Coast to Coasting #2: Gear failure - Boots (Again)

On top of Raven Crag - but watch those boots.

I have bad boot karma, no doubt about it.
My Zamberlans peeled their soles on the last day of the Northern Tongariro Circuit so I ditched them. My Scarpas peeled their soles on the last day of the Rakiura Track last year but I persisted, had them reglued (at great expense) in Brisbane, restitched (at very little expense) in Ladakh, and gave them away in Dharamsala because I just couldn’t trust them to last.
I bought a new pair of Mammut boots in January for this hike. Carefully broke them in till they were wonderfully comfortable. But then…

No, the soles didn’t peel on the last day; they peeled on just the third day, while we were hiking over Buttermere Fell without a care in the world. One moment I am eating my sandwich lunch, gazing up at Haystacks, lolling under the one tree at Black Sail Hut (the most remote YHA hostel in the UK) and retrieving a lost pair of spectacles found on the remote path on the way up to Seavy Knott, the next moment I noticed that my right sole had torn on the toe tip.

Black Sail Hut YHA

By the time we got to the Scafell Hotel in Rosthwaite, the sole was rapidly dissociating itself from the boot upper. The next day’s hike through the green glory of Greenup Gill (a gill or ghyll is the old Norse word for a ravine with a brook) and the upland moor of Grasmere Common via Brownrigg Moss, taking the high route past Calf Crag, with views of Easedale Tarn, and down the steep route from Helm Crag was uplifting and wild - but the boots were getting worse.
With at least 150 miles still to walk, I bit the bullet the next morning and rapidly bought a pair of Meindl boots from Chris at Cotswold Outdoor, Grasmere (oh yes, and had a quick look at Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage) 
I bought the boots at 9.40 am, put them straight on - and by 3.30 that afternoon we had passed Grisedale Tarn, onto Dollywaggon Pike and I had sweated to the top of Helvellyn and was photographing the stone that records Bert Hinkler landing a small plane on the top of the peak in 1926.
Helvellyn! I have wanted to go there ever since 2nd year high school physical geography classes about glaciation: tarns, arretes, scarps and dip slopes, moraines - we learned them all from studying the OS map of Swirrel Edge, Striding Edge and Red Tarn. To cap the day off, we descended straight down the knife blade of Striding Edge to Patterdale. 
What a day. The newfound  boots saw me through. And I hung the lost spectacles on my pack strap for the next 10 days in case I ran into their owner. But that is another story …..

Windswept and happy on Helvellyn with Striding Edge to the right