This blog has been migrated to Classic Press

A few days ago I saw that heavy rain was announced for that afternoon so I thought that I would not go for a walk. In the end I did go for a walk in the heavy rain. I was wearing a reasonable rain coat so I could have stayed dry if I had also worn rain trousers.

I didn’t wear rain trousers so for at least half the walk I was okay. I wasn’t too wet. Eventually though I started walking into the wind and my trousers started to get wet. Usually when you walk in the rain it’s not that your coat fails you. It’s that the clothing that is not protected from the rain whicks the water upwards, from your trousers, to your t-shirt, to your sweater, to your fleece. In the end you’re soaking wet.

By this point you realise that you need to keep walking fast, to keep warm and to prevent yourself from catching a cold. In Wuthering Heights they speak of “catching her death” and in other films or books they speak of being at risk from pneumonia etc. If I stopped walking I was at serious risk of getting cold.

For the entire summer I enjoyed walking in minimalist shoes, but now that the cold weather has come, and due to the rain I have been wearing On Cloud 5 for walking. They’re expensive by my standards, for shoes but they have one advantage over barefoot shoes. They lift you a centimetre or more off of the ground. When there are rivers running down the road you’re walking along it’s good to have thicker soles.

These are not waterproof shoes so they get wet when it’s raining, or if you walk through wet grass. When watching a video on Youtube one hiker said that sometimes he prefers not to wear Gore Tex shoes, because when Gore Tex shoes get wet they take a while to dry, whereas others dry with ease. The On Cloud 5 dry easily.

Another feature, and with someone like me this is a feature, the base of the foot is easy to clean. There are no nodules to trap mud like with other shoes. If I went for a walk in muddy conditions with the trail gloves I would spend half an hour clearing the mud from between every element of tread, before being able to walk into the building. With the other shoes I’m ready to enter within seconds.

The other reason for wearing thicker shoes is that the road surface will now be getting colder, due to the drop in air temperature. It is worth having thicker soles, to insulate myself from the cold ground. Having said this I wore the shoes that would be least annoying to clear of mud.

Recently I was thinking about why I grew so tired of car traffic. One reason is that I lost the freedom to walk in the mud. I lost the freedom to walk along paths that were safe from cars but muddy. In losing this freedom I found myself exposed to car traffic almost constantly when walking along certain routes. When I could walk in the mud I could avoid a bridge where cars don’t slow down, despite pedestrians crossing.

When you can’t travel the muddy path, you’re stuck with the dangerous path, and that dangerous path is fatiguing. By trying not to get muddy shoes I lost my freedom to enjoy the walks that got my shoes caked in mud. Recently I have brushed my shoes with a brush to remove all traces of dirt.

I am so meticulous about having clean shoes that despite the cleaner just mopping the floor I walked along it with wet, but clean shoes, so I left no trace. A day or two later I walked into the building and I saw that other people had left a mess, not me. I still don’t understand why it’s the parents of young children that get annoyed by mud, when they have young children. I find it absurd.

I find it absurd but my shoes are clean and I no longer drop clumps of mud, even after walking for one and a half hours in heavy rain.

And Finally, when heavy rain is falling it tends to clean shoes, as you walk, so the layer of mud that would form, doesn’t, because it’s waterlogged and washed away by the rain. Next time it rains so heavily I will wear rain trousers but I think that the rain will whick up from my shoes to my socks, from my socks to my trousers, and from my trousers to everything else. I should have been like someone else, and worn shorts.