GO EXPLORING

Everyone should have a trusty pair of boots to hand. You know the ones. Well-worn, well-loved; they have as many great stories of their own to tell as you do. They took you to all those spontaneous community centre parties with beer-stained floorboards, they took you to the top of that huge (you believed) hill in the Yorkshire dales, they took you down countless airport corridors and to summer festivals near and far.  There's a romance about boots. What can be more liberating than the power to go anywhere, explore far and wide, with your trusty boots on?

Palladium's boots couldn't have come into my life at a better time. My summer will be spent between Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party and a lot of pavement pounding in Paris, when I can't wait to spend every waking hour exploring the districts of my new city. Palladium's series of Explorer videos are really worth a gander; Berlin, London, Detroit and New York among other cities are shown in a new light as residents share their favourite hidden gems and great spaces of historical or architectural wonder which are veiled from common view. Having spent the last two years in Leeds at university, I'm days away from leaving and am suddenly getting that wrenching feeling that I haven't done enough exploring. Even at the end of my road, is a huge abandoned redbrick girls school that I should have investigated, camera (and boots) in tow, not to mention the children's psychiatric institution at Adel which has lain empty for over 20 years but is still intact with furniture and belongings. Don't make my mistake. Do it now. Put on your boots, and go exploring...