Trail Shoes

The shoe you pick for a trail run matters more than almost anything else you wear. Get it wrong on Kinder Scout in November and you'll know about it within the first kilometre.

We test trail shoes on Peak District grit, Lake District scree, Pennine bog, and everything in between — because a shoe that grips on a dry test track tells you absolutely nothing useful. We care about outsole lugs in mud, rock plate stiffness on technical ground, upper durability over a season, and whether the fit actually holds on descents.

The trail shoe market has exploded in the last five years. Hoka, Inov-8, Salomon, On — everyone's got an opinion and most of it conflicts. Some of it's legitimate. Some of it's marketing. We'll tell you which is which, and we'll tell you when the cheaper option does the job just as well.

Rob Cairney handles most of our trail and fell shoe reviews. He's been running the Dark Peak long enough to know exactly what fails and when.