The importance of footwear

Night

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Birch

Bill Bryson claimed in the book A Walk in the Woods, of which I wrote on Sunday, that the avarage distance an American walks in a day is 350 yards. This sounds pitiful. How can one not walk.

I walk usually an hour each day, sometimes much more. This means that I need to replace shoes quite often. Luckily, some shoes last a long time, such as my last pair of hiking shoes, which were made by Meindl.

I think I got them six or seven years ago, and they served well, in all kinds of weather, being waterproof. But last weekend they finally gave up.

Now I'm looking for a replacement. Meindl is of course an option, but then there is the Finnish shoemaker Sievi, which defines itself as "manufacturer of Safety and Occupational footwear".

I have a pair of everyday shoes made by Sievi. They call the shoes "professional footwear", because they have toe protection and anti-static properties, and Gore-tex as well. These shoes are also at the end of their use. So it goes. But they served well.

Coming back to hiking shoes, Sievi has some excellent models for such use. These shoes are a good fit to my feet which are rather wide. I have problems with narrow shoes, and unfortunately narrow seems to be the fashion all too often.

Well, I guess there is nothing else that go shopping and try the shoes out. This is not something I enjoy. Maybe one should buy several pairs of shoes at once. But one never knows in advance how well the shoes work in practice.