‘It’s like I’m dancing with the ground’

I’m expecting slightly more ceremony when I take my shoes and socks off. I place each sun-shy bare foot down on the grass while Mike Farrow unlaces his trainers and rolls up his trouser legs. I’ve barely had time to think about whether this experience is going to be spiritual, enlightening, or just plain cold, when he’s off: striding up the hill towards Purdown.

I stumble along behind as if I’m learning how to walk. I don’t seem to know what to do with my feet now that I can feel, intensely, the sharp dry parts of the old grass and the rucks and folds of the terrain.

At the gap in the hedge, a full winter of sturdy, hard-soled shoes has churned the grass into mud. I’m expecting it to be slimy and cold, like wading through a bag of gone-off spinach, but instead it’s smooth and malleable, like sun-warmed marzipan. My naked feet sink a centimetre with each velvety, cushioned step. The mud has dried out a lot in the past week, Mike says. The season is changing.

Over the year of Covid-19 lockdowns, Mike has been walking – and now running – in Stoke Park without shoes on. While many of us have been feeling the benefits of daily walks or regular runs, for Mike it has been the simple act of removing his footwear that has made a huge difference to his wellbeing.

“I found lockdown particularly difficult at first,” Mike says. Before life as we knew it stopped last March, he would be out dancing for at least 14 hours each week – “high-energy stuff”. He attended sessions at Hamilton House and would dance to live music at the Canteen and LeftBank. “It stopped overnight. All my social life and my exercise. I was kind of devastated at first.”

Mike, who is semi-retired from working in IT, was struggling to sleep. He began to walk near his home in St Werburgh’s at night. Then, in the daytime, he would roam further, for a couple of hours at a time, often coming up to Stoke Park. “It was spring so the leaves were just starting to come out, nature was starting to bloom. Just gradually, through the walking, I felt more calm. That immersion in nature really calmed me down.”

In Purdown’s expansive grassy stretches, he began taking his shoes off and experimenting with how it felt to walk barefoot. It brought back memories of being on the beach as a child growing up in Margate, and of hours spent dancing without shoes on.

“The barefoot walking must have given me some of the connection that I used to get from dancing, and gradually I started to sleep again,” Mike says. “It was a probably a mixture of the fresh air, the beautiful nature and the deep connection with the earth.”

We walk that same stretch, beneath Purdown’s concrete telecoms tower, which is set against a pale blue late afternoon sky. The maples in the hedgerow aren’t in leaf yet: winter hasn’t quite yet receded. A friendly dog runs up to Mike – “I know all the dogs!” he says with a trademark laugh and a wide smile.

Mike Farrow says the “deep connection with the earth” that he gets from walking and running barefoot has helped his wellbeing during the pandemic. Photo by Jess Connett

Up on the high bluff, with the roar of the motorway beneath and the Dower House beaming on the next hill, the wind is cutting. I’m wearing two pairs of gloves and have stuffed my hands into my pockets. My toes are bright red and tingling, heading for numbness. It’s a relief to get into the shelter of Barn Wood, but the path is littered with sharp-edged twigs and scratchy leaf litter. Showers of pins and needles cascade into my heels with each step.

“It is uncomfortable sometimes, and what it requires is a deeper sort of concentration on how you walk,” Mike says. “It brought me more into the present and out of my head. The discomfort and occasionally pain – because I wasn’t caught up in my thoughts – brought me a kind of joy.”

The path pushes uphill. Small green shoots are caught in the act of unfurling on the forest floor, taking their chance before the dense tree foliage blots out the light. Grey squirrels jump in the branches. Birds sing, and I notice dog paw prints, big and small.

Mike’s foot slips sideways in mud the texture of an overripe avocado. He leaves behind an unmistakably human impression, but the deep marks where his toes have dug in brings to mind something claw-like and primitive. I can feel my own toes gripping against dry tree roots and stones, feeling for their edges.

Anthropologists estimate that humans have been wearing protective footwear, comparable to modern shoes, for between 26,000 and 30,000 years. Evidence from Neanderthal and Homo sapiens skeletons shows weakening in the bones of the four smaller toes. In societies known to go barefoot, the toe bones remain thick because the toes stayed active; supportive shoes reduce how much work the toes do.

Mike credits barefoot running with helping to keep his feet warm through winter. Photo by Jess Connett

“We’re in hawthorn country now,” Mike warns as we walk deeper into the woods. “I love the hawthorn but I respect it too!” We both have to stop several times to scrape away prickly branches that have stuck to our blackened soles.

Shoes might be helpful for hawthorn protection, but the blood is returning to my feet, and Mike has found that the cold bothers him far less now. He walked barefoot through spring, summer and autumn, and even on a day when the mud had frozen into “stalactites of ice”.

“I challenged myself to walk barefoot through November and it was getting colder and colder and I was thinking I was going to have to stop doing this,” he says. But out again on the grass expanse, under the sweep of sky, he began to run for the first time in some 15 years. “I ran for about a half hour. I wasn’t trying to run any sort of distance or speed, I was just enjoying the ability to move and the feeling that it gave me.

“I love the walking but my dance was very energetic. With the walking I get a sense of connection but I wouldn’t get that deep energetic feeling that I often get with dance. It’s almost a trance-like state. Sometimes I can find that with the running. It’s like I’m dancing with the ground.”

Before the pandemic, Mike would dance for at least 14 hours per week. Photo by Jess Connett

We emerge near the great horse chestnut in Hermitage Wood, where two kids are playing on a rope swing. Children understand exactly what Mike is doing, he says – it’s their parents who don’t always get it. A man walking a dog shouts: “Aren’t your feet cold?” It’s the most common question he gets asked. “Not at all,” he replies with a grin.

The grass feels beautifully soft and delicate after the woodland paths. As it’s my first barefoot experience today, we’re not going to run: Mike warns that beginners shouldn’t overdo it. The sun is setting off behind Lockleaze’s Vench, the city fading away in hazy layers. There’s sharp gravel at the top of Lindsay Road, and then mole hills and gritty dry earth dug up by dogs or foxes.

We walk back through the gap in the hedge, over the smooth mud again. It’s almost fleshy, like stepping on the pads of someone else’s feet. We finish up on some lush, luxurious grass – the best in the whole of Stoke Park, according to Mike – and I feel elated.

“Lots of my friends are suffering, as are many people throughout the country and the world. Taking your shoes and socks off is a very simple and accessible practise,” Mike says. We rub our feet clean against the damp grass and put our shoes back on. I can feel the knit of my socks against my newly sensitised skin. “Lots of people I meet say: ‘I’m going to try it ­– but I’m going to wait until the summer!'”

Mike is planning to write a book about his barefoot practise. Find out more at www.barefootway.org

Main image of Mike Farrow by Jess Connett

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