Dirty Boots

What do clean boots and office Christmas trees have in common?  Neither of them are fulfilling the purpose for which they were intended.  In the case of the office Christmas tree it sits alone and forlorn on Christmas Day with no excited children or pressies anywhere to be seen - how sad is that?

Clean boots, paraded around Ambleside on a sunny bank holiday, remind me of caged animals in the zoo - they can see the fells all around but they're just not allowed onto them.  A dirty boot is a happy boot in my book so I was delighted when Bogs asked me to get a pair good and mucky for them.

Not that everyone agreed mind - look what happened when I posted a photo of them on Instagram when they arrived:

Too nice to get dirty?  Never! Chlorinekid & DistantHorizonsUK had better look away now...  Bogs promised these boots were 100% waterproof and I wasn't going to let a claim like that go untested.

First was some gentle puddling...

Then came the snow... (awesome footprint!)

Then there was a small bog...

Then they were dirty!  Yay!

So they needed to be cleaned - bring on the puddles!

Only one way to clean a good pair of boots.  (It's possible the care instructions didn't recommend this as the preferred method of cleaning...)

Remember when you were a kid and had your boots on and your mum still told you off for jumping in all the puddles?  Well, the best thing about being an adult is that I get to wear boots and jump in all the puddles I want!

At this point I realised that perhaps my mum had had a point all along.  My jeans were soaked, we were at Leighton Moss and I still had a good 2 hours birdwatching/ cake munching ahead of me. Steve gave me one of those looks but I remained unrepentant - boots should be dirty and puddles should be jumped in.

The boots were superb, my feet were comfy dry and warm and, in my humble opinion, the mud only added to the already awesome design.  Too nice to get dirty?  Pah!  It would be a sin not to!


The boots in the blog are the Sidney Lace Plaid boots - you can find them here.  They also have LOADS of other designs so do have a nose through their website.