Boot woes!

In a boots update...

Cotswold in Betws-y-Coed did a very good job in measuring and assessing my feet before going on to some serious fitting. Straight off they said that my feet were the wrong shape for any of the Scarpas. Apparently mine are long and thin in a southern European style, rather than short and squat as is more common in the UK. A pair of Asolos were a perfect fit but were a bit too inflexible for my purposes.

I settled on some La Sportivas, which are part way between, stiffer than a walking boot, but more flexble than a snow and ice design. After getting home and trying them on a bit more I'm coming to the conclusion that they are a bit narrow and press on the edge of my left foot. Unsure how to proceed as the pressure point is a lump of hard skin that I could probably get rid of with some foot TLC and otherwise they are quite good.

The other purchases of walking crampons, winter walking trousers and a head torch were more successful :)

Possibly I'll be going into the Liverpool branch to swap to yet another pair of boots...

(no subject)

Astronaut Larry is highly entertaining. Particular insights from today

1. The space shuttle pilots alighn the ship by pointing a sextant out of the window
2. After 2 years training, Larry didn't realise that the shuttle toilet cubicle had a light switch until day 7 of 14.
3. The Russian flights are just as safe as the US ones but with less than 10% of the paperwork. He was explaining that for an experiment he wanted to send up to the ISS, there were 190 safety documents to prepare which amounted to a pile of paper taller than a person...when he went to Russia to send up something similar, they said "Hmm, that bit looks fragile, lets put it in a padded box for launch.."