A note about footwear

I must confess to getting sentimental at times, and doing things for sentimental reasons.
For example, when I was packing my rucksack for my recent walk from Cahors to St. Jean, I came across the T-shirt that I had worn at the start of my walking the French route, from the Swiss border to Chaumont. So I felt it would only be fitting to wear that same T-shirt when arriving in St. Jean at the end of the French route.
And then there were the walking poles that I had almost left behind me in Chaumont. They have helped me a lot since then, so I have many fond memories of walks with them.

But my relationship with one piece of equipment transcends everything else, and that is my boots. As is clear in the picture, my current pair of boots is well worn, and they are really at the end of their life. When preparing for the walk to St. Jean, I was not sure if they would get me there, such is the wear on them. The right boot is significantly scuffed, with some damage to the leather on the upper surfaces. The heel of the left boot is worn away. But for sentimental reasons, and with a few practical considerations, I felt that it would only be proper to wear these boots on the way to St. Jean.

These boots have carried me safely for well over 2000km. They have carried me on many walks in Switzerland long before I started writing here. They have carried me around the borders of Basel, all of which I have written about here. The carried me from Luzern to Geneva, and on through France as far as Cahors. And they have never let me down. OK, I have sometimes come back from a day’s walk with chafed feet, but it is nearly always because I was not wearing suitable socks. It seemed only right that I should take these boots on my way to St. Jean.

And there was a practical reason too. New boots would be unfamiliar, and more likely to cause foot problems through that unfamiliarity. It takes several walks to get used to a new pair of boots, and a long walk over many days was not the time to do that.
So they came with me. And I am glad to say that they performed brilliantly. Though worn, they never let in water on the rainy days. They gave me good grip walking across wet rocks. And while they did all this, I had no blisters or chafed skin in the entire thirteen days of walking.

It is fair to say that these boots have been my faithful companions for a few years now. They have been good to me over the years. That is why I get a little bit sentimental about them. But now alas, I feel they are at the end of their useful life. I definitely cannot rely on them to get me from St. Jean to Santiago. And I am not even sure that I could take them on a snowy day in the Jura next winter. It is unfortunately time to retire these boots.

And that leaves me with two problems. The easy one is that I will have to buy new boots, something I may come back to writing about here later. The second problem, or question perhaps, is what I should do with the old ones. I am reluctant to throw them in the rubbish and have them end up in some landfill site. That would not be right for boots that have been my good companions for so long and through so much.

I am seriously thinking of suitable ways to send them into the afterlife of footwear. Those who have seen the film “The Way” will remember how Martin Sheen carried his son’s ashes to Finisterre as a way of honouring him. I guess I could do that with the boots. Cremate them first and then carry the ashes to Finisterre like in the film. Or I could leave them at the summit of some Swiss mountain to gradually rot away to nothing. However, I am not sure that this would be an environmentally friendly approach. But whatever the outcome, it has to be something that befits years of companionship and service.

But for now they sit in my shoe rack, and each time I see them, memories come back to me. As I said, I get sentimental over boots. That’s just how I am.