Episode 55: Walking Barefoot Across Europe with Eamonn Keaveney

And, uh, also, like, uh, I'm conscious as we're talking about this, we, we are talking barefoot, and as I say, you, you did it in, in Ireland as well.

And so you obviously have a, have a, a big love or a passion for walking barefoot.

I'm gonna ask, first of all, would you recommend it to other people, and if you were, what words would you use to describe it?

I'd recommend doing a bit of barefoot walking to people.

I wouldn't recommend it as a means of long-distance travel because it invites a lot of discomfort, to be quite frank.

And as I said, it does depend on the terrain you're walking on-

Yeah

... because if you're walking on trails, you'll be happy out.

But it does expose you to hazards, and if you're walking, like, as I was saying earlier, 20, 30 kilometers, you're gonna feel it eventually, so it's unpleasant.

But there are, you know, purported health benefits to walking barefoot.

I tend to shy from making any bold claims about anything because I'm not a doctor or an anatomist or anything like that.

Um, and I've seen some, some claims...

I'll put it this way.

There are people out there who the way they talk about walking barefoot, it'd be as if, like, if everyone just took their shoes off, you know, humans would live until they're 200 years old, and, you know, no one would, would ever die of cancer anymore, you know, and, and, and so on and so forth.

I feel very comfortable in saying that I don't think that, you know, walking barefoot will, you know, lead you to living to 200, or that it's going to cure your cancer, to be honest.

But, you know, walking barefoot and running barefoot and, and, and all that, you do move kind of differently.

Um, it- I think it's better for the structure of your feet because, you know, your toes don't get crushed and all that kind of stuff that happens with shoes.

So it's probably good for your feet, you know.

And mechanically, if you're walking differently, maybe it's good for your knees and good for your hips and good for your back.

And I have heard some people say anecdotally that they walk barefoot and it's great for their back pain, for example.

Maybe not if you're carrying a big massive backpack, but that's a different story.

But I wouldn't recommend it as some sort of magical cure-all.

But the thing is, you can try it and it's free, and the worst thing that can happen to you if you're walking barefoot is you step on something unpleasant, be that a thorn or something that a dog left behind and the owner didn't pick it up.

Very unpleasant, but I had someone ask me once, they said, "What do you do if you stand in dog crap?" To be honest, it almost never happens, you know, um, because people I think these days, and like continent-wide, pick up after their dogs, which is great.

But it's kind of like, well, what do you do if you're wearing a shoe and you step in dog crap? You wash your shoe, like, you know-