- Time of past OR future Camino
- Francés x 5, Le Puy x 2, Arles, Tours, Norte, Madrid, Via de la Plata, Portuguese, Primitivo
i'm just re-reading, for the umpteenth time, my favourite walking book, by John Hillaby, written in 1972, the book that first got me interested in long distance walking. It's the record (and musings) of his walk from Holland to the Mediterranean, avoiding roads along the way. He was a journalist, a naturalist, a self taught scholar, with a prodigious and eclectic knowledge and a great sense of humour. The book is out of print sadly.
Of specific interest, I've just come across this passage:
"About feet there is something that few but infantrymen and long-distance walkers know: that is, by continuous pounding they become flattened. They splay out, plantigrade, like the feet of a bear. In my experience the process is most evident after about two hundred miles, the distance from Land's End to Bristol, where, some years ago, I thought a walk through Britain had come to a stop. Now it so happens I had again walked just about that distance from the sea and it was about time I took the cure.
A simple matter. You bathe your feet. I dangled mine in the canal for ten minutes. You dry them, carefully, and put on thin socks, or none at all. Sockless and comfortable, I walked on...."
Might be worth a try.
Of specific interest, I've just come across this passage:
"About feet there is something that few but infantrymen and long-distance walkers know: that is, by continuous pounding they become flattened. They splay out, plantigrade, like the feet of a bear. In my experience the process is most evident after about two hundred miles, the distance from Land's End to Bristol, where, some years ago, I thought a walk through Britain had come to a stop. Now it so happens I had again walked just about that distance from the sea and it was about time I took the cure.
A simple matter. You bathe your feet. I dangled mine in the canal for ten minutes. You dry them, carefully, and put on thin socks, or none at all. Sockless and comfortable, I walked on...."
Might be worth a try.