My Medical Conditions And How They Affect My Walking

My main medical condition, and the reason why I'm classified as being disabled and have been given a free travel pass and allocated my support workers, is my Asperger's syndrome. It doesn't really affect me that much when I'm walking, apart from the occasional abuse hurled at me because of my unusual posture and gait.

I also used to suffer from acid reflux oesophagitis which meant that if I bent down stomach acid would spill out and burn my throat causing me to cough for the rest of the day - since losing a lot of weight this isn't a problem now though.

Since my diagnoses of severe vitamin D deficiency nearly eighteen months ago and my subsequent treatment and recovery I've been feeling a lot better but there has been long term and permanent damage to my bones and muscles and so I need to be careful when I'm walking because the consequences of any accident will be far worse for me than for the average person.

Also in 2016, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes; the only issue this presents when I'm walking is that I always need to remember to bring my tablets with me, which I need to take every time I eat a meal.

Overall my physical health is good at the moment, probably the best it's ever been, which is pretty impressive for a man of 55. I wish my social wellbeing was in such a healthy state though; I'm lonely and unfulfilled in my life. Walking, taking photographs, and writing for the blog does help though by giving me some sort of purpose in life; additionally I've joined a Facebook group for people who are over forty and are planning to walk over a thousand miles this year - so far I've only managed to log seventeen miles on two walks. The group should be good though; we'll be able to report on our progress and provide support and encouragement for each other.

Horsefly Bites

At the moment I've got five horsefly bites on various parts of my body. Fortunately the two I've got on my face aren't too serious, and might actually just be tick bites, but those on my arms and legs are more to contend with. They have been quite large, bright red, hard, sore and itchy. The first one that I noticed, on my thigh, has now subsided after nearly a week, and is now just a circular bruise. I've been using hydrocortisone cream, which alleviates the symptoms, but the healing process still needs to take its time.

I think I might be particularly sensitive to insect bites; I always keep myself well covered up when I'm walking....unfortunately this is the last thing I should be doing because of my vitamin D deficiency; I need to soak up as much sunshine as possible. It's a choice I have to make, I'm able to take vitamin D supplements and so I'm okay, so I choose to protect myself from the bites, not always successfully though. In the terrain where I go walking, exploring overgrown areas of access land well away from the footpaths I'm going to get insects caught up in my clothing....come to think of it, maybe it might just be better to leave my skin exposed; at least they can then fly away if they want to.

Decisions...decisions.  

Fairholmes To Hope

I travelled to Fairholmes, as far up the Derwent Valley as the bus goes before turning round and then continuing to Castleton.

After visiting the toilets at the Information Centre I walked up to the Derwent Dam; there are several information boards both here and at the Information Centre explaining all about the Dambusters Squadron, the construction of the dams, the water supply to the major cities of the East Midlands, the temporary prefabricated town built for the construction workers, and the temporary railway laid to transport stone quarried at Grindleford. There are also some nice views.

I then took a footpath that leads up through the woods to Lockerbrook Farm Outdoor Centre. There were some lovely views of the reservoir as I climbed higher; unfortunately the sun was at the wrong angle for any decent pictures. There are many paths in this area that I haven't explored yet and I will have to return, the infrequent bus service tends to put me off though.

In one location I walked past a feature which might have been natural, or it might have been an embankment; I couldn't tell - I'm neither a geologist nor an archaeologist. It looked like a Roman wall to me, but obviously isn't.

I turned right before reaching Hagg Farm and came out further along the Snake Pass road. When I reached a ruined barn I stopped to finish off my sandwiches, and also to make sure that my trousers wouldn't end up around my ankles. Since being prescribed both vitamin D and metformin tablets I've been steadily losing weight, it seems to drop off me with every step I take and by now I really had to do something about my trousers. My belt really needs an extra hole cutting, but for the time being I did an emergency repair job by tying a length of string tightly around my waist...the string is an item that's always buried somewhere at the bottom of my rucksack. Since I started taking the tablets I've lost nearly a stone and a half in weight and my 46ins waist trousers are now too big; I can now even get into a couple of 42ins pairs that I didn't throw away several years ago as I started to put on the weight.

There are some lovely views along here, looking up the Snake Pass.

I crossed the road and continued down into the valley of the River Ashop and then climbed up the path to Hope Cross; there are more lovely views looking from this direction.

It seemed to be especially busy in the Peak District today, by the time I reached Hope Cross I had already passed dozens of mountainbikers, but I now encountered a large group of horseriders...I'm very wary of horses...they're a lot bigger than me.

When I reached Hope I enjoyed a pot of tea and a chocolate chip cookie at The Old Hall Tearooms. The cookie contained 13 grams of sugar; at the moment my daily allowance is 100g; fortunately my diabetes is only very marginal and so an occasional treat shouldn't do me any harm.

I had a few minutes  to spare before the bus was due and so took a few photographs in the village.

As I was sitting in the bus shelter waiting for the bus an eccentric woman, a widow from Tideswell, came and sat next to me and started talking. She had put all of her things into a blue laundry basket and was carrying it with both hands in front of her; she explained that she went to Sheffield once and was mugged. I didn't follow the logic but thought it better not to ask.

As I was travelling on the bus back to Sheffield a woman, her young son, and their dog got on at Fox House - together with about thirty other people. The three of them sat in the seats behind me; she was very chuffed that the dog had been issued with its own ticket, something that hadn't happened before. I couldn't work out whether her son, or the dog, was called Harry.

Foolow, Grindlow, Great Hucklow, Windmill, and Castleton

It's only been a couple of days since my last walk in the Peak District, but the weather has been good today...and I'm feeling good too. I'm really enjoying my extra stamina and increased level of fitness since I started taking the vitamin D supplement...and I've lost 9lbs and at least an inch round my waistline. I'm on fire!

As usual, when I got off the bus at Foolow there were several cars parked close to the duck pond, spoiling the view of the church and the nearby buildings. I did my best though to get some decent angles.

For the first time I managed to look inside the tiny church, a converted blacksmith's shop.

I walked across the fields to Grindlow where I sat on this bench and ate my sandwiches. It was a bit early, but it saves carrying them I guess.

It was only a short walk along the road to Great Hucklow, where I took photographs of The Manse and giant spiders scuttling across the gable end of an old farmhouse.

Just beyond the village I discovered a lovely grassy footpath which runs parallel to the road; previously I've walked along the road, which is quite narrow in places. Sometimes the path opened up to reveal larger spaces of grassland with fantastic views to the north. An information panel explained that all these areas are the remains of old mine workings.

I quickley passed through the hamlet of Windmill and then went down the lane which leads to High Rake Mine. There are quite substantial ruins here; unfortunately the underground passages are fenced off though.

Tideslow Rake is quite an interesting landscape, and is the largest in the Peak District; it's a bit of a climb to get to the top, near to the transmitter mast.

The final few miles to Castleton were along stretches of road, across high limestone grassland and tracks constructed using limestone chippings...which can be painful to walk on after a while.

I caught the three o'clock bus back to Sheffield. About thirty minutes later, as it was climbing up the hill from Hathersage, three separate alarms sounded...they were very loud. The driver got out of the bus at the top of the hill at Fox House and checked everything he could on the vehicle - the alarms were still sounding even with the engine switched off.

He tried to contact the depot by radio, but he couldn't reach them. A rather rude passenger waiting to be let on asked what the problem was; it turned out to be an overheating engine and brakes.

The driver decided to let the waiting passengers on and proceed with caution down the hill to Sheffield. The journey was slow and the engine was misfiring and backfiring as we juddered forward; this uncomfortable motion probably compensating for the fact that the brakes might not be working.

A few miles later at Whirlow, we came into radio range and the driver was able to contact the depot; the highlight of the conversation was, 'there's a flame lit up and flashing on the dashboard...I'm not sure what it means.'

From Moscar To Within Two Miles Of Sheffield City Centre

I bought a couple of pairs of 'action trousers' [that's what it actually says on the labels] from a charity shop at Otley last week, for £2 a pair. I wore one pair today; they are very useful because of the number of pockets fastened by zips or velcro where I can stow the things I need ready at hand; pen and paper, loose change, compass, mobile phone...and chocolate.

Well...the trousers saw a bit of action today, a ten mile walk across the moors and down towards the city centre, getting wet and muddy as I was soaked during a heavy rain shower and then later sank up to my knees in a peat bog. I was happy with them though, they were quite comfortable, very practical and should  keep me warm during the winter.

I ended up missing my stop at the start of the walk. A woman got up out of her seat and pressed the buzzer; I assumed she was getting off at the same stop as me, Moscar Lodge, but she didn't; she wanted the next stop but had got up early, not knowing exactly where she was. So the bus went straight by my stop and I had to walk back along the road to the footpath. I wasn't really concentrating though, I was busy putting on my cagoule and distracted by her shapely legs and very short skirt; I blame the vitamin D tablets and my increasing testosterone levels for this.

It was drizzling as I approached the northern end of Stanage Edge only a few minutes after getting off the bus; visibility at times wasn't too bad though and I could see pretty well all the way to the horizon.

Along the top of Stanage Edge there's a series of numbers and channels cut into some of the rocks; these were made in the nineteenth century and are drinking troughs for grouse. Maybe as an hommage to one of my favourite films, Drowning By Numbers , I don't really know, but I decided to photograph every drinking trough I noticed, and did manage to shoot most of them along the section of the Edge that I walked along.

These two images were the best...to be honest, most of the photographs looked very similar, and not very interesting to look at.

By this time a heavy rain shower was overhead and so I took shelter in an old abandoned shepherd's shelter not too far away. Further on there's a renovated roofed shelter for the climbers on the Edge to use, I think the funding and the labour was provided by the British Mountaineering Council...I might well be wrong though. 

About fifteen minutes I saw a large group of hikers approaching across the moor and noticed that they didn't seem to be struggling too much. I assumed they were using a path and so set off in that direction. All the moors around here are Access Land and so we're free to wander as we please.

As I hoped the path led to Stanedge Pole. I'm using the official Ordnance Survey spelling, but as you'll see on the next two photographs, the recently added plaque at the base of the Pole spells it as 'Stanage Pole.'

I walked down the track towards Redmires Reservoirs but took a path that I've not used before across the moors to Fulwood Lane, where it was only a short walk to the head of the Porter Valley and an easy walk down to the end of the walk at Endcliffe Park. I stopped at Forge Dam Cafe for tea and a fruited scone and had a quick look inside The Shepherd Wheel, a restored working watermill, which hasn't been open on previous occasions when I've been here. There isn't much to look at.

There wasn't much opportunity today for me to soak up some sunshine and have my body produce some vitamin D, it was raining or cloudy most of the time. It probably wouldn't have made that much difference if had been sunny though because the nurse at the surgery reckons that my hair is too thick, so thick that no sunlight can reach my scalp, the area where most people produce their supply of vitamin D. She says that I'd need to strip down to just my shorts and have as much of my body exposed as possible. She might have been joking, I don't know. I will not be walking the streets of Doncaster in a semi-naked state though.

Bamford, Thornhill, Hope, and Castleton

After hiking up to the top of Mam Tor last week I did another 1,000ft climb in the Peak District today. It was the 'Glorious Twelfth' yesterday, the start of the short grouse shooting season and some areas of access land are closed for a few days at this time of year; so I chose a route staying well away from them - an ascent of Win Hill.

Before boarding the bus I spent a few pleasant minutes at Sheffield Bus Station exchanging tales of our various vitamin D treatment regimes with some fellow walkers; we all agreed how wonderful vitamin D is and how quick you begin to notice the improvement in your health and fitness.

I got off the bus at the bus turnaround at Bamford Station, took the track that leads to Thornhill and then continued uphill to reach the high level path to the summit of Win Hill. There are some lovely views of Bamford Edge and the Ladybower reservoir on the way up; unfortunately the weather was quite murky and it remained like that, with the exception of the few minutes I spent at Castleton at the end of the walk.

It was windy and quite cold at the summit of Win Hill; there were several people at the top, one or two of them looking like they ought to have been wearing more clothing...it really was quite unpleasant.

I made a steady descent down to Hope, arriving at the Old Hall Tearooms to coincide with the lunch break in the cricket at The Oval. I had a pot of tea and a Bakewell tart; I did notice that the public toilets are still out of order - come on High Peak Borough Council...get your act together.

On the way down to the village I walked through some lovely areas of heather moorland with distance views of the Great Ridge on the horizon.

I walked along the bottom of the valley to Castleton and arrived with about fifty minutes to wait for the bus; plenty of time to rush round and take a few photographs.

During the bus journey back to Sheffield a large woman with very long, fat, heavy, bedecked and matted carrot-root dreadlocks boarded at Bradwell. She sat in the seat directly in front of me and kept messing with her hair, several times sweeping back her dreadlocks in my direction, the bottom few inches landing on my lap...and on one occasion my penis was hit quite hard by one of the baubles she was wearing.

To be honest I didn't know how to handle the situation, thinking about it now I genuinely think this could have counted as sexual assault...but at this moment, sitting safely at home, I'm able to be smiling about what happened. She looked like some sort of monster from a science fiction film...so maybe it was all a set-up and I was being secretly filmed for a surreal tentacle porn parody film and I'm the star...and the cheque will be in the post on Monday.

You've got to laugh...or else you'll cry.

I'm Feeling A Lot Better Now

Just a quick update on my health.

It was about a fortnight ago that I received my diagnosis of adult rickets, and I've been taking  the prescribed vitamin D supplements since then. The improvements to my health have been impressive:

No more excessive sweating

Less getting out of breath

No more sore bones

No more weak and aching muscles all the time

A muscle knot in my leg has cleared up

My bowels have calmed down a lot

All of these improvements will make it a lot more pleasant experience when I go walking.

I've got to go for some more blood tests and will need to renew my prescription; I'm hoping to persuade the doctor to put me on a higher dose since some days by teatime I'm noticing a bit of weakness returning to my muscles.