On The Way To Sorting The Boots!

For this walk, on Saturday 6th November, we got on the train to Roydon aiming to walk from there to Bishops Stortford along the river Stort. This is only a distance of 12 miles but so long as we walk at least 12 miles on any one walk, we're happy!

Additional saga with the boots! I aught to explain that the problem with my boots is that they're a little bit too big. They were given to me when I was a Cub leader by a Scout leader to do short walks with my Cubs. You see ..... I hate new shoes/boots as they always give me blisters. However, these nicely walked-in boots seemed ideal and for the short walks I used to do with my Cubs, they were! However, this is not the case for the distances we're doing. Even with three pairs of socks, my feet are obviously moving around and causing blisters on my heels.

However, found some insoles with curved bits in the heels and thought I'd see if these would help. They do! However, to continue the saga, these aged boots today objected to me tightly lacing them up and two of the loops came off!! Heath Robinson eat your heart out ..... ended up with the lace tied round my ankle and I'm thankful that John knows how to repair this sort of thing!

At which point, they say an army walks on its stomach ..... shouldn't it be on its boots :)

Still, one highlight of the walk ..... between Sawbridgeworth and Bishops Stortford we again saw the flash of a kingfisher. This time, it went on ahead of us along the river so we saw the flash a few times. Never close enough to get a good look, mind you. Still, a brilliant sight.

How long did we take this time? Well, although the train got us to Roydon by 8.10, we got stuck on the wrong side of the level crossing for 35 minutes! At this point, a lorry driver also stuck there said he thought there must be a problem! So, at 8.45 we decided to head across country up to the A414 (not that pleasant to walk along!) and then back down to the Stort and carry on from there. We got to Bishops Stortford at 13.40. So, quite a bit slower than previously which may have been because of the couple of stops we had to make to sort out my laces. It was also quite muddy underfoot for a fair way.

Still ...... a result! No blisters on my feet! But John, my boot repairer par-excellence has a job to do before our next walk :)