New Boots

New boots.

I bought a pair of new hiking boots on Friday. They cost me €7.50 at MaxPlus, the discount end of line store in Chambray-lès-Tours. They are not a well known brand, but they are leather, with a proper sewn in waterproof tongue. I like the fact they are nice and simple, without multiple cut away layers and kilometres of stitching for water to seep through. I'm slightly dubious that the inner soles will stay put and I will certainly put in an extra insulated inner sole.

This laneway looks lush. What you can't see is that walking it meant going through knee deep water. No wonder the sign tells you not to take farm machinery down it.

My current pair of boots were reasonably expensive (£80 I seem to remember) Salomon lightweights that I bought in Kathmandu (the outdoor and travel gear store in London, not the Himalayan city) just before we moved to France. So, they've lasted nearly 4 years and are still perfectly wearable, but starting to show battlescars. They especially didn't appreciate being waded through floodwater along a farm lane in the Brenne last May. Foolishly, I didn't rinse them when I got home and they've never been quite the same since.

The Salomon boots, and I'm soaked through from the knees down.

The new boots will serve as a fine backup, allowing me to put the old ones into semi-retirement.