Wainwright Walks 91: Four seasons in one day on Rossett Pike

• Hills: Rossett Pike
• Classification: Wainwright (166)
• When: Saturday 25 February
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: About 8 miles
• Weather: See title…
• Conditions underfoot: Mixed. A random boulder field I wasn’t expecting being the low point.
• Post walk drink: Loweswater Gold, later Malbec
• Post walk watering hole: The Old Dungeon Ghyll pub, later the Golden Rule
• MAMBA factor: Medium
• Uses of the arse crampon: AWOL (a bit of a surprise)
• Mishaps: Delayed bus, malfunctioning poles, that random boulder field
• One that got away: Allen Crags

What to do to pass the time when recovering from an operation? I am sure there are many possibilities. Catching up on box sets being one; trying to get plenty of rest being another. In my case, whilst both of the above are making an appearance, so is reading a book about climbing Mount Everest (clearly a mountain I will never climb!) and catching up on writing blog posts. For once, this is therefore a post which will not start with a rant, although it will start with a medical tale of – if not exactly woe – various mishaps in getting sorted out having an operation which as at the date of writing will keep me off the hills for probably another month.

The health issue which led to this point started towards the end of the first lockdown in 2020 when my right leg started to swell up and become sore. At that time trying to get a doctor’s appointment was damn near impossible so I decided to ignore it and see if it sorted itself out. A week further on it became clear it wasn’t going to sort itself out and I ended up filling in an online consultation form and sending my GP a photo of my leg. A day later they rang me up and instructed me to get straight to the surgery where I was met by a GP kitted out in full Darth Vader PPE gear who took one look at my leg and referred me straight to the thrombosis unit at the local hospital. The upshot of my hospital visit was that I had a DVT combined with further blood clots in more than one surface vein – that was the bad news – the good news was that it was treatable with anticoagulants. This seemed to clear up the issue pretty fast and I stayed on them for just over a year before being taken off them – I had no ongoing issues with the leg after that and was able to carry on basically as normal with my walking (and everything else). 

Well that was until September 2022 anyway – when my leg started to swell up again. This time I pretty much knew what was going on within a couple of days and decided to walk down to my local GP surgery to try and get an appointment on the day. I was told that I would have to phone up for an appointment, so rang them on my mobile while standing there to be told I was 20th in the queue. To cut a long story short I basically had a strop in reception and said ‘I have a history of blood clots and I think I have another one. Can I please see a doctor or should I just take myself to A&E?’ To their credit they did manage to find me an appointment that morning when the doctor again sent me straight to the hospital where, as expected, it was confirmed I had another clot, although thankfully not in a deep vein this time – but it was in one of the surface veins that had had a clot in previously. It was by this point clear that the vein in question needed to be sorted out (I am not sure what the medical term is but the vein was basically knackered) so after a variety of scans, blood tests, and poking and prodding about I was eventually scheduled for an operation on the vein in the middle of January – not a bad time for me to actually clear my work diary as it tends to be February before things start getting really mad at work.

Wainwright Walks 90: a High Hartsop Doddle

• Hills: High Hartsop Dodd, Little Hart Crag (a repeat)
• Classification: Wainwright (165)
• When: Friday 24 February
• Who: Me, the mountaineering minion, and Tiny Paddington
• Distance: About 10 miles in total
• Weather: Not great to start with but massively improved. Very windy though.
• Conditions underfoot: Generally fine
• Post walk drink: Robinsons Dizzy Blonde
• Post walk watering hole: The Golden Rule
• MAMBA factor: Surprisingly high.
• Uses of the arse crampon: One very minor one coming off Little Hart Crag.
• Mishaps: Unless wind counts, none to speak of.

This blog has been on something of a hiatus for a while – for all sorts of reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that I haven’t actually done any hill walking since September, until the walk which is the subject of this blog. There are various reasons for this – far too much work being an obvious one, and an abortive trip in November being another, but also health reasons as I have spent a significant amount of time shuttling between hospital appointments as a result of the blood clot I got shortly before my last trip -issues which will hopefully soon be resolved as a result of a planned operation.

Another reason for putting the blog on hiatus is that I’d lost my confidence a bit – well more than a bit. I’ve been under a lot of stress generally – mostly due to work and the health issues – but also the levels of stress I’ve felt about hill walking given I’m getting closer to finishing the Wainwrights seemed to have ramped up to such a degree that I was half seriously thinking about packing it in. Readers of my blog over the years might remember that a number of years ago I had a serious falling out with someone in a Scottish walking community I was involved with, which involved them suggesting (amongst other things) that I was a pathetic excuse for a hill walker. I know logically that I am not, but for whatever reason the comments made years ago massively came back to haunt me recently and after my latest trip in November, where a combination of weather and insomnia meant no new hills, I needed to take some time out and try and get my head sorted out a bit as well as try and work on my fitness, as lack of fitness isn’t helpful for confidence on the hills. I didn’t even do my usual summary of the year as there was hardly anything to write and the number of hills done was the worst ever, which again had me feeling pretty rubbish.

Anyway, 2023 eventually rolled round and I decided to pencil in some trips North and see what happened. I had an operation scheduled for early January which then promptly got cancelled due to the nurses strike and rescheduled for a time that meant my first booked trip at the end of March was not going to happen. I decided to take a deep breath and book a trip at the end of February and see what happened; I thought if I ended up leaving any attempts at hills till May there was a fairly strong chance I wouldn’t go back to it. In which case the person referred to above would have won – something I really didn’t want to happen.