I waited for the obligatory couple of weeks for them to turn up.

On first look I was impressed by the quality, a few minutes later and I had threaded them onto my toes and took a trundle round the kitchen. So far so good, what would they be like on the street? I went and found out, strolling the short distance between houses to the end of the cul de sac. There was quite the pleasant sensation of being barefoot without the discomfort when walking on anything other than carpet and quarry tiles.
I enjoy being barefoot at the best of times, I’m really not that fond of the restriction afforded by boots and shoes as the slightest persistent pressure hurts, to be frank.

When not squeezing my wide feet into ridiculous mountain footwear, I have always favoured as flat a shoe as possible. Baseball boots and trainers or daps that are as wide as possible. Stopped wearing formal shoes a long time ago. Flirting with all sorts of shoes and boots over the years has seen me wear and work in and in no particular order, items from the following brands:
Clark's, K-shoes, Ridiculous Cowboy Boots, Barkers, Loakes, Hoggs of Fife, Hunter Wellies, Steel Toed Wellies, R. M. Williams (Mountaineering in Stockman's boots is interesting) Nike, Addidas, Merell, Zamberlan, Meindl, Scarpa, Hanwag, Salomon, La Sportiva, Karrimor, Keen, MBT, VivoBarefoot, Xero Shoes, Hobibear, Futobei, Vibram amongst a good few more.

Lately, my feet have become quite unbearable at times. I guess that they and my lower limbs are going to be the last places that free up after the statins, seeing as they were the first to go.

I have been wearing dedicated barefoot shoes since half way through 2023 when my current crop of challenges began to surface. I was working at Zip World in Blaenau Ffestiniog, driving the Quarry Explorer trucks, taking the customers up to the Zipline launch platform. I loved it there. I had been there for a few months and I think I had settled in quite well in spite of my idiosyncratic ways.

One morning I was summoned into one of the offices for a quick medical and came out without a job - I had Hypertension and my eyesight was blurry. Not surprising after a couple of strong coffees, but hey ho. One door closes and another opens. Made some lifestyle and dietary adjustments and was back down to normal quite quickly. Then I landed an opportunity to set up a bushcraft/forest school over in Flintshire. Whilst helping in a paddlesport session in a river that August, I contracted a long drawn out bacterial infection that kicked in within 24 hours and kept ebbing and flowing through til January '24. Since then it has been round after round of pharmaceutical intervention and other games, with varying results.

The shoes have very quickly become my everyday footwear - I am experiencing some foot and lower limb swelling that needs sorting, probably a medication issue - but they are just so comfortable. I bought another pair, then some socks Then I bought some Vibram V-Trek. Then another pair of the cheap ones, then another pair of Vibrams and yet another pair of cheapos. Together with socks from various manufacturers. I can rotate through them so they don't get too fungally.

Aside from wearing them all the time, I wore them for the whole of the Coed Cymerau Circuit experiment published on Project Gwella.

Within 24 hours the benefits became apparent. My feet, now essentially free from restriction could begin to regain a version of themselves that had hithertoo been unavailable somatically. Ligaments audibly clicked and joints popped as they relaxed into themselves. Actively using the big toe mindfully began to activate the plantar ligament and thus to the limb above.

Writing this nearly a month later, I can say that the mechanical discomfort is now down to 20% of what it was. There is still some way to go before being able to use it under heavy load. There are still some dorsiflexion issues, numb big toe, plantar fasciitis, peroneal nerve entrapment in at least 3 places and possibly a bit of a neuroma in the forefoot. I am still massaging my feet and legs daily which helps a lot