FOOTWEAR FOCUS ROAD TEST
Outdoor Footwear P
icture the Bavarian Alps in early summer: snowy peaks on rugged mountains like cutouts against cloudless blue skies. Steep, green meadows dotted with wild flowers restoring the cows recently released from the barn-imprisoned winter diet of hay and silage.
And, just as you are taking in this sublime scene along the path comes a
jolly group of hikers clad in lederhosen, green pork pie hats askance on their heads, all wearing Meindl boots singing “I love to go a wandering, along a mountain track…” (In German of course) by way of a commercial break. Footwear Today’s budget did not stretch to flying me to the natural habitat of the Meindl boot, the Bavarian Alps, to road test a pair of Burma Pro hiking boots. I wish it had. A bracing hike breathing the crystal air that fuels the skill and creativity of Meindl boot makers in Kirchanschöring in South West Bavaria would have fully justified the expense of getting me there. It would have seemed appropriate to have
I Luf to go A-vandering Henry Harington puts the boot into the Meindl Burma Pro (and his editor!)
paused my Alpine ramblings at a wayside inn to refresh myself with one of the beers brewed under the 500 year old Reinheitsgebot ("purity order") that permits only barley, hops and yeast to be ingredients of beer – artificial additives were forbidden in Germany before the term was invented. I could become skilled in – perhaps not road testing – but sampling the output of the 1,300 breweries in German, half of which are located in Bavaria. I don’t ask my editor for much: I could have insisted that a “Burma” hiking
boot should be tested in the jungles of Myanmar! But on second thoughts tramping through mosquito infested jungle in a country whose generals imprison Nobel Peace Prize winners would not be a picnic. So instead of cavorting across the Alpine meadows to a background of
surging music and singing…. “The hills are alive with the sound of music” I road tested the boots on Dartmoor. Anyway, walking boots look naf if one is wearing a nun’s habit. Instead of gliding among the Alpenrose, Alpine Aster, Alpine rock jasmine, gentian and Alpine pasque-flower I tramped amidst the bog cotton and tussock grass on Dartmoor! But, I had my own back on my editor’s failure to enter into the spirit of road
testing in the most appropriate environment: Dartmoor is gorgeous at this time of year: the same blue skies as the Alps, crisp air, the soaring skylarks, the impertinent call of the cuckoo and the melancholy cry of the curlew. I donned my Burma’s and tramped up through the bluebell wood - no
surging music but the air perfumed by the astringent sweetness of England’s favourite flower. On the high moor the green bracken is unfurling like someone stretching after a good night’s sleep. Who needs an Alpine bouquet when moor is covered with blazing yellow
gorse, cuckoo flowers with their feint pink blush, bright blue, pink and white milkwort and the grass is spangled with the tiny yellow tormentil. If this sounds like a botany lesson, it is because of the sheer pleasure of a good hiking boot being so comfortable and undemanding that you can concentrate on the things that matter – the birds and the flowers. The Meindl Pro is such a boot. One is generally not allowed, for reasons of political correctness, to caricature a people nowadays: but what if the stereotyping reflects, as it does
with the makers of the Burma boot, the skills and thoroughness that one expects from German craftsmanship – or to be politically correct craftswomanship or is that craftspersonship? Cutting a brisk pace over the moor you can expect your feet to get hot. I don’t know a more delicate way of putting this but I suffer from hot feet. This boot has a Gore-Tex waterproof and breathable inner which is what one expects from a top end boot. But the Meindl Burma Pro also boasts an “Air- Active system” that optimises ventilation and operates like bellows (although fortunately does not sound like one). The Air-Active system it is designed to remove moisture, generated by the
foot from the boot. If one is on a really long walk, perhaps over days, keeping feet cool and dry is very important; otherwise you are at greater or risk foot rot, athletes’ foot and other foot borne lurgies. And, while cool feet are important in warm weather, dry feet are essential when it is cold as it reduces the clammy sock syndrome that can be uncomfortable and even lead to bunching and blisters. A feature I just love about this boot, and have not seen elsewhere, is the
way the lacing is designed to pull against the heel. One of the pairs of lacing lugs is not on the front of the boot, but to the sides, attached to the heel. This has the effect of pulling one’s foot firmly into the heel cup. Meindl has an incomprehensible way of explaining this, they say “DIGAfix technology is a diagonal retaining system in the instep area which exerts no pressure on the foot as it pulls the heel into the heel cup for a secure fit”. I think my explanation is clearer. Hotels around the globe have a five star rating system for the quality of
service (except Dubai where the Burj al Arab which boasts a self-awarded seven stars). The Meindl Burma Pro undoubtedly qualifies for the complete constellation of stars in my book.
Meindl Burma Pro hiking boot Retail Price: £174.99
Contact Details for Stockists: Tel: 015395 60214
28 • FOOTWEAR TODAY
• AUGUST 2010
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