To find what’s happened to Michael Mosley quite anxiety provoking

Don't worry about it.

The news he was missing impacted more deeply than I thought it would.
As time went by, it felt like a relief that they had found him.

Of course that's nothing in comparison to what his family have been through, and nobody is reading that in your original post. Well, one is 🙄

Yes, I can see you care about the family Dr M has left behind, and that’s why you’re on a public forum talking about the ‘idiocy’ of their loved one. 🙄

People die eveyday. It’s life unfortunately

Not sure about this. I go hillwalking alone. I went this weekend and there was snow on the Munro tops. A couple of months ago I bought a garmin inreach and I used it this weekend for the first time, because I was in thehills overnight. Everyone who knows I have bought this has said I am paranoid or has accused me of not having the correct equipment or skills. My own mother, who has never been up a hill, has told me I need to speak to someone. I have had to put my minor children down as emergency contacts on it because the adults in my life think the whole thing is a joke.

One person's sensible precaution is another person's anxiety.

I feel very sad about Michael Mosley, and for now I think people will be more aware of their own mortality as a result of his premature death. In a few short weeks the same people will be back to how they were before.

@Marinade I don’t know about the boat times but I can well imagine him thinking he’d nip round the coast to another nice taverna he might have been to before, stop for a drink and then either carry on the path back from Agia Marina to Symi via the old town, or get a boat back either to join his wife or back to Symi. When you look at the route it does make sense, though I agree with others - not in the extreme heat on your own with no shade, phone or water! But you can see why he took a risk - and then just getting lost was enough for heatstroke to set in.

My DP is always going out without his phone and I always tell him it’s stupid. Our phones are the bane of modern life, but the one thing they do give us is extra safety in being able to navigate/call for help/etc. I’m all for a digital detox, but not when going hiking. Even if it wasn’t extremely hot, it’s a rarely used track and one could easily slip, fall, break an ankle or whatever. But then I’m a worrier too, and I know how the OP feels tbh.

I think he purposefully went towards Agia Marina rather than the direct route by road though. So whether it was a wrong turn is something of a moot point.

I feel nothing but sadness for MM and his family. It's not for me to feel anger. May he rest in peace

It was a 30 minute walk from the beach to his accommodation. It only turned into a 3 hour hike because he took a wrong turn and got lost.

I’ve also been in 42C heat. You can’t do anything between about 1pm and 7pm.

Also, I read somewhere that MM and his wife had been to Symi before some years ago. I suspect that, a bit like that blog above, it might well have been a walk he had done before, perhaps in less intense heat, perhaps in the opposite direction - hence setting off at a brisk pace and assuming it would be doable even in the heat, if he knew it was 40 mins or so to Agia Marina.

But if he then missed the right path, or got disoriented, or wasn’t as acclimatised to the heat as he assumed he was, being up there for a couple of hours in that extreme heat could easily have given him heatstroke and confusion enough to kill. I guess we forget how vulnerable we are to extreme heat.

I’m a natural sloth who isn’t good in the heat when it gets over 24 degrees, so I’ve never been one for hot beach holidays. But lots of people, especially of that generation, are; and perhaps forget that that ten degree difference between 30 degrees and 40 degrees is the difference between toasty hot for those who like the sun, and genuinely killer heat. I was in France in the 2003 heatwave where it topped 42 degrees. You couldn’t go out. Thousands of older French people just died in the heat, something astonishing like ten thousand or more - it was a national emergency situation. Since then they are better at hot weather emergencies, but it’s shocking how dangerous the heat is.

I think it’s a really stark reminder that we are all mortal.

I would imagine that being a doctor and having been able to reverse some of his health issues through diet and the fasting stuff made him feel quite invincible. So many healthy people think like this. They think because they exercise, eat well and whatever else that they’re giving themselves some protective bubble that makes them less susceptible to things than others. It’s very tiresome.

I have chronic and severe autoimmune issues. I’ve learnt the hard way that sometimes our bodies really are just our worst enemies whatever we do to them or put in them.

This is very enlightening, thank you, as I have found it a bit confusing and conflicting to understand the different routes. I heard that the boat taxi back from St Nicholas Beach to Symi was not running until 4pm which is why he left. So would there have been an earlier boat from agia marina? What you are saying corresponds with the mayor's statements - he chose a more treacherous route and did not stop to refresh/take water at Pedi.

I am surprised how upset I have been over his death purely because I often go coastal walking on my own both in UK and when away on holiday as my husband is happy to slob around on a lilo but I prefer to go off exploring and walking. However I would never have gone off in that heat without my phone as I am paranoid about getting lost so I have OS maps and GPS tracker on my phone along with find my phone so others can find me. I also would not scrabble around on cliffs and would have retraced my steps to find a good path.

I don't know what his thought processes were when he left his wife on that beach or indeed when he got to Pedhi early afternoon but the temperature alone should have made him think twice. If he was already dehydrated though maybe that impairs thought processes.

I will certainly remember him next time I wander off walking alone but am so desperately sad for the outcome for him and his family. One bad decision and it led to tragedy.

Yes, I think he'd have made it if he hadn't got lost. Once he was lost, the only thing to do would have been to climb to the highest point to try and see where to go. So he did a massive climb in 40 degree heat which he had not been planning to do.

The poor man. He was probably a bit frightened, he didn't have his phone, and was feeling increasingly unwell it seems.

I think it was a series of things, none of which were his 'fault', but which together, led to his death. What an awful thing to happen.

The walk from Pedi back to Symi was not actually very far by road, but MM chose to walk instead from Pedi to Agia Marina, which is 40 minutes from Pedi over a rocky hiker’s path. At Agia Marina there is a cafe and small harbour with a beach where you can either pick up another boat back to Symi (or Pedi), or you can carry on on a hiker’s trail to Chorio, the upper town of Symi.

The point is that even if the round trail is 3hrs, there were stops around it and the distance he seems to have meant to walk before getting to another stop is 40mins or so. Still not remotely advisable in the heat (all the online guides to that walk say not to do it between 11 and 4 when the sun is at its hottest). But he seems to have got lost up on the hillside and missed the track. Here’s a blog from 2012 about that exact walk:

https://barrysramblings.com/2012/09/29/symi-getting-it-wrong/

If he’d had a phone (access to maps, GPS, the ability to call someone), more water, a hat, not gone in 40 degree heat, not got lost, someone had seen him coming down the rocky slope at Agia Marina - all could have been different.

But I do agree that older men often mistakenly feel like they’re still physically invincible (more so than women do, I think, maybe because we are generally more aware of our physical vulnerabilities). My dad was exactly the same until he hit his mid-70s and his health really suddenly started to go. But at 67 he still thought he could do anything, and he was far, far less fit than MM was!)

It sounds like an error of judgment. We all make them, for the most part they don’t result in our death or have any serious consequences at all. In a small number of cases, they do.

I feel bad because MIL always asks me to read his columns at the weekend in the Daily Mail and I got a bit fed up with it, find it a bit preachy and think it encourages her anorexic tendencies (she is always disappointed if it is not on fasting / calories

A few weeks ago I was thinking well maybe he might just have a heart attack or something and that will show her we are not infallible. Now this has happened

I have already had her going on about how she will miss him and his columns.

He had an episode some years ago I believe. It’s not an ongoing thing as far as I know and they wouldn’t know if he suffered another episode.

I think you have to risk assess the things that you do in life. I don't think you can shelter away from them because of what ifs

I love running. I do it for my mental health and lowers my chance of cancer occurrence. So in that vein I'm reducing the what ifs of a mental breakdown and possible cancer. However I might get run over and die or have a heart attack whilst out. To mitigate those risks I wear a medical alert bracelet so my loved ones aren't spending hours trying to find me. I also have a treadmill so do some runs inside when it's hot. So basically in an activity that helps me in one way I offset the risks against it in another way.

Unfortunately MM took a few risks and sadly paid the price.

Note to self - AIBU is there to initiate a debate and a wide variety of opinions. It is the very premise of this part of the site. You should have made it clear that you only wanted to elicit responses from people who agree with you (or put it in Chat).

Hang on, didn't he suffer from a condition called transient global amnesia? That would explain a lot. Maybe not 'stupidity' then?

I am now a ghoul as I don't agree with you? But yet I am the one who is making personal attacks. You have zero idea of what I am affected by so calling me an emotionless ghoul is indicative of your lack of overall awareness and perspective.

Exactly what I was thinking!

I really liked him and made a point of listening to what he had to say. I am sure if he had been asked about walking distances in the heat he probably would have said don't do it, wait till it's cooler.

So to hear that he did something like this, with such awful consequences is deeply distressing but I am also very annoyed with him, even though I know that is irrational.

I think it's because it was an avoidable death. He made a couple of stupid choices that were, from our perspective, lunacy.

Such a shame.