Pete Thomas

So far I haven’t had actual blisters, but some very painful areas on my left foot: the pad just below my big toe and the lower part of my heel. I hate these more than blisters because they are spread out and harder to define. The problem with my toe is not so much a blister but to do with lack of cushioning, ie I could do with more fatty tissue on the bottom of my feet, however my metabolism works in the usual way for gentlemen of a certain age, any extra fatty tissue goes towards enhancing the beer gut. As you can see from the boot discussion earlier, I’ve started to address the problem with new boots, but of course even though they can now be padded out with the incredibly expensive odoureaters, they still need breaking in while the affected areas are not yet healed, so I’m trying the conventional blister solutions: moleskin or Compeed. Laurie tells me people tend to either swear by one or the other. I’m currently swearing at both while I try them out: I have moleskin on the toe and Compeed on the heal. I’m resigned to the probability that due to the ever increasing training schedule I may just have to learn to control the pain, as the only way to completely heal them may be to go to bed for 3 months.

I was initially disappointed to discover moleskin is not real moleskin but an artificial molskin with a sticky side and a moley side. Being an animal wildlife lover I’m very glad there aren’t loads of mole farms. I suppose roadkill moles would be ethically sound, but most roadkill round here are hedghehogs. Not so good for blisters.

Compeed seems to be a very hi-tech sort of second skin, with very complicated instructions about peeling back various layers of protective packaging flaps and things (more than an inkjet cartdridge). You also heat it up for a minute before and after applying. You’d think that after all that palaver it would stay on if you have a bath, but no. Still, I suppose real trekkers don’t have baths so that’s alright then. The good thing about moleskin is that you can take it off before a bath or shower, and it still has plenty of sticky to reuse it.

You’ve read about our experience of being caught in the worst downpour since records began, Goretex is now our best friend. When I first bought the waterproof trousers I got home and thought, F***, I’ve just paid £90 for plastic trousers. No, no, no. I ‘m so glad I didn’t take them back and buy the £9.99 Pacamac trousers from Matalan. I soon realised once they were on that they had some great features. Not only a zip on the bottom outside of the legs to help put them on over your boots, but there is a sort of double zip feature so you can also unzip the outside of the legs from the top of the leg downwards if you want a bit of ventilation on your thighs without undoing the whole thing from the bottom upwards and having them flap about in the breeze. I hope you can follow this, easier to understand (just) if you are actually wearing them.

There is something deep in your psyche that makes you not want to put waterproof trousers on. I don’t know if it’s just the palava of pulling them over your boots or a macho thing, but once you’ve experienced boots full of rain you know you need them. The problem is scattered showers (which is what the weather forecast always says as they have to hedge their bets - you can’t really really complain if they are wrong about scattered showers, if it doesn’t rain they’ll just say you weren’t in the place where they were scattered).

On the last walk (which included scattered showers) I had the Goretex trousers on but felt slightly uncomfortable on the inside of my right thigh, even though my normal trousers were quite light and comfortable. So, I took the plunge (having threatened Laurie for a while with removing my actual trousers and just wearing the waterproofs), and we stopped (luckily a bit later than than the sudden meeting with the Fickles Hole Riding School weekly outing) for me to remove my trousers and resume the walk in just the Goretex trousers.

After some trepidation (and hoping I wouldn’t turn into a Goretex fetishist), I realised that it was actually working quite well and that maybe I could become friends with these trousers, especially the upper zips on the outside leg. Just a pity there is no zip at the front.

Got some new boots today. These are not as macho looking as my previous leather ones, but they are lighter and ventilate better. Most importantly there is room for the shock absorber insoles.

Saxophone players use an expression “Gear Acquisition Syndrome” or “GAS”. It’s very often associated with amateurs, but can quite easily spread up the food chain. Us hardened pros are usually happy with a beaten up old instrument and have no need to succumb to all the latest accessories (unless of course we are lucky enough to be sponsored), but I still occasionally feel the need to by the latest NASA designed waterproof neckstrap.

But when it comes to trekking gear, walking into the outdoor shop is almost on a par with waliking into a stationary shop. I become the ideal consumer and drool over all the lastest hitech equipment and accessories. Sometimes my inherent thriftyness wins out, and tells me that an £80 trekking pole is actually a stick so I end up walking with a stick I found by the river Itchen. Funny thing is when I was on a walk recently and left it somewhere, I actually went back (downhill) a mile or so to retrive it as if it was an £80 stick. I wonder if I’m going to need to bring my stick to Peru, how do you explain to customs why you are bringing a bit of a tree on a transatlantic flight and back?