to not trust this 'helpful' stranger in the mountains?

[SummerOfLadybirds]

I've fallen out with a close friend and want to know who was BU.
We went camping in Lake District recently. We're experienced hikers so had all correct gear, provisions, torches, map, compass etc. We planned to stay in proper campsites as my friend hates wild camping. On 2nd day decided to leave marked routes as felt confident we could navigate. (The paths are too busy in good weather, we both wanted to hike in wilderness). At first it was fine, we went high up and didn't see anyone for hours. To cut a long story short we then lost the compass, got disorientated and got lost!! My friend started freaking out and worrying we'd have to camp in mountains if we couldn't find way down. I said that was fine, we had tent, food, clothes etc, we could set up camp and find way down in morning but she said she wanted a shower and a proper loo (and was scared of 'ghosts'!) I said its too dangerous to try and descend once its dark, she got in a massive strop.

Meanwhile for a couple of hours, despite seeing nobody all day, we'd both noticed a man in camouflage gear popping up in different places nearby. Once he was in front of us, once he was chilling by a rock, another time he was behind us. He didn't acknowledge us but he wasn't that close. We assumed he was just enjoying nature, going in same direction as us.

When the light began to fade, my friend got really scared and insisted we keep walking and suddenly we almost bumped into this man as we came around a boulder!! He said hi and asked where we were going, my friend started to blurt out we were lost, but I didn't want to seem vulnerable so I cut in and said 'we're not really lost' and made out she was joking. He was friendly but something didn't feel quite right and I felt we WERE vulnerable, 2 petite women and this guy (he was very tall and muscular, had a big army-style rucksack and just seemed a bit 'odd'). He offered to guide us down but I was worried he might lead us somewhere even more remote, so I told him thanks but we didn't need his help and was very assertive in not wanting to walk with him.
We carried on, I was freaked out now because of the man, and my friend was petrified of being on mountain in night and not speaking to me because i'd refused his help.
Anyway we did make it off the mountain (in the dark) and finally got to a campsite at 2am.

My friend is still furious that I wouldn't let this man help us. I still think he could have done anything to us, like leading us further off-route in the dark and raping us.

TheChandler, I am neither nervous nor timid and have been hiking for more than 10 years, sometimes alone. In all this time I have never felt afraid of another hiker (or a sheep or monster-rock for that matter!)I don't appreciate being called 'ditzy' for not trusting a stranger

I called you ditzy due to your reference to yourselves as "two petite ladies" and for your friend being afraid of ghosts. If thats not ditzy then I don't know what is. I never even mentioned the stupidity of going off the main trails then complaining about being scared. Basically, you got yourselves all worked up over nothing, as nothing bad actually happened, and you are still all worked up about precisely nothing at all.

Do you really not think that if there were a tall, muscular menace of the mountains, likely to go around raping women, there might not have been a report of something by now?

Although I am all for trusting my instincts, if this man was a murderer or a rapist, he wasn't very good at it. or had forgotten his gun at home and kicked himself for it

I think you were right to trust your instincts on this man but I think some poor decisions during the day and a poor choice of walking partner make you a bit unreasonable too.

Definitely stick to the path with your friend next time, especially if she won't consider wild camping even though you were lost and it was getting dark. Not sensible at all.

Registering using SMSRegistering using SMS

To register using SMS text messages you must:
Send the word 'register' in an SMS message to 999
You will then receive SMS messages about the service
When you have read these SMS messages reply by sending 'yes' in an SMS message to 999
You will receive a SMS message telling you that your mobile phone is registered or if there is a problem with your registration

Yes, if you make an emergency call when you have no signal on your usual network, the call will be routed via any available network. That's why, on my phone at least, if you're out of range of your usual network but another is available, it will say Emergency Calls Only somewhere on the screen.

If you have no network access at all, you will not be able to make calls, because without the network access there is no mechanism to carry the call.

(One exception to that is that my phone can now do calls and texts over WiFi. Apparently. Whatever...)

I've no idea about the SMS thing or if you do have to register for it.

The SMS service is intended for hearing and speech impaired people, who cannot use the normal service, according to the webpage explaining how to register. It would be a much slower form of communication in an emergency. Other than the probably small chance of getting a text through where there is no call service available I'm not sure what the advantage would be.

The next time you go hiking go with a friend who isn't quite so neurotic and semi hysterical, poor bloke was probably only trying to help!

Sometimes you can send a text when you don't have a good enough signal to make a call

I have no idea what the technical reason for this is . But I've experienced it many times ( being able to text but not call , I mean ,not texting the emergency services )

why would you be safer from an attacker in your tent?

Lesson learned, OP. Your friend should just be glad you're both here and otherwise unharmed. Tell her CatsFlaps says she is being a right tit.

You did the right thing.
If this was a horror movie everyone would be saying how dumb u were to go with the man ... And get eaten!

You really should have let your friend go with the man. She'd be the one eaten and you'd be remorseful, but at least you wouldn't have fallen out over this.

Lweji ??? hope that was a joke.

OP - tell your friend to fear the living, not the dead. I totally believe that the intuition you had about this man should be taken notice of- intuition is a very powerful thing, based on subconscious cues that your conscious may not process. There's a thread running on it at the moment.

I mentioned a news story earlier in the thread about a man who looked for lone women walkers it was in Ireland though not Scotland apologies. I'm not going to link to the story because it is truly horrible but if you feel the need to look his name was Graham Dwyer. He ended up killing his partner in the mountains near Dublin but had in fact been looking for women walkers in that area for sometime.

Not saying it's common, it's clearly not but got absolutely fed up of posters suggesting op was idiotic to even think this man could be a danger.

A text only needs a split second of connectivity to transmit, whereas voice requires a much more stable & continuous link.

Another tip is to write the time at the end of the text (if your adventuring, not down the pub) as otherwise the time stamp on the received text will show it as being sent whenever it was actually transmitted, not when you hit send.

So if you'd sent "On way back now" to your friend at 16:00 it might reach them at 18:00 and say that's when it was sent....

Hope that makes sense, did when I wrote it but not sure now!!

I'd have probably accepted his help. It's fair to say you hadn't seen anyone for hours and if he'd wanted to do something, he could have let you stay lost until you were properly vunerable.

And I do wonder if you didn't want to accept help because you consider yourself an experienced hiker?

But that said, I wasn't there, and sometimes you do get a feeling and I don't believe you should ignore that.

I have, in my time, picked people up (I picked up a youngish (20?) YO boy on a dark lane, maybe 8-9pm, who was hitching (dangerously) and dropped him home and I picked two girls up who were trying to catch a cab in rural Hertfordshire!!! They were NEVER going to get a cab!.. so I took them to the nearest train station to catch a train back to London...)

I've also travelled a lot with my children (across USA, Canada, Europe, Arctic) and most people do genuinely want to help when they see someone in need.

I don't think either of you are being unreasonable... I think you just need to stick to the paths and be aware of your own capabilities and fears ;-)

Hide the thread and forget it Op. You made a decision based on a strong feeling of intuition at the time. That would be enough for me. Neither you or your friend can possibly say whether this man was harmless or not.

I'd give up on the compass and next time just take a rreeaalllyyy big ball of string...

...or drop a trail of breadcrumbs, that always works