Pylons and Poles

Pylons

You have almost certainly seen, on your travels, individuals struggling up the hill carrying elaborate metal contraptions. These structures, known as ‘mountainbikes’, are the modular components of pylons, especially designed for when a communications mast or cable carrying pylon has to be erected in an inaccessible place. Each operative collects a ‘mountainbike’ from a depot at ground level and is responsible for delivering it to the point required for the mast’s erection, where it will be assembled along with others to make the mast. It is demanding work, the only respite being the occasional downhill stretch where the ‘mountainbiker’ can climb upon his burden for a few seconds and allow it to carry him as it rolls down the slope.

Owing to the extreme difficulty of the work, success rates are low. Many a time, a ‘mountainbiker’, weary and mud-spattered, can be seen in the car park lashing his component to the back of his vehicle, to return it to the depot of his employer. Penalties for failure are harsh. Punishment consists of having one’s clothes daubed with lurid graffiti and being made to wear a ridiculous hat to advertise one’s shame to the world.

Walking Poles

These sharp pointed accessories were being widely yet secretly used by popular outdoor writers throughout the 20^th century. Then, in the early 1990’s, at a pre-arranged signal, they all ‘came out’ simultaneously, declaring themselves, through the columns of the outdoor press, to be users. They were photographed with up to two of these things and, free now from guilty secrecy, unburdened themselves, describing the joy they derived from them.

Following this other walkers started experimenting with them, believing they could ‘handle it’, using just the occasional pole for descents with heavy loads or for river crossings. Since then poles have become endemic. It is a sad sight to see users, clad in their Gore-Tex hoodies, lurching along canal towpaths or stumbling round the local park. The waste of resources is huge: experts have estimated that the average user could, for the money spent on poles, afford 25 pints of beer or 10 packets of cigarettes instead.

About 12 years ago I got in with a bad crowd and was persuaded to try a pole. 'Just one', they said, 'It'll give you a really good time, won't harm you and you can control it'. Well I couldn't. The first time I 'used' I had a bad trip. Luckily the grazes and contusions eventually healed and I suffered no lasting harm.

Activists are now campaigning for walking poles to be available only on prescription.

Suffering

My good friend H- has many years of experience in tour and mountain guiding. During this time he has come to recognise that nationalities each have distinct characteristics. The one which defines the British, he says, is a love of Suffering.

I can readily concur with this. Indeed, I confess that my first trip to Iceland was on a trek led by the legendary guide D- P-. Our shelter was the rude sheep-house and our sleep mat was the soft sheep droppings therein; we were nourished by the tinned treacle pudding we brought from home and potent cocoa brewed on a fragrant primus.

I have encountered many seekers after Suffering. Did you realise, for instance, that there are people who fill pitta bread with leftover porridge and eat it cold as a packed lunch? Difficult to believe I know, but I have encountered a number of such cases.

I recall old Mac, our scout leader when we were youths, who would have his morning shave using tea left over from breakfast. We once caught his colleague, P.B., in the act of putting all the elements of breakfast - cereal, eggs, bread, tomatoes, bacon, jam etc, into one pan and heating it on the primus. When challenged, he remarked, 'It all gets mixed up inside you doesn't it?'

The trainer on a winter skills course I once attended produced a plastic tub of Christmas pudding at lunchtime. 'Got all the nourishment you need', he proclaimed as he spooned it in, cold. 'And is a bloody miserable experience', he didn't proclaim.

I think it has something to do with our early years. I have already described our nights in damp sleeping bags under flimsy cotton tents. Also, we spent a good deal of time in clammy institutions called Youth Hostels (See Post Hostels and Huts for more details). Being comfortable can seem like cheating.

In England we have a man who does his hill walking naked. Think about that for a moment. Think about the searching wind, the icy shower of rain, the midges, the harsh rub of webbing straps; twigs and brash. And police. He has been arrested many times for conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace or something, which must be terribly inconvenient, and the consequent imprisonment very distressing to an outdoor man. How frustrating it must be, every time you go into a country pub for your mid-walk pint, to be shouted at and thrown out. In a documentary I saw about him once, he refined his suffering still further by being accompanied for part of the way by a young woman, also naked. His public nakedness meant, of course, that he was the only man present who could not allow himself to become excited by the situation. The only explanation can be this urge to Suffer. He is a fine example of the British love of Suffering. Not one to show the children though.

If you want to know more, and are not about to eat your dinner, here he is:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/naked-rambler-could-face-a-lifetime-of-imprisonments-after-european-court-ruling-9823945.html

But possibly the mightiest seeker after Suffering of all is the marathon walker John Merrill, who comes from the same part of the British Isles as I. Now in his seventies, he continues to walk monumental distances, applying to himself certain painful strictures. At a steady speed of three miles an hour for 10 hours each day, taking no breaks or stops of any kind, he walks thousands of miles. His feats are legion and include going all the way round the British coastline, America coast to coast, Lands End to John o' Groats, the Great Divide, and many many more. He refuses to have companions when walking and takes no fluids.

He is a product of the English boarding school system which probably explains his superior capacity for self-distress.

Here he is:

 http://m.johnmerrillwalkguides.co.uk/ABOUT-JOHN-MERRILL.html

8. The Food Chain Again: Midges

Previously on the subject of the food chain I took it as far as carnivorous animals. Some would say that that leaves only the addition of Man, the topmost predator of all, to complete the  chain. Not true: somewhere above us in the food chain are those buzzy bitey things of various sorts, commonly referred to as midges.

Have you ever sat of an evening by a babbling brook, and thought, 'What do these things eat when I'm not here?' Well, we humans are just the gourmet end of the midge diet spectrum. We are plucked and ready to eat compared with, say, sheep, or owls; in summer many of us are ready cooked. We must be a considerable delicacy.

We are also far more plentiful now than we were in earlier evolutionary times. The implications of this are serious. In mankind midges have an increasing supply of high energy food; we will form a growing proportion of their diet and they will evolve accordingly.

The midges of the English wild places are tame stuff compared with those of Scotland and elsewhere. Nevertheless, they can deliver a serious chomp when in the mood. Often I have returned from a bivvying expedition with a face resembling that of an elderly pugilist. But this pales into insignificance compared with the midges of Greenland which are capable of biting a hole in your boat.

  

I spend a lot of time in the vicinity of Mývatn, a large lake in northern Iceland. Literally translated, its name means 'midge lake'. For a week or two in June each year, billions of the things clamber out of the water and go buzzing around. They like nothing more than to get into a nook, cranny or hole.

Now, my head, and yours too I expect, has several holes in it. And the midges don't know the rules. No-one has told them that the holes in my head are off limits. I am not a cliff. Consequently I am forever batting the things out the holes in my head – evicting them from my ears or snorting them from my nose. They don't actually bite much: I have had worse damage in England. The female of one species does use us as a dietary supplement when pregnant though, so when in Mývatn watch out for the ones with a lump in front. Rather, their speciality lies in being a nuisance, swirling round one's head and, as their navigational skills are execrable, forever blundering into one. A mosquito net is an essential piece of equipment when working or travelling in that area during the midge season.

You will though, however carefully you plan, find yourself without a mosquito net from time to time. Do not panic: relief is still possible if you adopt the method I call the Fifty Yard Blurt. First, affect an exaggerated air of insouciance, sauntering along for 50 yards or so. While you are doing this, and being careful to avoid any outward show, gather your energy in the manner of a coiled spring. Finally, explode abruptly into a high speed 50 yard dash. Midges are not sharp witted; they will not register your departure until it is too late to discover where you are. (Their 5 second memory span helps here). Now you can saunter a while until a new posse of midges builds up around your head. Then repeat the procedure as before. (Note: if preferred, metres can be adopted in place of yards without affecting the ploy.)

One must remember as one curses them, that, around Mývatn, the midges' poo and dead bodies nourish the region, making it a green and pleasant place, supporting huge numbers of birds and fish which feed off the larvae. Damn.