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By the time we reached the halfway point of our journey, my feet looked like the photo above. It's not a great photo, doesn't quite do them justice, and as soon as Karim can work out how to get the photos he took on his phone onto a computer I will update the gallery. Not for any odd reason, but because I like people to know what happens to feet when you keep walking on a blister for a few days.
The decision to abandon my walking boots in favour of my trainers had thus far proved to be a good one, but we were only halfway through our journey and things could change pretty quick.
It was a really weird thing - when we had been preparing for the walk, I had been worried about the fitness side of things. I was really concerned that my general pub-landlord physique and lifestyle would create problems and cause me to collapse at the foot of the first hill choking up my lungs. As it turned out I was coping ok with the actual stamina side of things (although it has to be said not as well as super-fit Karim), (And for super-fit, read less unhealthy than me). It was my b****** feet that were letting the side down.
They really did hurt. Every night I would shower (assuming we were at a camp site), then I would spend an hour drying them, cleaning them, covering them in talcum powder... In fact we tried everything. Karim decided it would be fun to pour Iodine into them... And it was great fun - for him. Personally I found it rather uncomfortable, and his manic laughter just added to my unease....
You see, for all our planning, and all the research we had done on the Net, and for all the people's stories and advice we had listened to, it had never occurred to me to ask how to treat blisters when your foots falling off.
It was going to be a few more days when we discovered Compeed, the plaster that covers blisters with another layer of skin. A few more days when I would speak to Lee and ask him why he had never pointed this out to me before. And then a few seconds before he would respond "Well, I thought you would have known that".
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