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The great outdoors

Here you can find advice on camping, outdoor activities and walking in the UK and abroad.

Original poster

Outdoorsy Shite: My most perilous outdoorsy moment

108 replies

GrimmaTheNome · 22/03/2012 09:35

This thread is inspired by randomly starting to read Bill Bryson's 'A Walk in the Woods' which has been sitting on my shelf for well over a decade. I've only read the first couple of chapters - the first includes many horrible and scary things that can happen to walkers on the Appalachian trail, the second focuses in particular on bear attacks. Quite why he didn't say 'sod this, I'll go back to the UK and do the Coast to Coast' eludes me.

I think by the end of the book I shall have an increased gratitude for living and walking mainly in the United Kingdom where the worst that can happen is... what? Here's all I can think of. I expect someone will top mine but please do enter yours even if it really was exceptionally tame. Grin

Adder encounter - DH pee'd on one behind a tree. It slithered off. Not very perilous at all. Well, the adder might beg to differ.

Lone bullock - chased DH and I through some woods where it shouldn't have been. We think it was lost and discombobulated. Quite perilous, it was big and faster than us, fortunately it didn't follow us up a steep slope.

OP posts:
ArielThePiraticalMermaid · 22/03/2012 11:25

Mine's an adder too. I went blackberrying one September in shorts and a flip flops near the power station. My mother said of the "Warning: snakes" sign, "Oh don't worry, that's only there to keep trespassers out." I was this close to treading on the damn thing before it woke up and slithered off. Luckily I was more excited to have finally seen an adder than cross with my mum.

A heat-addled buzzard fell out of a tree in France once. Nearly landed on me. I approached it to check it was ok, and it ran at me making noises and flapping its wings.

Neither of those are particularly perilous, I must admit Grin

Bullocks are bloody scary. I am generally very wary of cattle Blush

Original poster
GrimmaTheNome · 22/03/2012 11:32

Anyone who isn't wary of cattle is an idiot. But usually you can assess whether its a good idea to enter their field or not - they don't usually appear out of the blue in a wood and go on the offensive unprovoked.

OP posts:
ArielThePiraticalMermaid · 22/03/2012 11:39

They're completely unpredictable, that's my problem with them. You never know if they're going to rampage across a field towards you, or run away. One of my dad's friends, a farmer, was killed by a cow kneeling on him and crushing him to death. She was protecting her calf.

The wood incident would have made me completely freak out. We even turned around on a walk the other day because some bullock started eyeing us.

Original poster
GrimmaTheNome · 22/03/2012 18:54

Come on, someone must have something other than discombobulated bullocks and non-perilous adders?

OP posts:
ArielThePiraticalMermaid · 22/03/2012 18:56

Oh I forgot. I was nearly eaten by a sabre toothed tiger once

Howzzat?

Flightty · 22/03/2012 18:57

Can I just ask.....no, no it's alright.

I'll just let myself out through the wardrobe again. Bye! Smile

Flightty · 22/03/2012 19:01

Oh actually while I'm here.

We did get followed by some cows once, and had to sit in a tree over a river until they wandered off.

I think my most perilous involved dogs though. Me and an ex used to go wandering a lot. One day we went round the back of the river (another one) and across some dodgy nettle fields (about as high as our heads) and having got through those, we ended up at a barbed wire fence, which we climbed over as you do...into an agregates yard which was locked, both ends, and halfway through it there were a couple of hounds started barking and running like billyho at us. That was scary. We got to the other end and out just in time.

I don't think I liked adventures so much after that day. Oh and we got stuck on a huge hill one night behind an agricultural college and couldn't get out of that, either - totally dark, no torches, gahhhhhhhh stupid ex boyfriend! (all his fault, naturally)

Slubberdegullion · 22/03/2012 19:06

Does it have to be peril via flora or fauna?

I have peril on a sailing boat but no animals or plants were involved (well there was a dead squid lying in the bottom of the boat but he was totally non perilous if a little inky)

oooh oohh I remember and ALMOST fauna peril. When we youth hostelled in North Queensland and there were warnings sent out to the back packing community of a vicious disembowling cassowary and we had to keep out eyes peeled and do something should he apporach.
no idea what it was now

saggarmakersbottomknocker · 22/03/2012 19:11

I got bitten by a Jack Russell, nay it was a pack of them but only one of the buggers bit me.

Hairy moment at the top of Helvellyn involving zero visibility and straying from the path.

Cows - yes - avoid them. And angry swans, Christ on a bike they're nasty.

We once took our eyes of ds when he was in a dinghy and he floated out. That was an 'oh shit' moment and no mistake.

madwomanintheattic · 22/03/2012 19:14

It wasn't in the uk. Grin and we do carry bear spray in the summer. Grin
And a 6yo girl was attacked last year. And the damn cougars keep leaping out of the bushes onto dogs. Even the ones on leads.

Acksherly, the only time I've ever come to harm, at all, was when I tipped a boiling pan of water all over my synthetic fleece bewrapped hand trying to make a mug of tea to thaw out first thing in the morning. Clearly I'm more of a danger to myself than any mere animal poses. I can vouch for the insulating properties of fleece though. it was a fecker to try and rip my hand out of the damn technical look I've got a hole for my thumb and it's soooooo cosy sleeve, so that I could dunk my burn into the stream. I had to walk fifteen miles watching my blisters develop.

I did drink the tea though.

madwomanintheattic · 22/03/2012 19:19

Oh god, saggar, I remember trying to coach a woman who was petrified of heights up striding edge in the fog. we got that bit done,mother decided to come down off swirral (I think - memory hazy). That first bit where you have to dangle yersel off the edge and rootle about with your toes to get on the path? Yeah... She didn't like that much. It took about four of us, all hanging on by our fingernails around her. She would have taken us all out if she'd bottled...

Oo, and I got stuck one side of a sump in a cave with a hysterical 14yo girl. Complete bottle neck, with people ahead of us (obv we couldn't see them) and loads behind, in a long snake like tunnel with no passing room, and no way to turn round. In the end I had to squeeze past her and literally drag her through. Quite what would have happened if she'd pulled the other way I dread to think.

People, y'see. They're very dangerous.

saggarmakersbottomknocker · 22/03/2012 19:25

oh madwoman - cave things I don't like. Well a cave is OK - a cave plus water, plus darkness. No way.

Fenouille · 22/03/2012 19:33

I've almost been struck by lightning while gallivanting over mountains twice. How's that?

LeninGrad · 22/03/2012 19:37

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

FryingNemo · 22/03/2012 19:49

We climbed a tree to get away from galloping cows. They had horns. I blame Brown Owl for that one.

The worst moment was abseiling down into Cathedral Cavern and getting to the end of rope with about 2 metres still to go. I was not amused. Possibly only myself to blame.

Then there was the occasion we carefully tested how firm the protection was and a slab of rock the size of a piano slowly separated from the cliff and fell at our feet.

I don't climb anymore.

FryingNemo · 22/03/2012 19:50

How do you know it wasn't an abominable snow man?

Northey · 22/03/2012 20:13

Oh pfuh, you all do such impressive things!

A preternaturally massive bull (genuinely larger than a VW camper van) lying across the road over the Kintyre peninsula, across which we were walking to get from one CalMac terminal to another, on quite a tight schedule. The road is the only thing bisecting miles of moor sort of land. Any diversion round the edge of its presumed comfort zone would have been hemicircle of about 200 yards radius downwards, over very rough ground, with no really guarantee that it wouldn't choose to get up and canter down to us in about 5 seconds flat just for the hell of it. We had no choice other than to keep walking right up to it and past it, with its beady eyes relentlessly on us from about 100 yards out. The anticipation was horrific. And the feel of its eyes on my back, and my certainty that I shouldn't look back at it, were almost as bad.

Northey · 22/03/2012 20:15

Hmm. Lots of unclear pronouns in that. But hopefully it is clear.

Northey · 22/03/2012 20:15

Feck, what on earth is wrong with my prose tonight?

ArielThePiraticalMermaid · 22/03/2012 20:20

Sounds bloody terrifying Shock

This is a peril boast by proxy - my mum got chased by a hippo once.

EssieW · 22/03/2012 20:29

  1. Small avalanche in Alps - wasn't me, was friend but I was watching and waiting to descend same slope on foot. She fell a long way triggering small avalanche. I have never been so scared in my life...

  2. Although...later that holiday, electrical storm when we were climbing a rock ridge. Not a good place to be.

  3. Chased by cows in Derbyshire. Field of young cows were a bit too interested. Had to jump over a wall to get away from them.

Northey · 22/03/2012 20:30

It was like one of those illustrations from a children's book, where mrs pepperpot is small enough to run underneath a cat or something. I honestly felt I'd got into some kind of freaky fairyland thing and on the next page would have to shelter from the rain under a toadstool.

ArielThePiraticalMermaid · 22/03/2012 20:34

Hmmmm. Too many of these are cattle-related.

Northey · 22/03/2012 20:36

I didn't feel at all safe on Striding Edge on a really quite breezy day. Not a cow in sight.

AIBUqatada · 22/03/2012 20:39

Almost all my outdoorsy perils are cow-involving, and I see that the thread has got those well covered.

I've had a couple of wasp-involving perils too, due to insensitive offspring putting their faces too close to wasp nests in the woods, and being quicker to run away than I was.