maybe a reboot will fix it

One thing you can certainly say about me, in addition to all the less palatable stuff about being fat, bald and malodorous, is that I am not some sort of fickle fly-by-night flibbertigibbet when it comes to owning walking boots. This is partly because I am as tight as a gnat's chuff: walking boots are expensive and I want to be sure that when I purchase a pair they're going to last a while. Obviously I want them to be comfortable as well and that generally requires some outlay of cash, since in general you broadly get what you pay for, so there's a middle ground to be found between super-comfortable boots of solid gold that cost a gazillion quid and dirt-cheap boots that grind your toes off and leak like a sieve.

Leaking like a sieve, as it happens, is the thing that usually indicates that it's time to buy a new pair of boots, rather than anything absurdly dramatic like the soles falling off. And, just as the early-2007 Dartmoor trip finished off the old Berghauses, so it was for my 14-year-old pair of Salomon boots, under suspicion for a while for no longer being everything one might wish for in the waterproofing department and finally caught bang to rights during our soggy trip up the Blorenge in February, the second half of which was a fairly miserable cold squelchy experience.

As those of you who keep up with my insane ramblings on Twitter will know (it's mentioned in the Blorenge post as well), I've been suffering from quite painful ankle tendinitis for most of 2021 which has restricted my activities in the walking and running departments. Now that a proper full recovery finally seems to be in sight and I am under strict orders from the podiatrist and physiotherapist to go out and challenge myself with some exercise, my mind has turned to walking activity (I've already got back to the parkrun with Nia a couple of times) and I don't really want wet feet again. So we went over to Go Outdoors in Cardiff and I bought a new pair of boots. I've gone back to old-school leather Berghaus boots, partly because they were exceptionally comfortable and partly because this pair were on sale for 60 quid off.

As I said when I bought the last pair, the old Berghauses were probably the best part of 20 years old, and the Salomons lasted 14 years, so I have basically had two pairs of boots for the entirety of my adult life. Will the new pair see me into my grave, or at least into the twilight of my mountain walking career? We shall see.