Sunday 4 December 2016

Footwear

A good learning method if you're looking to hone your skills in relation to understanding terrain, is to take a walk in seasonally inappropriate footwear. Not boots in the summer, you'll gain little from that. No, go walking in the autumn/winter in summer trail shoes. That'll learn you. You'll pay far more attention to your footfall, learn to understand possible ground condition by flora, learn to look for subtle changes or indicators which will help your feet stay dry and most importantly learn to read the land ahead, making better informed path choices. Some changes or indicators can be very subtle too, you have to really look.  It's a totally different experience to walking in all weather, all terrain boots where you can just clump along protected; you have to think a lot more. Your reward, you'll notice a lot more though and gain a greater insight into terrain in general, and most importantly, you'll stay dry footed.

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