas - Daddy knew a short-cut that would take us onto the Pyg track! I should say here that I was wearing a summer frock and my (fairly well fitted) Clark's sandals, my brother was wearing his grey flannel shorts, white aertex shirt and plimsolls. I don't know exactly how long we climbed, about five hours I think. It involved a chimney that I negotiated rather well I thought, and finished on what I now know to be Crib Gogh! I can still see the sheer drop one side and the scree slope the other, although I haven't been back since. A group of people came towards us and recognised our predicament - my brother and I were escorted by two people each and taught the proper way to walk down a mountain. Our father followed about fifty yards behind accompanied by the rest of the group explaining precisely what they would do to him if they ever saw him anywhere on the mountains again!!! My parents moved to Anglesey about a year or so before my father died and he always seemed a little wary when we drove into Snowdonia - think he thought one of our rescuers might see him and remember the threat even after all these years!
I'll report back when I've taken the boots for a ramble and when I've found out whether red socks really do make you a real walker!
Bye for now,
Susan

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