It was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher, who in 1851 wrote:
“When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the sole leather has passed into the fibre of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out. He is the richest man who pays the largest debt to his shoemaker.”
To loosely paraphrase what he was saying, it is the people with the most worn-out footwear and gear who have experienced the most.
We’ve all heard that walking is good for you, not just in terms of physical health benefits (e.g. losing weight, being fitter, reducing risks like heart problems, diabetes, strokes, high blood pressure, etc) but also in terms of mental health. Studies have shown that walking can improve your mood, reduce stress, anxiety and risk of depression, improve memory and problem-solving, help you sleep better, and even improve your confidence.
The physical benefits are easy enough to understand, the mental ones less so, but just consider a walk with nature around you – in the countryside or in the mountains – and these become clearer too. (Or even just taking a break away from it all in some greenspace in a town or city.)
Paul Dudley White, an early 20th century American physician and cardiologist (i.e. he knew what he was taking about), went rather further when he wrote:
“A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.”
And Charles Dickens was not unaware of the mental benefits of walking either, for he wrote:
“It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something.”
They say that walking is free, but if you’re doing enough walking to wear out your boots and other kit, then it’s clearly not a totally free hobby – but then what hobby is?
We also ought to bear in mind that the rate you wear out your boots (ignoring the fact that cheap footwear won’t last as long) doesn’t just depend on how far you walk, but also on what sort of terrain you are walking on and how well you look after your boots. It stands to reason that walking on rock or tarmac will wear down your soles far quicker than walking on softer surfaces, such as grass or soft earth.
It’s commonly said that a pair of good walking boots should last for between 500 and 1,000 miles. Walk on softer surfaces and you’ll be in the upper range of this distance; walk on harder surfaces and you’ll be in the lower range.
Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) has good paths, but they are rocky underfoot; there’s virtually no grass available underfoot anywhere if you stick to the paths. That means that someone like me, who walks up Yr Wyddfa the best part of 100 times a year, will be needing to buy a new pair of boots at roughly annual intervals, and I guess that’s about right.
Personally, I’d go along with the above quotes without hesitation. Walking brings immense health benefits – physical and mental – and if the price I have to pay is new boots and other walking gear every now and then , then so be it. Perhaps realising that my boots are worn and that I’ll soon need to splash out on new ones isn’t such a bad thing after all.