Helen Sheard, who sings with Bob in Commoners Choir, organises talks for the Holme Valley Mountain Rescue Team. I’d offered to give them a talk on walking and last month she took me up on it.
Holme Valley MRT is a volunteer-based search and rescue team based in Marsden, near Huddersfield. Sixty members on call twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, plus trainees and support members. They cover over a thousand square kilometres of West Yorkshire — open moorland, crags, semi-urban areas, anything from seven metres to nearly six hundred metres above sea level. They do a serious job.
The talk was a podiatrist’s view on the things that go wrong with walkers’ feet, and the things that prevent them. We covered:
- Footwear. Why fit and lacing matter more than brand or price, and what to look for in a walking boot or shoe for the kind of terrain they cover.
- Sock systems. Why a thin liner sock under a thicker walking sock reduces blisters more than any single sock can.
- Blister management. When to leave a blister alone, when to drain it carefully, and when to get the casualty off the hill.
- Common foot problems on multi-day walks — friction, infection, plantar fasciitis flare-ups, neuroma irritation — and what to do about them in the field versus in clinic.
- When to seek help. The signs that a foot or lower-limb injury needs proper assessment rather than another night of just hoping it’ll settle.
The questions afterwards were the most useful part. A team that walks long distances on rough ground in poor weather has a real interest in foot care, and the conversation went on past the formal end of the talk.
If you’re a walking group, club, mountain rescue team or similar organisation in Yorkshire and you’d find a podiatrist’s talk useful, we’re happy to do them where time allows.
For everyday foot, ankle and lower-limb care, book an appointment or make an enquiry → — Leeds, York, Wetherby and Wharfedale.
Bob Longworth MSc DPodM is a director and senior podiatrist at Podiatry Clinics (Yorkshire) Ltd.