Woman with ‘barefoot lifestyle’ told to toe the line on trip to US

A MOTHER-OF-TWO who has been living a “barefoot lifestyle” in Yorkshire for the past 30 months yesterday told how she had to go back to wearing shoes on a trip to the US.

Bea Marshall, 34, decided to forsake footwear in May 2010 after suffering running injuries. She was told going barefoot could help, while improving posture and circulation.

Since then she has hit the streets and shops of her home city of Sheffield without shoes, and said she hardly ever finds anyone who takes offence or insists she covers up.

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But she has just returned from a nine-week American road trip with her two young sons Robin, seven, and Jos, five, and said her choice not to wear shoes had raised eyebrows.

Website designer Mrs Marshall, who lives with her husband Andy in Walkley, Sheffield, said: “In this country what I generally find is that people will stop and talk to me about why I’m not wearing shoes and ask me why I do it, but in America that really did not happen at all.

“What I found was that people in shops and other places would come up to me and say ‘we are concerned about you not wearing shoes here – we need you to put shoes on’.”

Mrs Marshall said she had been warned to expect such attitudes and had made herself a pair of “minimal shoes” to wear when challenged by shop assistants, but had spent as much of the journey barefoot as possible.