Not sure whether he did it to prove that lowland walking is just as ‘dangerous’ as going to the hills but this is a (very) short story about Richard…
Richard lives in the suburbs of a Yorkshire City and is lucky just now that he has miles of woodlands just across the road from him – very nice they are too… Now they’ve dried up after the constant rain over the winter, he’s taken to walking there nearly every day for his ‘permitted’ exercise.
He was out on his walk on Tuesday when he slipped and plunged down a banking. He was pretty battered by the time he landed down the drop… he checked himself over and staggered to his feet. His wrist was very painful, his little finger on the other hand, his ribs were agony and his face was bleeding quite badly…
Naturally, he was muttering and swearing as he lurched and staggered to the bottom of the hill and he looked up as he approached the valley path to see a lady and her dog. She looked round to see what the muttering and swearing was, looked totally horrified and started to run away…
Richard just wanted to get home… he lurched around the paths in the direction of home but, each time he rounded a corner or joined another path, there was the lady and the dog again – and she set off running in panic again.
This went on for the mile or so out of the woods – he says when he reached the main road, she was well down the road and still running.
I can imagine she’s now reported that some unkempt and dishevelled, muttering weirdo is rampaging around the woods chasing women!
Poor Richard ended up having to get an ambulance to A&E for x-rays, his face patching up etc. Luckily nothing was broken but his ribs are badly bruised, his wrist is badly sprained, his little finger luckily got better by today and his face is still a mess…
So much for us being safer exercising within an hour of our houses!
Oh dear – hope he is ok now!
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Well… some of him is. His face healed up fine and didn’t scar. His little finger was soon better and his ribs were just bruised. However, his sprained wrist should have been strapped up properly – that way, it would have been better in 3 weeks. As they didn’t strap it up and he just put a tubigrip on it (my advice), it’s still bad 2 months later! 😦
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Very good story! I have to say, from following your blog and looking at your photos, all of your hikes look slippery! I would probably be sliding and tripping all over the place on some of your walks. Take care. Bob
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It’s because it’s almost permanently wet I think – everywhere is slimy. But I think Richard ‘fell’ foul (literally) of the sudden drying out spell which has left the ground dry and crumbly… We’re not used to that!
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Know the feeling. Done my ribs too on the easiest of walks\
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I broke one of my ribs in the silliest way… I’d accidentally put a can in the bottle bin (or the other way around) and, back then, they didn’t separate them, they just scrapped the lot instead of recycling them as they were then ‘contaminated’. So, being horrified, I dived on top of the big metal bin to reach down to retrieve it and ‘snap’ – that was my rib gone.
I found a broken rib the worst break I’ve ever had due to the fact that, for the next few weeks, 24 hours a day, every single time you breathe in, it bloody hurts!
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I fell over a three inch high tree stub and cracked two – though I struggled up Cruachan a week later. More recently I slipped on a perfectly good path circuiting Loughrigg, landed nicely on my back but slapped a walking pole into my ribs.
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I landed on my ice axe once… but the jacket took the brunt and I was fine…
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Could have been nasty
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Yeah – it could have been my expensive Paramo winter jacket! 😉
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Yes, it was funny in a way, that poor lady running through the woods, but I daren’t laugh too loud – Richard may hear me,
Hope he is making a good recovery, bruised ribs can be very painful.
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He was laughing by the time we spoke on the phone that night. He’s been trying to give me a daily ‘funny’ to cheer me up as I’ve been so morose and grumpy!
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Hope he doesn’t catch anything else there. As I know from several bike crashes and dog bites even leafy suburbia can be dangerous. Watched Back in Time for the Corner Shop recently and both Bradford and Sheffield look amazing from a distance. Loads of parks, woods, hills, and stunning buildings. For some reason I thought of them as still grey and industrial looking.
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The buildings are grey and industrial looking – especially the ones down his terraced street. Lots of ‘back to backs’ etc. where he lives. But there are a lot of woodlands and some nice hills sticking up out of bits of Bradford’s edges.
He’s had a few dog-bites in those woods!
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Poor Richard. Does he carry a phone when he walks alone like that? Might be a good idea.
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To be honest, neither of us do any more. I used to in Scotland where it’s very remote but, otherwise, I never remember/bother any more.
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