Outdoorsy Shite: My most perilous outdoorsy moment

[GrimmaTheNome]

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.

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.

Hippo! They are crazy...

My friend went to help at a zoo sleepover in the hippo building, with the sparks (like rainbows - 5 yo girls). Apparently, all they do from about 5am for 4 hours solid is have wild noisy athletic hippo sex.

The keepers confirmed that this was an everyday occurrence, but were unable to comment on why they still used the hippo building for small children's sleepovers. There was literally 6 feet between the kids and the orgy.

We decided not to take the brownies to the zoo for their sleepover...

Does it have to be peril via flora or fauna?

I'm sure Bill had peril by flora, so certainly I'd like to hear the worst.

I remember a huge feeling of relief the first time I walked in England after living in the US and realising that (so long as I didn't actually eat anything daft), there was nowt worse than nettles and brambles, flora-wise.

Ooh, I don't know, if you walk too close to the person in front you can often be taken by surprise by a whippy back branch. You need your wits about you all right.

lots of menacing cows around here which make for scary walks!
I have fallen into a nettle bush a few times. not fun.

And I have 9 2/3 fingers - frostbite in the Arctic. bits of big toe missing as well. am yet to try to get a 10% discount in a nail salon

So... furrin: frostbite, avalanches, cougars, hippos

UK: cows

If we can just get all farmers to be Brian Aldridge and keep the buggers indoors....

Brian got kicked in the head by a cow years ago and acquired irreversible health problems that seem to have reversed. The incarceration is probably revenge for that.

My local farmer is touchingly nervous of his beasts, due to their having occasionally ganged up on him in the past and broken the odd limb.

Adders: one very warm late spring day in Northumbria my dog seemed very very touchy, kept jumping in the air every time he sniffed a tussock. Late in the day I realised why when I saw a very fearsome small adder rearing up at him, wide-open mouthed and hissing. I think he must have seen several during the day. Made me quite nervous for him.

I remember a huge feeling of relief the first time I walked in England after living in the US and realising that (so long as I didn't actually eat anything daft), there was nowt worse than nettles and brambles, flora-wise.

See that's what worries me about Australia. There are so many things out there to hurt you.

Grimma, you forgot yaks. . I suppose they are sort of cows though. Just hairier.

I thought yaks were the size of large dogs. Have I been labouring under a dreadful delusion?

My theory? Abominable snowman.

Yes. Yaks are enormous.

Yak cheese is very nice. Unlike yak butter which is minging.

Is yak's milk pink? (I think that's a random pub quiz fact that stuck in my brain)

Oh, my sister fell into a gorse bush when camping with the Brownies. Had to have the thorns tweezed out of her arse by Tawny Owl. Luckily Tawny Owl was our mum.

She also fell into a patch of briars in our back garden and had to have the same treatment. You'd think she would have learned from the first time!

DS2 fell off his bike into a huge cluster of stinging nettles once. Oh the howling! You have never heard the like. Poor little soul was one big rash.

I don't know what colour yak milk is. The cheese is the normal yellow of something like gruyere. I've only met the yak butter melted into tea and it nearly made me vom.

Most perilous moment was probably capsizing a sailboat in Ullswater (not very perilous) or walking Hellvellyn with inappropriate footwear (good boots, but too small) twas agony.

Butter in tea?

I met a woman in appropriate footwear climbing a style on a coastal path. It was throwing it down with rain and we were miles from anywhere, and the mud was about a foot deep. She was tottering along in white stilettos and a vairy short yellow mini skirt, which flashed her fanjo as she tried to work out how to get over the thing. We sort of fell silent at the incongruity, and she tottered off down the path into the mist. One of life's great mysteries. I have no idea whether they fitted or not though but her skirt didn't

I watched dh capsize a sailboat somewhere off the gower. Given that I had just brought the thing in and we'd switched over as we were taking it in turns to look after dd, I wasn't overly impressed with his masculine capabilities... I can't really talk though. I managed to capsize a dinghy on a ruddy great reservoir, and the entire mast came adrift. We had to be dragged back behind the rescue boat.

I love that Bill Bryson book, Grima. It almost put me off setting foot outdoors in North America, and I'm still pretty nervous about going anywhere near berry patches, which is a shame cos I like a bit of foraging.

My most perilous moment in the UK was an adder too... most recently, one slithered away from just under my foot on a very tramped-on part of the coastal path at Burton Bradstock. Lovely, it was. I took a picture but by the time the shutter clicked, it'd sodded off. Very appropriate, meeting an adder in what the tourist office like to call 'Thomas Hardy country'.

My dad once put his hand on a small adder in Yorkshire. It slithered off into the river and swam away, possibly in horror.

I've seen many slithery things, and thought, 'oh! A snake!' and it always turns out to be a slow worm.

Can we cope with a risqué story of peril? DP at the tiller sailed round a bend on the Broads and into a head on collision with another vessel. The reason for his momentary lapse of concentration was my interference with his tiller... Oh the dreadful, dreadful vulgarity. I do apologise. It was off season and seriously the only other boat we'd seen all day.

Rofl northey! That is hilarious!

No! I am very firmly brought up and inclined to extreme sanctimony. I really can't account for it. He was lucky the crash didn't cause me to bite.