Maps don't tell the whole story

Blonde Two's last post talks of gorse problems; I have had my own.

It seemed like a good idea at the time (2002).

Lurgh Mhor and Bidein a'Choire Sheasgaich (Lurgh Mhor is often mentioned as one of the most remote Munros)

SMC guide to the Munros, "...there is very much the feeling of a real expedition to climb them, some may prefer to take two days..."

By my route the distance was about 18 miles there and back of very strenuous hill walking.

The conventional route started by crossing the railway near Gerry's Hostel (where I later stayed on my LEJOG walk).

I had looked at the map and also viewed the river from the road just to the east of Achnashellach station and it looked shallow. I took trainers to wade across the river thereby saving myself about six kilometres there and back on the track starting near Gerry's hostel.

From memory, the climb over the fence or whatever to cross the railway was not easy. Next I found myself in total swamp often up to my knees, but boots were being carried so remained dry. The river was waded fairly easily, but the far bank was guarded by solid gorse over six feet high and twenty or thirty feet deep. I hid my trainers and had no alternative but to force my way through that gorse which was very close to impossible. Sweating and shredded I was faced with climbing a deer fence (they are about ten feet in height), into a wood. The wood was strewn with felled trees and thick undergrowth, the trees having being felled at right angles to my direction of travel necessitating climbing over and negotiating the mass of twisted branches, brambles, hidden holes and other evil ankle twisting horrors. Another deer fence was conquered to land me on the track of the conventional route. That was a distance of about half a kilometre from the car, but the worst half kilometre I can ever remember.

The rest of that day was brilliant, but on the way back descending steeply a few hundred yards from the point where I had gained the track from the second deer fence my knee suddenly suffered the most excruciating pain. I was staying with the caravan at Kinlochewe and the previous day I had by some strange prescience bought a single walking pole at a small outdoor shop there which has since closed. Why I bought that pole I have no idea - I had scorned them in the past and seemed to have no reason for the purchase, but it it turned out to be a lifesaver.

I think that was the start of my knee problems which resulted in several arthroscopies and replacement knee surgery in May 2012.

Of course I had to re-negotiate the obstacle course providing a final challenge for a very long day.

CLICK TO ENLARGE
The thick brown dash/dot line is part of my LEJOG route from 2008 - the tent symbol indicates a night stop at Gerry's hostel

Orange goes pink

I am now wearing black stockings.

The nurse (I didn't ask if she wears them) said I can dispense with them in summer if I am walking and wearing shorts - that's a good job - some observers may get over excited otherwise.

This compression hosiery will apparently reduce the risk of DVT - let's hope so. 

The wound on my shin is improving and I am walking some miles again, modestly. Pete's arthritis is showing signs of gradual improvement with the shed load of pills he takes daily. I feel I could walk more, but I don't want to risk aggravation and I will see how things are going after I see the nurse again next Thursday.

Here are a few photos from our two last Thursdays around Witherslack and the Winster valley.

Old yew tree and Witherslack church

Well, I have gone on and on about hairy-orange-string.  Perhaps we have a  refined lady farmer in the Winster valley?

Strange building, excessively windowed, in grounds of large conventional country house - cheap roofing-felt roof. Any ideas anybody?

Witherslack Hall. The special-needs school where daughter High Horse was recently made redundant.
Whitbarrow on the skyline

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day was doubly poignant. My brother (18 months younger than me) has Altzheimers and he has been moved from a home in Leeming Bar to a hospital in Scarborough.

With daughter, High Horse, and granddaughter Katie, just gone three years old, we made the round trip of 330 miles setting off at 10:00 am and getting back home at 8:00 pm and all for a half hour visit with my brother. Although Nick recognises us it is impossible to have meaningful conversation, but he seemed fairly cheerful and pleased to see us, and the staff were kind and seem to be looking after Nick as well as is possible.

We did reflect at the eleventh hour as we were driving across Bowes Moor and a little later had a break at the Sutton Bank National Park Centre.

After leaving the hospital I was asked to drive along the sea front at Scarborough for Katie to see the sea, then I continued to follow sat-nav instructions. I quickly realised that sat-nav was now taking us home via York and Leeds because we had diverted from our inward route over Bowes Moor. Although I knew this was not the best plan I just went with it and that was a mistake leading to all the usual M62 start stop frustration.

Another World War reference came to mind - The Longest Day.

At Sutton Bank visitor centre

What are the odds?

Amidst all the frustration of my leg wound healing, oh so slowly, I have had a free health check with my gp’s nurse.

Prior to getting the results, and considering the mountains and lakes of cheese, red wine and cakey sweetie confections I consume Imagination tortured me convincing that at least diabetes would be diagnosed, along with cholesterol off the top of the graph, and perhaps something else Imagination had failed to anticipate. 

In the past, Imagination was so good at creating the “what if…” scenario I was invariably second on the rope as a rock climber and rarely the leader.

Everything was fine, so nurse said? I don’t understand these things and work on the principle that the less I know the better. Amongst stuff about blood sugars, and a resting heart rate of 54 I was told there is good and bad cholesterol and my good outweighs the bad.

Nurse put all the stats into some sophisticated number crunching software, even asking me to confirm that my country of birth was the UK, which seemed to be the largest influencing factor.

I was told the national average chance of having a “cardio vascular event”for a 74 year old, within the next ten years was 26%, and mine came out at 23% .

With my ignorance of things scientific I am now not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Six years later

Yesterday  Gayle,  Click for Mick and Gayles blog , called in after her walk round my domain, and on her way to Scotland. Unfortunately Mick was absent due to some current employment.

It is unusual to make strong friends later in life, but Mick and Gayle are an exception for me. We talked without a single break for over three hours, but importantly we both talked and we both listened having a genuine interest in each others topics and anecdotes and that is the measure of good conversation and friendship.

My memory of our first meeting on day fifteen of my Land's End to John 'o Groats walk is still vivid but for you readers here is the relevant extract from my journal:

Wednesday 30th april 2008

Bawdrip to Cheddar

17.5 miles

Towards the end of this day I had just negotiated what became in my mind the worst stile of the whole trip. There was a gap in a hedge about six feet wide with a difficult stile descending via a nearly vertical mud bank about six feet down to a complete and unavoidable mud bath, and then ascending to another stile even more difficult than its partner, and all this, for reasons I can’t now remember had necessitated removing my rucksack.

I was just walking up the field trying to recover from this trauma when I realised I was being followed by two other walkers. They turned out to be Mick and Gayle who were also walking the End to End, and we walked together with some minor navigation problems due to our enthusiastic chattering, to arrive at the camp site at Cheddar. Mick and Gayle turned out to be a great couple who were doing the walk for the Macmillan charity. I think they will be visiting me at Arnside sometime in the future. Their planning had been meticulous with a large spreadsheet detailing all accommodation on their route, and they had also produced at home a large number of dehydrated meals using a proprietary dehydrating system. The meals looked very good.

And later on  my blog:

...we continued to meet each other from time to time until they took a different route via Offa’s Dyke from Knighton, but we have remained in touch by mobile  since…"

The offending stile.
Mick and Gayle were perhaps a hundred yards behind, but I hadn't seen them at this stage

Well, that was six years ago and we have had many pleasurable exchanges since, and long may they continue.

LEG acknowledges his foot

I posted just before setting off for the SW Coast Path/Two Moors Way walk about acquiring a new sound system.

In the past I had separates. To listen to FM music (DAB wasn't available) I had to get up, cross the room, crouch down to floor level, and with difficulty manipulate various controls. Selecting tracks for a cd so it didn't continue to play the throwaway piece tagged on after the symphony was even more fiddly. Most of the time I just couldn't be bothered. How lazy can you get?

I have a sort of guilt feeling for such indolence, and perhaps it illustrates my lack of commitment to the wholly intellectual life, but I just wasn't listening to music which I do enjoy.

I can now sit in my chair and listen to superior tv sound, play cds and select tracks, listen to quality sound DAB radio on many preselected channels, or play any music I have on the iPad or IPhone with ease.

That may not be helpful in view of having just been diagnosed with a blood clot in LOWER LEG, but I do get up and wander about every so often, and as advised by the medics, keep waggling LEG's foot.




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Busy but not walking

Leg seems to have recovered, more or less, from the the cellulitis type bacterial infection after taking on board enough antibiotic to solve the World health problem, but he still continues to rebel against the whacking I gave him with a branch somewhere around 15th September on my SW Coast Path walk, and which received another whacking when my hooped carbon fibre tent pole, under tension, released itself and struck again in the same place. Leg therefore has two wounds close together on the shin about a centimetre diameter which are not healing well and are still painful, and Leg seems to have the capacity to transfer that pain to me in retribution.

There is also the added problem of the blood clot in Lower Leg, not a dvt, and therefore not too serious, but I am still giving myself daily injections, and attending fortnightly at the hospital for scans, and also at my gp's nurse for attention to the wound. Lower Leg I am told is behaving himself according to the scans.

Of course, I am not whinging. Daughter High Horse may not agree.

I need to rest and keep the leg up as much as possible which I do in the evenings, but during the day I am always busy.

Have you heard of hacking? Buying an item as new and then modifying it to your own requirements, having a high hit rate with IKEA products. High Horse is into this and we’ve bought a bunk bed, from IKEA, for Katie’s birthday later this month, and I have been co-opted to hack.

As bought from Ikea (after the half day you have taken to assemble it)

An elaborate "hack" using two units

Work in progress - finished photo may appear later

Thursday walks with Pete are suspended for the moment - Pete has joined the wounded, suffering from arthritis and is taking tons of pills which he is assured, will, after some time, relieve things.

Today our walking substitute was a visit to a picture framers in the wilds  beyond Kendal used by Pete’s wife who is a talented amateur artist. The mission was to have framed a superb photo of Annapurna taken by David Ensor (David Ensor Travel Photography, www.davidensorphotos.co.uk ). David is the proprietor of Chiltern Lodge b and b at Worth Matravers where I stayed on the second night of my recent walk on the SW Coast Path (highly recommended), he has travelled extensively and organised his own treks to the Himalayas pursuing his passion for photography.

Photo by www.davidensorphotos.co.uk

The picture framer was located in a mini industrial estate hidden under the slopes of Scout Scar in the middle of nowhere. You could hardly move inside the place for stacks of wood that looked as though they had accumulated over a hundred years. It was a pleasure to chat with Michael the owner knowing it was he who would do the job, all so much better than handing over to some faceless multiple in the middle of town (watch out Gimmer - it looks as though I’m going conservative -  small c).

After that, despite not having walked, we still went for our usual wind-down at Café Ambio (located in the newly built livestock auction mart). It was a busy auction day, and as usual we followed the trail to the café of mixed sawdust and livestock leavings scattered, incongruously along the recently laid pristine vinyl flooring. All the farmers, in their working worn tweed suits and waistcoats, flat hats, wellies and boots were seated together at one end of the room, troughing, and telling the tale with lively bavardage - this is obviously a cherished social occasion for them (no ladies), and despite the clinical architecture of the building there was a strong atmosphere akin to attending a shepherds' meet in a seventeenth century pub in the Dales, belied by expensive 4 x 4s and nearly new Landrovers evident outside.

Time-out for the farmers at Ambio

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KATIE UPDATE

Perhaps she may get on The Two Blondes team?
twoblondeswalking.com