I am really sorry to hear about your experience and hope you recover soon. The scenery looks beautiful, and it was very brave of you to climb up to the summit (or almost the summit) on such a hot day. However, I’m concerned that this might have contributed to the medical emergency you experienced. We need to take things easy—unfortunately, we’re not as young as we used to be
Thanks. Yeah, I should know better at my age. I thought I was playing it safe by turning back when I did, but really, I shouldn't have attempted such a strenuous hike on such a hot day.
Ha, yes maybe. If you did, I would have been the white X3 on the hard shoulder of the Southbound carriageway just before JCT 31.
Physically I'm okay and the symptoms are slowly easing. I'm not sorry to see the back of the visual disturbances (anything containing stripes would appear jump around and glow, that was mega weird) which seem to have settled down now, but I'm still getting all kinds of discomfort and whooziness in my head. According to the MRI scan there's nothing physically amiss, but I really don't feel too clever from time to time (the worst of it comes and goes).
Congratulations on your purchase, are you on the move again?
Thanks, I always do as a matter of course. This has dented my confidence a little and I'm concerned that after three weeks I'm still having issues, despite being given the all clear physically. At least the symptoms are diminishing in their severity, but I would like my head to at least return back to what used to pass for normal.
Thanks, me too. I'm slowly getting there, even managed a bit of a moorland walk today without feeling too much nausea, so things are improving.
I thought I'd done the sensible thing in turning back when I did, but perhaps I'd carried on for too long already and I think the hike itself was only part of the problem.
I was almost certainly dehydrated. I had taken two 330ml bottles of water on the hike and drunk another 500ml when I returned to the car, but I'd not drunk anything other than coffee before setting out, which is not ideal.
The main trigger I think was the car AC being out of commission (now fixed), with the temperature slowly climbing during the drive home, I inadvertently ended up performing a variant on the hypothetical "boiling a frog in water" experiment on myself.
As it happened, I had a Swift Drop temperature tracker attached to my rucksack the whole time, so I've got some idea of how hot things were throughout...
Point 1 is the beginning of the walk, point 2 is when I returned to the car and started to drive home, point 3 is when the ambulance arrived, so I think that 2 to 3 section (or at least, the first half of it) is what really pushed me over the edge.
Hopefully I've learned my lesson and can make it back into the mountains at some point in the not too distant future, although right now, the thought of driving to and from The Lake District turns my stomach.
28° at point 1 is pretty hot for a hike, actually hotter than my hikes in the Apennines, which are higher. But I agree the car probably did for you if the AC was not working. I always try to carry one and a half litres of water, as I hate feeling thirsty. I fear cramps more than anything when I hike. I have had a couple of "difficult" hikes with leg cramps.
Glad you're on the mend. Confidence takes a knock with these 'incidents' even if scans etc show nothing is amiss.
Yes, looking forward (?) to moving again to a more permantent (I hope) home a bit closer to the rest of the world. Galloway was only ever intended as a short term thing (two years this month), and we have really enjoyed living in such a beautiful area.
We're buying a small bungalow with plans to enlarge... in Levens 😁😁 So expect pictures from the Lakes next year 😁😁
That looks like a great location, tiny village on the right side of Kendal for the Eskdale and Coniston fells. Fantastic stuff, I hope it all goes well.