UKH

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2883142411723232&id=3377330...

An excellent piece by SMR. Pity the advice/guidance is not the same in England.

Dave

While on my daily dog walk / exercise from home yesterday had a conversation with a guy working in his garden who told me he drives every week [15-20 minutes] to go up our local hill. - Not very high but loads of steep bits where a trip could be nasty.  He really annoyed me with his arrogance when arguing that I was daft in sticking to walks at home and he was doing no harm. A know all! I'd love to make a paper copy of Mountain Rescue advice and put it through his letter box but I won't.

Only reason I'm posting this is to let off steam.

perhaps the MRT won't have to pick up his dead body after a heart attack on one of their hills if he stays hill fit.  A lot of the Lake District fatalities are heart attacks.  There will be a lot of them if older people come back to the hills having lost decades of fitness.  Not just heart attacks but lesser injuries from atrophied load bearing joints and musculature.  Add Vitamin D deficiency, already a major problem in the North and rickets and just Stir, Stir..

Are you bored? 

just stirring, not shaking ...

I am a bit concerned for my own fitness - with being ill over the winter and now this I've lost decades of fitness as I suppose is the case generally

Keep to the low levels and walk.  Build it up gradually.  

So what is a "larger hill". If we assume for the sake of argument that Arthur's Seat is not, but Ben Nevis is, then presumably the cut off must be somewhere in between.........

And, if the main criterion is that you can be dealt with by an ambulance and that mountain rescue is not necessary if you break your leg, then presumably climbing is ok if it meets the same criterion, is socially distanced and no more risky than, say, cycling.

Do you have stairs in your home? I don't even go out for exercise atm instead I do a work out at home using a home made step approximately 8" high (I live in a flat with no inside stairs). I work out for 2 hours per day until the sweat is lashing off me using the step I made, squats, lunges, higher steps onto a chair etc and when I want I will put a weighted rucksack on to increase the workload or have longer workouts. 

I do respect and follow the advice, but I still personally disagree with it. 

Started the run early-ish today to avoid the congested areas near home - there's few nice walkways I have been avoiding during daytime, but I miss my regular routes. I ran to the local hills, saw very few people and had plenty of space. By the time I was coming back, my very local area was buzzing with people. So why should we not disperse people from the urban areas? 

I do understand the honeypots would be mobbed if we allowed the travel, so I don't really have a solution. It's a bit selfish, I know, which is why I just stick to the rules. 

See the Strava Flybys screenshot below. My route is black line - pretty much no other lines at North West.

https://i.imgur.com/wbmDgZc.jpg

I've worked out that 135 ascents and descents of the stairs = 1000 feet of the same.  However, it seems to me (they are particularly and unusually steep stairs which have caused a few painful mishaps over the years!) this kind of staireering might be far more likely to risk injury than walking up a genuine ordinary hill.

Just after I posted my local council put out an announcement specifically mentioning the hill to which I referred. The main car parks for this hill have been shut and people are asked not to park elsewhere else or to go up this hill. Some people have a sense of entitlement and think they know better.

Elsewhere I read a comment which for me sums up why we should follow mountain rescue instructions / advice. The mountain rescue people are there for us if we get into trouble. They are now asking us to make sacrifices to help them. Not too much to ask.