50: Frostbitten with Nigel Vardy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am talking today to about ninety seven percent of
an excellent human being. Ninety seven percent? Is that a
bit high?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Low? Well, I was ninety five percent about three shows ago,
so have I expanded since then?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
This is the problem. Other people remember what I say
and I don't. You know, it's this accountability thing isn't
very good. So I should probably set the scene for
the audience. Here I am speaking to Nigel Vardi. I've
nearly said mister Nigel Vardi, but I think I should
actually say mister frostbite.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
It's something that's stuck in the education side. Yep.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah. So you're a mountaineer, you are an incredibly interesting person.
We've already had about half an hour of pre recording
conversation talking about sort of the mutual people we know
good and ill, and you're also you're an outdoorsman in
the truest fashion. I think it's safe to say I'm

(00:57):
not going to do justice to who you are, So
can you give us sort of one paragraph or two
paragraph version of who you are and what people would
know you?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
For good grief, people tend to know me because of
suffering frostbite, which was nineteen ninety nine. So twenty six
years ago now, and myself and two friends climbing on
Dinali in Alaska got severely frostbitten and were rear lifted
off the mountain, which set an altitude record, which is

(01:27):
never great when you're a casualty. And it was obviously
a slow news day that week because we hit every
headline across the world, and I was doing media interviews
from a hospital bed for weeks. And the long and
short of it was the frostbite robbed me of all
my fingertips, all mytoes, both my heels, minnos fell off,

(01:50):
my left cheek fell off. But other than that, I'm
doing rather well. And then what I've continued to do
since then is, you know, people in the NHS, certainly
physiotherapists used to be taught you cannot walk without toes,
and I just love proving people wrong. So I ski

(02:11):
without toes, I mountaineer without toes, I cycle without toes,
I go deer stalking without toes. I shoot and fish
without toes because they're not going to grow back, as
I keep telling certain parts of government, and somebody the
other week actually asked me if my fingers were going
to grow back and well, it's just not going to happen,
is it.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
How have they mistaken you for a lizard or something?
You know, if this tail falls off, then it will
grow back.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
They I know this stems on research into modern ideas
of limb you know, rebuilding. But I think I'm just
a bit past those doors now. And I always like
paperwork when I get it from authorities. Is your condition
going to change in the next six months? And you
used to reply with great long windows spiels about out,

(03:00):
oh I've got this injury and that injury. Now I
just write they're not growing back with a very big
exclamation mark.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
I suppose if you know, if you go to the
Himalayan side again and do some more stuff there on
a winter expedition, they might actually get worse. You know,
you could lose a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, I mean, I've been back to the Himalayas and
one of my feet really really did get cold, Richard.
And at that point I said time to go home,
and it was bright red. When I got back down
to the camp about two or three hours later, I
took my shoes and socks off and got my feeding
the sleeping bag, and it was bright red and I
did a lot of crying, I can tell you now, yeah,

(03:37):
because getting frostbite once is ridiculous and getting it twice
is just stupid. And I photographed the progression of the injury.
This is something I learned in hospital and thankfully it
made a full recovery. But it was absolutely the right
thing to do.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Okay. So, I mean, my natural inclination here is to
keep making jokes about amputation, but really this is why
it shouldn't be allowed around people anyway. But I think
for the benefit of the audience and for so getting
something sensible out of this conversation, we should go back
to the beginning. So you were born somewhere? Where was that?

Speaker 2 (04:16):
I was born in Derby in nineteen sixty nine and
I left after three days and came back home to
Belper in Derbyshire, and I've been here ever since.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
So you are you are Derbyshire pretty much born and bred?

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah. So Derby's always a weird one because there's flat
Derby and there's hilly Derby, isn't there there's a little
bit of both. So you're would you say you're on
the edge of the hilly bit then sort of Derby
to Belper we are.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
There's a village two or three miles south of me
called Duffield and we always used to say that where
the Chevin ended, which is a little hillside there. We
always used to joke that was the end of the Pennines.
And like you say, it goes into the Trent Valley
and the Derwent Valley further south and up north, up north,
just full of ups and downs and hilly bits. Not

(05:05):
from when you're in a wheelchair, I'll tell you.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Now, well that's the joe. Well, that's the more of
the Yorkshire Dales thing, isn't it. Three old men in
a bath going down the hill? Yeah? So would you
say that? I mean, did you grow up in a town,
did you grow up in the countryside? What was when
did you start to feel connected to the outdoors, to nature,

(05:31):
to green spaces as we're told to call them.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Now, Well, I grew up on the edge of a town,
but we had a very large garden, we had a
woodland very close by, and my dad's mother, because sadly
my grandfather died just before I was born, lived in
a little hamlet.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Called Blackbrook and Blackbrook.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Is where my dad grew up and its fields and
woods and rolling hills and stone walls and hedgerows and
all the fun of the fair. So I used to
spend a lot of time with my mama up in Blackbrook,
but also her family were all farmers, so the background
to that was further in western Derbyshire around the Church,

(06:17):
Broughton hatt and Fostern area. They still had a dairy
farm when I was little and we used to go
and help out on that. Sadly they lost the cows
probably the late seventies I think, and they turned fully
into pig units. And my uncle Fred as I called him,
his two children which are about my age slightly older,

(06:39):
were very big into showing at the Royal Show as
it was, and so they take pigs off to show
at the Royal which meant me and my dad used
to go and muck in to keep the farm running
when they were away. So most of my teenage and
into my twenties life were smelling like the back end
of a pig. But the great thing with it was,
and particularly when we had the cow. When they had

(07:01):
the cows, we used to cut hay, so we'd go
a making in the traditional sense with bales that you
could pick up with your hands, cut the grass, bail
the hay, stacked the hay, which was then fantastic rabbiting country.
And my dad was brought up in field sports by
his father, and I am now the proud odor of

(07:22):
my grandfather's side by side that he bought, that he
passed down to me Dad. That's been passed down to me.
From that farming background, shooting in what were World War
II bomb dumps. That part of Derbyshire had a lot
of wartime activity. If anybody's heard of the Fold explosion,
type it into the internet you'll soon find about all that.

(07:45):
But not far from there. Every field had a few
bombs here and a few bombs there to spread them apart.
And after the war they collapsed and turned into rabbit warrens.
And all my childhood was split between farming and rabbiting
and a bit of pigeon shooting and anything else we
could shoot, and we all let the lot from the
day I was born.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Which decade without being in there was that the sixties
or seventies, so that.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Would have been the seventies into the eighties.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
This is difficult for people. I mean, if you're under
the age of forteen, our to sort of get to
grips with what the countries I had looked like then.
And we've been talking about that a lost recently on
the show. But you know, just the numbers of rabbits
that are around when you read these old tales about
the amount of control effort that went into controlling rabbit populations,

(08:31):
particularly on railway lines and on infrastructure like that, it
used to be full time occupation for quite a lot
of people, didn't.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
It It did. I mean, you know, we're talking of
the days when a tractor did not have a cab
and a bailin machine, as I say, through bails out
you could pick up. But the rabbit population was huge,
and you know, half of my childhood's you know, the
meat we yet was rabbit. It was just we shot it,
we skinned it, we ate it, and there was never

(09:01):
a shortage. There were few outbreaks of mixy. But I mean,
it wasn't it wasn't anything like that. The numbers we
don't see now, or certainly around my way, I don't see.
You could pick tenor field out easily every night.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
So when did you make the move, well not even
a move, When did your eyes start going towards the
summits as it were, when you start looking towards the mountains.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Well in complete parallel with this lifestyle of field sports.
And then when I was a teenager I started fishing
with my mates from school. But from a very early
age my mum and dad were big into getting outdoors
and going hill walking, and particularly in Derbyshire, there was
an author called John Merrill who wrote some lovely, really

(09:45):
nice handmapped walking guides and we bought those and I
can remember going out in my dad's Illman Avenger and
we'd wander off up the Peak district. And this is
something that people in the modern world, py perhaps my
not understand the same. They think this is a privilege.
When we did it, it was because we didn't want

(10:06):
to be at home. Yes we had a car, but
it cost nothing. It wasn't like going to the fair
or the infant Alton Towers when the corkscrew first came
these sorts of things the outdoors cost note and my
mum Blesser was very particular. We're not going to a calf,
We're not going to buy out well tech sandwiches. We'll
text some snap as we call it in Derbyshire and

(10:27):
we will go walking, and we used to go to
the Army surplus and buy some pit boots and some
combat trousers and whatever else and go into the hills.
And this started by about the age of five. Right
up into my teens, I was still doing big day walks,
so the two were parallel. I still shot, I still fished,

(10:47):
and I went hill hawking as well. When I got
to work, I started meeting folks who said, do you
want to come and do some stuff in Scotland. And
then we started going into winter hill walking Scotland. That
then bred into winter mountaineering in Scotland and then took
me across the world to you know, some of the
biggest mountains in the world.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
And in that time, did you because that would have
been seventies, eighties and presumably into the nineties, did you Yeah,
you know, with this right to roame debate and you know,
we're twenty five years since the Countryside Right of Way Act,
did you feel them thirty to forty nearly fifty years
ago restricted in where you could go to in the hills.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
And have you felt an issue at all? I mean,
one thing, it's very easy to point what's left of
my finger at anything. But what people have got to
remember is, and I've traveled a lot, we have one
of the best footpath systems in the world. You know,
I've done a lot of travel in South Africa. I've
done lots of travels in Asia, and there are no

(11:51):
footpaths or there will be open access areas, but don't
think there are anything like we've got. You're really on
your own. I mean, I've literally just come back from
the Dragonsburg in South Africa. And if you get stuck
up there and you can't navigate properly, you're in for
a bad day. And I haven't got an issue with
people because the right to roam appeared or access land

(12:13):
appeared in my time on particularly close to me places
like kinder Scoum and Eclonemar, and I haven't got an
issue with people wanting to do that. What I have
an issue with is people blatantly causing damage. We've had
some horrendous wildfires in the last few years that never
happened when I was a child that I can remember,

(12:35):
and I think some people the word respect comes to mind,
where if I dropped a piece of litter, God help
what my moment. I mean don't get me wrong in
Mum and Dad were lovely people, but they wouldn't put
up with me dropping a crisp packet. And I go
round the peak district, and not just the peaks, I
go all over the place now, and you just see

(12:55):
the disregard people seem to have for roadside verges, countryside whatever.
It just seems to be a free for all of
a dumping ground. And if you want the right to roam,
and I've talked to people at the British Mountaineering Council
about this, if you want the right to roam, you
have got to respect the country you're going into and

(13:17):
not use it as a playground.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
So what do you remember of your of that first
Scottish winter mountaineering trip. Do you remember where you went to?

Speaker 2 (13:28):
We went to glen Coe and we stayed in Balahoolish
in a pretty horrendous, sweaty, horrible damp place. I can
always remember because one of the lags did a fry up,
cracked an egg and it was rotten and it stunked
the place out.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
I'll never forget it.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
But it was single ice ACKs and crampons. It wasn't
technical climbing, but it was moving together, it was going
up steep to rain. It was a very good winter,
a very good winter. We were plastered with snow, and
I thoroughly enjoyed the technicality of it, the way to
work together as friends and a team. These are all

(14:04):
people I went to work Withather there, friends from the
Derbyshire Nottingham Shaeria, and it was an incredibly social thing.
So at night we'd have a good laugh and cook
together and a few drinks. Every morning we're out on
the hill and it really opened my eyes. And don't
get me wrong, I was working for the electricity industry
at the time, so I knew about going out in

(14:24):
foul weather. I did twenty four hour standby, so at
three in the morning in a blizzard and my phone rang,
they expected you out there. So I was used to
the weather. I was used to the cold. I'd grown
up in farming.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
I e.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Rain, snow or whatever. Animals don't care, so I relish
the conditions. And I relished them, perhaps to a point
that I saw other people struggling and thought, what is
your problem? This is nature, this is what we were
born to be in, not a brick box with a
roof on. We are an animal.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
I think that Scottish winter thing because people get so
obsessed with sort of the heights of Summits and that
kind of thing, and they think, well, it's Scotland, it's
in the UK, how bad can it be? But that
Scottish winter, particularly West coast mountaineering, is it's a very
technical environment. Just being on the slope, isn't it. Or
just being on that ridge, even if you're not doing

(15:18):
a graded winter climb where you've got two ice axes
and you're you're climbing almost vertically, Just plodding up a
ridge in bad weather, in wind, in a line is
It's quite a difficult activity to get your head around,
isn't it?

Speaker 2 (15:34):
It is? And we always say to her, you know,
you want to climb the himalayas you want to climb
in North America. You go on training in Scotland, Scotland
will throw everything at you because she can be cold
and wet, which never are in the high mountains. You
can be cold, but you very rarely get wet. You
can have four seasons in a day. I've been on
King Gone practically on the hands and knees in the wind.

(15:56):
You know, it's the only place in the world I
know where the weather station sticks. It sad out for
thirty seconds, takes a reading and goes back down. Otherwise
it will take off. You go to the ben, you
go to Torridon, you go to the Gorms, you know,
up to all a pooling around there. You can have
the foulest, most testing day of your life, you really can.

(16:20):
And yet that evening you can still be down at
ground level, lipping to the chip shop and then go
to the pool.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah. I think it's easy to forget, you know, from
the rural side of things that places like that, those big, wild,
remote mountainous regions makeup a big chunk of what is
the rural space of the UK. It's not all rolling
Hampshire fields, you know, the when you go north of Glasgow.

(16:46):
Most of the country looks like that to one degree
or another, and it's it's a big chunk of our
land mass. It's just not a massive.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Un particularly when you get it. You know, as you say,
you get into the Troussecs and you go up that
way of the world, the population once you get out
the central Belt, the population is just tremendously sparse. I mean,
you can go for hours and not see your soul.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
But in my mind, because I've worked in all those
environments for nearly twenty well nearly twenty years now, and
I wouldn't in my head, I wouldn't go, oh, you
know the truss Ax or Neidart or something like that, that's countryside.
I would say, it's it's something else. It's not. It
doesn't feel pastoral, or was obviously not pastoral, but it
doesn't feel rural in the same way. I don't know,

(17:27):
it's just that's different. It is like going into a
different layer of environment.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
I find Aaron absolutely magical because the north side of
Aaron is the Highlands and the south side of our
Aaron is like the Lowlands. Because the complete Scottish sort
of break goes right through from the Great Glen and
down and you can see the rural side of Scotland.
But you say, you drive up the road and it's
just like the world's ticked over. It's like Mordor in

(17:57):
a lovely way. Don't get me wrong, anybody listening from Scotland.
I love Scotland, but just a change in stone, in rock,
in angle, in the way the cloud holds it, in
the way the sunbeams through it. I was on the
Isle of Rum earlier this year. That was absolutely fabulous,
and you know, I'd never been before and what a

(18:18):
stunning part of the world to go mountaineering on.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
And when did you make that first step overseas? What
was your first big overseas hill.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Well, probably in Chile nineteen ninety four. I did what
we now call Operation Rally, and I went off for
three months to live in southern Chile and do relief work.
So I can't say technically we climbed this mountain all that,
but we're in an incredibly challenging environment, no people, no roads,

(18:52):
so you might be getting around on an inflatable rib.
You would have to find somewhere to land and build
a camp. It was very rudimentary, and we did some
mountain trekking, we worked in mountainous areas. It just utterly
opened my eyes to this stunning world that we live in.
And ever since that moment, you know, I've just been

(19:14):
in the mountains. I've done a lot of sea kayaking
and other things as well, but the mountains are the
place for me.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
And when you came back from these trips overseas, I mean,
either the first one, or the thousands of things you've
done since. Does that make you look at the British
countryside in a different way? Does it make you see
it in a different way?

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Do you know it's odd? I would say as a child,
I really loved the countryside and I used to play
in it as a boy and just an absolute playground.
And when I got into my teens and I got
into work and you know, attempting to have fastcars which
never really happened, and all those sorts of things, you

(19:55):
can easily lose it. What gave it me back was
nearly dark. I came back from Alaska, and after all
my surgery and all the amputations and everything else, I
can still remember the day they said, you can go
home for an afternoon, Nigel, and just see how you'll cope.

(20:16):
So I went to me mum and Dad's and i'd
got in the house. They lived in a bungalow, and
even that for me, it was a fight to get in.
And the first thing they said is what would you like?
I said, a cup of tea. I want to see
if I can hold the pine to be and can
you get me a gun? I want to see if
I can pull a trigger still, and from that moment
I understood that I had to get back outside again.

(20:38):
I'd spent so long in a hospital and so long
in a wheelchair. I needed some greenery. And it wasn't
till spring, so it'd be two thousand actually that I
was able to walk on my own unaided and drive again.
And the first thing I did was go back to
those woodlands that I played in as a little born,

(21:00):
and when the bluebells came up, I went and sat
in them and went very quiet for a very long
time and probably cried quite a lot. And I still
do that every year now, and exactly the same words,
in the same bluebell fields.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
So it's almost this it's like a pilgrimage back to yourself.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah it is, and it's it's a wonderfully uplifting experience.
It's very personal, and I don't think people appreciate. You know,
they'll watching a BBC documentary where you know, you see
a snow leopard, and what you don't get is have
been waiting eight weeks for that eight seconds of shot

(21:41):
and I sit very still and people say, you know,
there's no wildlife here, and I've got woodpeckers over my head.
I have literally had a hair jump over me. And
because if you sit so long enough, it's there. People
don't have the time to sit still, or they choose
not to because they're retention spans so short.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Now, yeah, and it's this. We've almost been told now
for several generations, that interesting things are all on the
other side of a Ryan air flight, that everything's overseas,
all the interesting wildlife are overseas. There's nothing here that
you know, talk about the barren stripped wastelands of wildlife
here as anymore. None of the places I go to

(22:25):
I like that. It's just you have to wait fifteen
minutes for everything to come out.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
I've I mean, I've been pigeon shooting in a hedgerow
before marketing all the macamouflage, and fine, yeah, a bit
of pigeon shooting, and then some hairs have come out
and boxed and you just put the gun down and
you watch because it's utterly wonderful.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
And we're both off to you. You've done a hell
of a lot more than I have, and you you've
been doing this for a long, much longer time than
I have. But we it sounds like you and I
have had a similar sort of experiences where the gortex
cots one outdoor British Mountaineering Council world. I'm quite happy

(23:07):
to have you talk and have you be there and
have you do things for them, But at the moment
you talk about the other outdoor world that might involve
tweed or a jackpie waistcoat or a shotgun or something
like that, you're suddenly a persona on grauted They don't
want you anywhere near it. Why do you think there's
such a division between those two halves? Do you know?

Speaker 2 (23:30):
It's interesting? I was at the National Outdoor Expo earlier
this year and I'm just walking around and a lady
came at me from one of the wildlife trusts, obviously
doing the pay five pound a month, okay, fine, whatever,
and she said, are you interested in the countryside? I said, yes,
do you protect wildlife? And my reply was, well, that
depends on how you view protecting wildlife. And her reply was, oh,

(23:53):
you're one of those shooting people, aren't you. You're also
you're all so easy to spot. Bear in mind, I
was in a gortex and all the rest of it,
and obviously she wasn't getting any of my money. But
it was the fact of there is still this idea
of us and them. Now, whether it is we all
still think you posh, big land owning rich folk. Well,

(24:14):
I don't know where they get that from. Because the
syndicate ie shooting our flags were miners, two or three
worked in the prison service, a couple of builders, and
there's a few retired ones. So but people still have
this idea that we're all, you know, very rich land owning,
we don't want you on our land, et cetera, et cetera.

(24:37):
And I don't know why they see that. There's still
this sort of divide. And I've tried all kinds of things.
I've done events with people where I've been on and
openly spoken about grass shooting on the moors, and some
will engage and some will back off. It's not everybody's thing,

(24:58):
but people are frightened to say it, and the older
I'm getting, the less frightened I am. I could swear there,
but I'm not going to. And the fact is that
if you want to go on land, I have no
issue with that, but you've got to remember it's where
nature lives, and it's somebody's livelihood and the more and

(25:23):
more we look inwards into a city and we think
that's our world. Everything else is just some toy and
they don't understand it, so they can easily play the well,
you know, I'm a bit ignorant because I don't want
to understand it, so I can get away with what
I want and you can't.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
It's not in any of the messaging that they get
from the outdoorside, because you know, I go to those
same sort of outdoor shows and go to see the
same sort of things. You don't see anything in there.
And then any of the messaging from the hill walking, climbing,
mountain biking, paddling, whatever world that says your very presence

(26:05):
in that space can have a negative impact on wildlife,
you know, just you being there, or being to you
being there too often, or your dog being off the
lead there, or just it doesn't really go belt beyond
footpath erosion and litter and livestock worrying. There are the
only three things that get mentioned. There's no restraint asked

(26:29):
for or sort of honesty about human impact on the landscape.
But you do see that with field sports, and you
do see that with farming conversations. It's just it's very
interesting seeing what's missing from messaging.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
What I would say is I think that's turning slightly
and people when I went to the National Outdoor Expert
last year, we had a conversation about open access and
I openly came. What we said, I'm a member and
I'm also a shooting man. And their view was this
was a British Mountaineering council. Their view is it's quite
a few of you like this. What do you think

(27:05):
is the answer? And I said, you know, if you
want to come and camp in the outdoors, you can't
just turn up and just put your tent down, light
a fire and leave rubbish. Because and that's why this
is now trying to get a distinguishment between wild camping
and fly camping. And fly camping the amount of damage

(27:26):
and grotesque horror you cause to the countryside is an insult.
I wild camp, but you need to know when the
ground nesting bird season is. You need to know where
you are allowed to go. And I'm also go to
leave no trace, instructor. I don't want to see a
single piece of evidence except perhas a flattened piece of

(27:49):
grass where you've been. I don't want to see anything.
The issue you've got is that within the outdoor community,
it's a bit like the shooting unity the field sports community.
You are preaching to the converted. It's the people outside
that community who will go to a big outdoor superstore,

(28:11):
buy some cheap equipment and then go and camp somewhere.
And there is evidence of this all over YouTube. It's
really quite frightening and people doing, you know, look at me,
I've got an axe and I'm going to cut a
tree down and burn it, and you just absolutely tearing
your hair out at where where as a society have

(28:32):
we allowed this to happen? Why have we let people
get this far without pulling in the lead.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Is it that thing that the people doing those things,
the people basically setting far to the moorland through their
actions or leaving all these huge piles of litter and
abandoning tents everywhere. They're not listening to the British Mountaineering
Council nor Basque. You know, they're sort of somewhere in
the middle. They don't know that there's a conversation, but
they're copying something they've seen on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
As you say, I absolutely agree, and there's plenty of
organizations on both sides of the fence here that give
the right message and they want people to be respectful.
I'm also what's called a dog's body, so I actually
work with Mountain Rescue search dogs and part of it

(29:24):
is they'll say to me, we'd like you to go
and hide here on the more and somebody trading their
dog will come and find you. And we do that
on RSPB reserves on the understanding that by a certain
time of year you are off because we have dogs
off leads. That's fine, but by this time of year,

(29:45):
I think it's a thirty first of March, you are
out because ground nesting season starts, and you walk it
in the middle of June and this folk there with
the dogs running everywhere, regardless of signage, regardless of all
the information, and if you approach them, most of the
time it's okay, I'm really sorry, but it might be

(30:06):
you can't tell me what to do. We're not trying
to be provocative. We're not trying to be aggressive or
anything silly. We're trying to say to you, would you
like something fifty feet tall trapesing through your house? And
once it's done. It's done. There's no control delete, there's
no edit on do it's over. You have killed that

(30:29):
brood or something or whatever disturbed them, and we're back
to next year. And people just don't get that.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
No, And there seems to be, like you say, when
if you go up and speak to them, or if
you could point out the impact of their actions, it's
almost like this the first time they've heard it. It's
the first time they've heard it, and it's so surprising
to them. It sounds to them like an attack on them.
It's like you and you've got this with the outdoors

(30:57):
being now a space for mental health, and you know,
I work in the outdoors because it's good for my brain.
But it's also now it only exists for someone's mental
health to some people. And if you're saying don't do this,
or don't go to this place at this time of year,
or don't let your dog off the lead in these places,
it almost sounds like you're trying to restrict their mental wellness.

(31:19):
It's something I've come across a few times of people.
It's a very interesting psychological issue. It's not just an
issue of behavior.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
I've got to be honest. It's like the people that
go to a campsite and complain that the sheep make
noise all night. You know. Welcome to the countryside. Welcome
to the fact that large machinery will be going down
lanes quite slowly, Animals will be taken from field to field.
Because I've grown up in this. To me, it's the norm.
There's no good getting agitated when there's sixty dairy cows

(31:49):
coming down a road because they don't care how much
you pick your aordin shout. They'll look at you and
go what But if we can appreciate that's somebody's livelihood
and those animals go up that pace because that's what
those animals do, chill out, give it five, let them
move on, and let's just all lift together in peace, please.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
So we should probably discuss the incident in Alaska. So
that was nineteen ninety nine, was that right?

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (32:18):
It was yeah, yeah, So McKinley or Donale, because it's
back to being McKinley now, isn't it's Mount McKinley. Well, yes,
going orange man, says McKinley.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yes, And everybody in Alaska doesn't give two dudars what
he says about it. And I was there in January
at an ice festival where it was minus twenty at
its warmest. I'm so happy and and everybody's selling well.
They kept saying do you want to buy a button?
And I'm going, why is one missing off my shirt?
And then I realize button means badge?

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Oh, like a pin.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
And they had a badge like a pin badge, and
he said, do not always Donali. It's in Donali National Park. Yes,
it was McKinley for a long time. But the traditional
name is Dinali, and that orange man can go and
do one. It's Dinali quite simply.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Because Denali is the indigenous name. Isn't it correct? Was
McKinley a National Parks boss or something? It was that?

Speaker 2 (33:15):
I think it was the US president at one point.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Or is it that one? Okay, when there's someone when
a mountain is named after somebody, it's always somebody trying
to curry favor with them, isn't it? Or something like that?
No one ever asked to be called can you name
that mountain after me? But it does it sort of
ego by proxy.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
It's like ever and it should be Everist, not Everest.
Absolutely nobody. You know, we should be calling it Chom
Molonghma or Sagam Arthur, but everybody knows it as you
know somebody who makes double glazing and everest.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yes, so you were you were climbing on Denali Sonari's
what six thousand, six thousand and two hundred meters or
something like that, six.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
One sixty do something like that. I've got a map
on the wall somewhere, yes, yeah, between us Willie my
feet and Inch's man still so twenty thousand.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
So what were you doing there? What was the intention?
And who and who were you with?

Speaker 2 (34:08):
So I was with two friends, Anthony Hollins and Steve
Ball and I knew Anthony through Operation Rally or Rally International.
I'd been to Chile and had been somewhere warmer and
more jungly. I think it was Bordeo or Guyana anyway,
but we knew each other. There was a really big
support group organization through Raleigh, so everybody came together and

(34:29):
with Socialize and whatever else. And I was actually cycle
touring up through the Peak district with a couple of
three friends trying to find every ruined abby we could
via every pie shop we could find so we did
the Pies and Abbey Bye tour. We went to Skipton

(34:50):
and had dinner with some other friends from Raleigh, of
which was there who said, Nige, you know, me and
Steve are going to Alaska next year to climb alask
Dinali or McKinley at the time, would you be interested. Now,
I've just come back from the Andes and I'd been
climbing in South America, and I was like, yeah, let's
go and do it. So the three of us planned
together and organized it all in a very nineteen ninety CeNSE,

(35:12):
with fax messages and you know, handwriting, that terrible old thing.
And we flew over there and you know, we got
to a little village town called Talketna, and that's where
the airstrip is. This is the reason this place exists.
It's at the end of a fifteen mile dead end road,
but it's got an airstrip. You fly into the range
and then you know the world really is your.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Oyster just getting there. Back then, I mean, the nineteen
nineties wasn't a thousand years ago, but it was a
different world in terms of logistical planning. You know, fans
machines made it easier but you were still basically having
to guess the right building and send a message to
it in order to speak to the right person to
book a flight three months ahead or whatever.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, in those days you had it. You had more
in country agents. So you talk to an agent locally
who says, can you get me some transport? Can you
book me flights? Where as I say, I was back
there last year and earlier this year, and we're doing
it on WhatsApp.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, and that's it. Gets one of those things that
sort of disappeared slowly, the friction of trying to get
to places that no one went away without anyone noticing
until you look back and go, what the hell that
was a FAF trying to get anything.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Well, the other thing is, of course you had to
wait up into the middle of the night if you
did want to telephone somebody. Yes, it's just of the
time difference, whereas now you send an email knowing well
they'll get it eventually, or or on sap them and
they'll get it eventually and they're reply to me rather
than kriyker. You know, I need to stay up to
midnight to ring these vote. But those days are gone.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, and when when you went over there, what was
the was there one particular route or one face you
were looking at doing?

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Yeah, it's called the West Rib, and every mountain has
its roots. They usually named the West Buttresses. The standard
route on Denali. We initially looked at the Cassin Ridge,
which is a really technical ridge, but the weather conditions
and snow conditions worked good, and so we went for
the West Rib. Just to put that into context for people.

(37:16):
When we got there, you actually go through a gap
in the mountains called the Valley of Death, just to
make it sound really interesting.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Fantastic name.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Oh absolutely, and nobody had been there for over two
years because of the avalanches. So we were the first
people to pass into what they call the Valley of Death,
the Kehilton, the Northeast Fork, and then take on the
Ice Fall, which is a broken mad crav assfield. Now again,
back in Britain, there'd be a footpath side at every

(37:50):
field boundary out there, you're on your own.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, and mild deep fissures that you could just stumble into.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Well, I fell down three of asses up to my
armpits with my feet flailing underneath me.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
But we roped up.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
You know, we know what we're doing, and we then
took on the West Rib. So that's twelve days of
very full on mountaineering. And this is not a you
know this sixty porters and five drawing teams and a
film crew and who knows that you're on your own.
So what you carry, you take and there's nobody else

(38:26):
doing the work for you. So that twelve days was
consistent mountaineering, load hauling, a climatizing just to get a
crack at the summit.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
So were you were you climbing them hauling or were
you climbing with packs.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
We'd climb with a pack, leave it, go down that evening,
sleep in the tent, pack the tents up the next day,
go up to the bags, and then sleep there. So
you did most most of your route. You did it
twice at least.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
See, you're sort of like leap frogging chaining your way
up up the route. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to get
this into context for so the non mountaineers in the audience,
because there will be a few trying to get this
so they can visualize this, because this kind of mountaineering,
it's not sport. It's a medieval siege, isn't it. It's

(39:18):
technical and long and hard work with careful planning, but
it's also a bit of brute force to it.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
It is, and there is a term siege climbing or
siege mountaineering, but that tends to come with long fixed ropes.
We were Alpine style climbing. So if anybody's been to
a climbing wall of fifty meters rope, we have two
of those. That was it. And so you climb together,
you move together like I learned in Scotland, and you

(39:45):
protect each other on the move. It's a lot quicker
than siege climbing, but it is. It's a lot of
brute force, it really is.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
We want snow and ice the whole time, or was
there a bit of mixed in there with exposed rock
on the windward sides.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
There's a bit of rock on the ridge, but most
of the time, certainly a land on ice at base
camp when you get off the aircraft and in solid
ice and snow except the little outcrops all the way
to the top.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
And was there a was skipping ahead a little bit?
But was there a point where you realized something had
gone wrong? Or was it a cascading series of events
there's a.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Bit of a cascade of everything. Really. We climbed as
far as we could get to get tents, and when
you're on a ridge, you know there's not nice, big
flat areas to put tents, so you're squeezing stuff in
everywhere you can, and we had there was one kind
site higher but it's called the Sucker Camp, and when
you get there you realize why because it's a desolation

(40:46):
of destroyed tents. The wind's horrific, so we can to
size we could, and what we do is we leave
everything we don't need and we do a really quick
run to the summit. Well that's the plan, and it
was until we got really committed on that day, multiple
hours in getting onto what's called the Football Field, which

(41:06):
is the big summit plateau that the weather bend in,
and it bend in like there's no tomorrow. I mean,
whether you can't describe sixty not cross winds on the
top of twenty thousand feet of plateau with you know,
Siberia to your left, Greenland to your right, and the
North Pole in front of you. There's no way to hide.

(41:28):
And we were told after we were rescued that the
wind till was approximately minus sixty centigrade.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
How far adrift from the forecast. Then when you first lamp,
you know, before you got onto that plane first flew
off to the mountain, what were you expecting versus what
you got? How bad was that gap?

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Well, what you've got to remember is, of course weather
forecasting's moved on. In these days, there were no phones
on the mountain. You couldn't get a forecast via a
SAP link really or anything in those so we were
all issued with the citizens Band handheld radio. I mean,
this was the technology of its day. And all the
rangers said, is every evening I think it was at

(42:11):
seven o'clock. We could be wrong. We'll just do a
broadcast of is everybody okay the weather forecast going to
be like this? And if you want to call back
and just tell us where you are every few days,
that'd be lovely. And that's what we did. And the
forecast we got wasn't super blue skies, but it certainly
was not howling storm either. But again, forecasting has moved on,

(42:36):
and it really isn't an interesting part of the world
for weather because you get massive monsoons come out of
India into the Sea of Japan up northeast towards the
Bearing Straits, picking up moisture and it just dumps it
on the Alaska Range. I mean, it really does. And
we ended up in the middle of that.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
So the night when it went wrong of sort of
everything going from a this is a rough time too.
Are we going to survive this? Can you sort of
break that down a little bit? What happened? And where
were you?

Speaker 2 (43:11):
We're on the plateau and it's called the football field.
And the reason it is is because I'll tell you what,
you could put a football stadium up there. You really could.
It's that big, and the wind's howling and there's no
where to hide, and it's not safe to go back.
This is your problem. You can't just ab say them
a sixty mile an our crosswind. So we thought we've

(43:33):
got to go forwards. We have to go forwards. But
Steve was getting hypothermic. And if anybody's been out in
the cold and the shivering and then when they get
colder they stop shivering, now you're getting hypothermic, and in
a situation like that, this is quite life threatening. And
we just said, look, we've got to get out of
this wind. What the hell are we going to do?

(43:54):
And we saw a well I hastened to say, cravas
breaking in what the summit cones, And we just said, look,
let's smack the door open in this thing with our
ice ACKs is let's get inside, let's get out of
this wind, and let's reevaluate. And that's exactly what we did. Now,
when I say cravas, people usually imagine a big, gaping

(44:15):
vertical hole in the ice. Wasn't quite like that. What
there was there was a bottomless pit, I assure you,
But there was also a big shelf in there, so
we could get on the shelf. It was reasonably large,
and we rammed our rooksacks into the hole we made
to keep the weather out. And at least then, what

(44:36):
people have got to understand is in the sixty mile
an hour crosswinds, you can't even talk to each other.
You've got to scream at each other. And even having
a rope between us would drag us over with the
wind dragon. And we've got rooksacks on, and so we thought, look,
we can get in this hole in the ground and
at least re evaluate what the hell is going on.
We can get try and get Steve warm. So we
hug Steve, darkness fell and outside is this howling melee.

(45:04):
So it's not exactly warm under the ice and snow,
I assure you, but it's a damn sight better than
being outside. And it was there. Obviously we came to
the conclusion that you know, we're really in the stick
here and we're trying to keep a mind, body and
sold together. And then we remembered, of course I got
the radio. So we try to send a rescue message

(45:25):
out or you know, a distress call as it were,
out to the rangers. The problem we've got is, and
again people don't understand this. Now they've got mobile phones.
You're trying to transmit with a little handheld radio with
eight one and a half vault AA cells in it,
You're not going to be broadcasting very well. The ranger

(45:46):
base has got a massive radio with all kinds of
warm batteries. But the difference with the radio it has
a PTT switch pressed to talk, and they're trained that
when I pressed the press to talks with they were
hearing a click and they thinking is that interference or
is that somebody after us? And so they broadcast out,

(46:08):
is that somebody on the radio are you trying to
make a call. If so, give me two clicks click, click,
and straight away they know they're actually talking to a person,
they're not just listening to interference. And we ended up
passing information a bit like twenty questions. And the one
great thing that saved us were those factss. Because when

(46:31):
you apply to climb through the National Park Service, you
have to tell them who you are, how old you are,
where you're from, what experience you have, what equipment you have,
who you're next of kin are, etc. Etc.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Etc.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
And because we've been calling in every few days to
say it's us and we're here and conditions are okay
or not, they've got a rough idea where we were.
But they could go through the name of every expedition
until they got a message that's that's us, and straight
away they know it's the three English guys. There's somewhere
about here on the mountain. They then rang their families

(47:08):
up and scared the hell out of them to say,
you know, your son, your husband or whatever is trapped
on the mountain in a storm, but that's all we
can tell your Thanks a lot and click by and
click by, And of course we knew nothing of this
because we're still up there, but it inaugurated the rescue attempt,
and obviously without that, I would not be here.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Now to say it all back now. I mean, you've
been through this story probably a thousand times now with
your public speaking and your engagement and all these other
things that you do. But it must be difficult for
you to I don't know how when you speak, when
you say those things and you tell that story, does

(47:53):
a little part of you sort of zoom back to
that place? Do you feel it still or have you so?
So it's salburbated now.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Every time I can still close my eyes and be
exactly I know exactly where I was. And it's interesting
when we talk about mental health, you know, people saying
I need to get into the outdoors, and I appreciate that.
I know exactly the same myself. But one of the
greatest things I ever found from a mental health was
actually getting on a stage and speaking about it. And

(48:22):
when I was in a position to actually first give
a lecture on thirty five millimeters slide of all things
in those days, I did rue in my local town
at a community hall we call the over sixties because
we just do. And I'm there with a slide protector,
give in this lecture, and by the end of it,
I was emotionally and physically broken, and I sat down

(48:44):
and blessed. My cousin Laura was with me, and she
helped me under, and I cried every ounce of my
soul out because I'd let so much out in an
hour or two's lecture and speech and questions. And I
think people need to engage that more. If you've got
a problem, and believe me, we all have them, don't

(49:04):
be frightened about it, and don't hold it in. Find
somebody you can trust, or even a group of people
you've never seen in your life, and let it out.
And my speaking for me has been some of the
best release I've ever had from this.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
So there's a school of thoughts. And this is not
my you know, I am not an expert. I don't
I'm basically a functional idiot, as most of the audience knows.
So this is just me repeating things I've heard. But
they used to do some quite a bit of work
with veterans' charities, and there was sort of the mental
health aspects of that, and one of the guys working

(49:43):
on that said that he sees a difference between normal
Green Army mostly for the UK, but normal Green military
and Special Forces in terms of PTSD and dealing with
stress from it events, even even though they're are ten
or fifteen years behind you. The difference, he thinks, and

(50:06):
he thought, was that when you're just normal enlisted, stuff
happens to you. You know, you're traveling convoy somewhere and
an ID goes off, or you know you're on patrol
and something and you're ambushed, something happens to you. Whereas
special forces, you tend to be the thing that's going
to happen to someone else. You know, you have that

(50:27):
level of agency, You have that level of control. And
part of the therapy he was trying and working with
people was for the guys mostly but girls as well
who were in that former group where they didn't have
that agency. You know, they were still sort of reeling
from this thing happening to them. That getting them to

(50:49):
talk about it and getting them to almost go back
to that point again and again made them retrospectively have
control over it because they got to talk through well,
this happened and then I felt this That made me
think this that and then the next time I had
that flash of fear, I had this response to it,
and every time thereafter I was actually getting a flash
of fear. About the fear and the way anxiety works.

(51:13):
I wonder whether that's something that you've experienced so that you,
by going through it on stage and talking through it,
you were able to regain and not regain control, because
you're all there voluntarily, but you know, at least relive
it in a way that your brain can process it
at a speed it's ready for.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
It's interesting you say about that, Richard, because when I
when we first hit Alaska the hospitals, one of the
first doctors to see has had come out of retirement
and he was ex American Navy and he'd done a
lot of early research work into frost bites. The middle
sky was the spitting image of Father Christmas. He really was.

(51:55):
And you know, you're young, you've just had the backside
kicked out. If you're lying in a bed, you're all
completely immobile, and he looks you up and down and
he says, yeah, you'll be in the mountains again, and
he knows, he knows. Now, you don't take that statement
in at that time. It hits you a lot later.
But something I've worked with a lot of military veterans

(52:17):
and other things like this, and what they say is
you take out of something what you take into it.
So if you go in fit, highly motivated and up
for whatever, then even though you get kicked physically, mentally,
whatever it is, you tend to come out more highly
motivated than other people and fitter. If you go into

(52:39):
something where you know you've got poor mental health, you're
physically unfit, mentally unfit, and something happens to you, your
body has a hell of a time recovering as well
of course mentally recovering. And it is a big issue
for the health services that people have issues and don't
go in highly motivated and as fit as they physically
can in the circuit stances they're in, because that is

(53:02):
such an advantage, such an advantage, and I found, I mean,
I was giving lectures at the hospital at Nottingham. I
was in Nottingham City Hospital Burns Unit for a long
time being treated. All my surgery was done here in
the UK, and I actually gave a lecture to the
student nurses and burn staff on what it was like

(53:23):
to go through this and you know, the accident before
and since then, Yes, I mean literally I have taught
from six year olds to senior managers to teenagers to
all kinds of folk and for me and that and
writing as well, just being able to write things down

(53:44):
has been an enormous release, as well as going back
to those woods full of bluebells that used to play
and as a little boy.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
They all play their part, and no one's journey through
that is going to be the same, and no two
people are going to have the same journey. It's a
long term recovery as well. We shoul won't necessarily be
a straight line, which is probably a good time to
start talking about the physical side of the aftermath for
you then, So what was the damage as it were

(54:11):
from the end.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
So basically I lost all my toes. I lost the
ball on my left foot as well. I lost both heels,
all of my fingertips, my nose and a section of
my left cheek.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
But as I'm talking to you here, you've got a nose,
so where it come from.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
That's my forehead right, So my forehead was peeled off
and stuck down there. It's quite old surgery actually, this
has been done for years. They literally drew an upside
down nose on my forehead, turned it over and stuck it.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
On, So it's your nose. It's just not from there, really, absolutely,
you haven't got a chunk of someone else on there.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
No. I always joke with youngsters about this. You know,
where do you think you get space skin from on
the human body? And you get all kinds of people going.
You know, an eight year old will go, oh, sir,
is it dead people or a pig or a mouse. No,
it's all me, what's left of me in varying guysers.
I'm quite not scarred on the right hip, but there's

(55:17):
lots of areas where they took skin for grafting. So
the end of my fingers my forehead were grafted and
repaired with other skin of mine, stuck on quite literally
with super glucas. That's what it was made for.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
And what was there an order they did it in
was the sort of an order of priority, so through
to aesthetic.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Yeah, they did my right hand first, and that's purely
because when you've got frost bite, when it's hard and settled,
you can still pick up a knife and a fork.
And having a patient bed bound and I was bed
bound for age ten weeks who can't feed themselves as
hard work. So they took the fingers off my right
hand first, and I looked to eat with my left

(56:00):
and I can also still shave with my left and
still right with my left, because when you need to
be ambidextrous, you will be. When my right hand had
recovered enough to hold a spoon again, that did my
left hand or mytoes, both my heels in one go.
My nose actually peeled off, and then eventually I sneezed

(56:20):
and the last bit fell off my left cheek. No,
it's fine, the left cheek fell away, and the joke
is and it's really true. You know, don't pick at scars,
at scabs, carystose scars. So we literally had to wait
for this frostbitten tissue to peel away. And I still
have this wonderful memory of an NHS nurse sat on

(56:42):
top of me in bed with the biggest pair of
toenail clippers you've ever seen in your life, clipping the
edge of my nose off as it peeled away, to
try and take that dead tissue away.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
That thing of cold weather injuries and frostbite is it's
such a peculiar experience in that you are watching parts
of you die and then stay dead on you whilst
they're still attached.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
That they don't hide them, they don't put them in dressings.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
You just get to watch, so you get to say
goodbye to those parts of you one more so you
get sort of.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Well, I mean the right hand. My mother's mum minna
phrase was cleanliness as next to godliness. Lad And when
I was going for the first surgery and knowing they're
going to paint me with id in and lord knows
what else, I said to one of the nurses. I said,
my name was Kirsty. I said, Kirsty, can I actually
have a bath before I go into theater please? Because

(57:36):
I want to be clean? And she said yes, but
you'll have to do it two or three hours before
theater because if your skins still slightly damp, they can't operate.
So that's fine, Kirsty. So she wheeled me out at
someone godly hour of the night into this little bathroom,
lowered me in on a hoist because I wasn't a
land to walk, and she said would you like ten minutes?
And I said, if you wouldn't mind, And I sat

(57:57):
in there. And I looked at my right hand and
I actually wish my thing good way, and there were
still part of me. There was still attached, but they
were very dead. But they've been with me for thirty years.
And later in that day they'd be gone. And it's
not a moment I can describe to people in any
other way. You have to face something like that yourself.

(58:20):
What I knew was you're dead. There's nothing I can
do to save you, but you're still part of me.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Yeah, you can't say to anyone which bit of you
are you ready to let go of? See all of it?
You don't foresee anything going adrift with your feet? Then
did any parts of those your heels or your ball
of your foot get replaced? Hacking out?

Speaker 2 (58:47):
My left heel was down to the bone. So I
was looking at the heel bone for a while. And
what they have is something called a vack machine. So
they pack it out with a foam. They put it's
a bit like a blue pee to sticky back plastic
on it when the valve and a little handbag with
a vacuum pump, and it keeps the wound under negative pressure.
I see, And so instead of six months to grow,

(59:09):
It'll do it in six weeks.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Yeah, because it's trying to fill that void all the time.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Yeah, and it's it's literally sucking it out, saying come on,
get building, get building. I think that was probably the
most painful part because in the week or two weeks
that that was on and then they changed the dressing,
I'd grown into the dressing and then they ripped it out. Ye.
And I cannot describe to you the pain that that brought. However,

(59:37):
and this might be personal to me. If you know
it's for the right reasons, you'll face it and you'll
put up with it. We didn't have an option, but
we knew in the end i'd have a heel back
and I would have gone through anything to get that
rebuilt so I could walk properly.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
I was going to say, yeah, because everything else, walking
must have been the benchmark for you for everything else,
if you've got to be able to walk upright over
rough ground.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Yeah. And you know, the first day I walked was
I mean, they took the toes and fingers off on
the Friday, and I was walking by the next Wednesday.
And the two physios that got me on a walking frame,
you know, my mom had a zimmer as we used
to call them, and it was something like that, to
try and stand and walk. And if anybody listening has
ever been in bed with the flu for two or
three weeks, the first day you stand up, you're nearly

(01:00:31):
fall over because you're not used to being upright, and
all your blood practures are wrong. But I was so determined.
But on the other side of that, I was really scared.
Bear in mind, I'm a thirty year old mountaineer. I'm
really scared because if I fall over, that little boy
inside me saying people will laugh at you. And you know,

(01:00:54):
we might be adults, but we've always been children. And
I had to get over that to stand. And I
walked out of the room I was in and there
was a group of friends there, took a picture, and
the nurses then took the frame off me and said
you don't need that, come on walk with us. And
about fifty or eighty yards down the corridor, they chased
me down with a wheelchair, saying will you sit down?

(01:01:15):
Because I was gone.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
That was it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
You've got me up right now. I do not get
in my way, but I've still got lots of injuries
and skin grafts on my feet. We have to protect
them as well. So we started off like that. Eventually
I got to and I had lots more surgery on
my feet try and get the skin to close up.
I ended up on crutches, still advised to use a
wheelchair when I can, until I got to a point

(01:01:40):
and the accident happened in May nineteen ninety nine, and
it wasn't really till spring two thousand I got to
any kind of position where I could get behind the
wheel of a car and I could go for a
little bit of a walk if I wanted to unaided.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
How long then was it before you were able to
walk on a hill again and go hill walking? We
used to say, although everyone says hiking now for some reason.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Or trekking, that's a big wrecking now. Probably that summer
or into that autumn before I'd still got dressings on
my feet, and the dressings got thinner, which meant you
could put boots on, and then we enter a whole
new world, Richard, of what foot size are you?

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
I was going to come to this, but I was
trying to damp around it a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
You know, I work with a lot of industry I
work with a lot of organizations and they'll say, oh, congratulations,
you know you've won a peer of boots, and I'll go, great,
that's lovely. What foot size are you? I have no
idea And you can hear the tumbleweed go across the ground.
You know, it's like, what do you mean? You don't
know how big your feet are? So what I do
is I said these picture of people a photograph of

(01:02:49):
my feet on proper measuring foot you know, real proper
stuff used to do your children at clarks and caves
and start right years ago. There you are, you tell me, yeah,
And this is a whole new chapter in my life
because more and more we're going down an avenue of

(01:03:09):
buying things online and having them posted to your house,
and Lord above, I actually have to go to a
shop and talk to people and say I've got special
kevlar liners that go in my shoes or boots to
give me a bit of spring. I've got all kinds
of orthotics that go in and if they don't go

(01:03:31):
in and they're not snug, your boots are no good
to me. So I'm down to about two or three
places in Britain I will buy footwear from full Stop.
I cannot go to a place where oh they're over there,
because I'll just walk out the door. I want old
fashioned customer service. But you've got to appreciate we're not

(01:03:53):
all the same.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
So who are those brands who serves you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
Well, well they're not brands, they're actually place. So I
go to Altberg at Richmond and they make them in
the factory and they've been fabulous to me, they really
really have. I actually said them this is my problem,
can you help me? And it was just come up, sir,
just come up with sort you out and they were
bang gone. The other one I go to is a
climate shop at Ambleside. They've been excellent to me because

(01:04:19):
even where I am in Derbyshire, the amount of independent
stores has been disappearing. And it's not just the outdoor sector.
Every sector suffering this.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
Can you imagine buying gloves for hands that you know
are just ripped to pieces. But I know people that
support me and have supported me for over twenty years,
extremities up in Grassmoor in Derbyshire and they will custom
do gloves for me, and thank goodness for them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Yeah, because now protecting what is remaining of your appendages
must be highest than your priorities now or much higher
than it was.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
Not only protecting but all also at maintaining. You know,
I must have the most wonderful softest feet of any
man in the world, because I have to cream them
twice a day every day because even though the skin
on there is from my hips, it's pulled up from
my feet. There is actually some hair from my groin

(01:05:21):
on my feet, which for a short time I did
actually have pubic hairs on my feet. However they did
fall out. But the fact is that twenty five years on,
that skin still tries to turn into a nail. It
goes really hard, and so every month I go to
p dietary at the local hospital or local clinic. They

(01:05:44):
literally shave dead skin off by the pound because it's
just the way it works now. And I then cream
my feet twice a day every day on the mountain,
in a sea, kayak, stalking, climbing, walking, or staying at home,
because if I don't I know what's coming, those feet
will crack and bleed. So its self care is really

(01:06:08):
really important.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
Although suppose toneail fungus is less of an issue for
you athletes. Foot's not a problem at all, trust me. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
In fact, and I have some artificial fingers, some silicon fingers,
and I keep trying to get the courage up to
take them into a nail bar and say can I
leave them with you and pick them up later? And
I mean, bless my niece. She did beauty therapy at college.
And if anybody's had a child like this where they
come back and they do moms nails and aren't nails

(01:06:37):
and your dad's uncle Nagina, you've not got any nails.
And I said, well, take me false ones in, tap
me fingers in, get them to do them, take them
into the os, you know, take them into college and
see what they say. And apparently the girl nearly fainted,
which you put them on the desk. But the fact
is you don't know half the people that have got
a prosthetic. They're that good these days. They're what passed

(01:06:58):
you in the street. And you'll never know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Yeah. There's almost like two schools of thoughts on it now,
isn't there. There's the extremely realistic and then people go
the other way and say, well, I'm bionic now, so
let's go for something that's optimized for function rather than appearance.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
I am terminator.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
Yeah you get that. Yeah, with them, particularly towards all
sort the athletic side of things. You see a lot
of the blades and stuff their feet, but.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
They're completely designed to be athletic and design on an
engineering basis against prettiness. And now with my hands, you know,
people say why don't you wear your false fingers. I've
learned how to use these hands and I still have
a sense of touch and feeling in them, and that's vital.
You don't get that in an orthotic. But also, and

(01:07:45):
there's a lot of bloody mindedness in this again, as
it was on the mountain. I found people falling over
backwards to help me, which is lovely. But if they
don't let you try, and they don't let you fail,
and they'll never let you learn, it's easy to say,
oh my fingers are short, I can't write properly. I
need to use a laptop or there's a magic pen

(01:08:07):
used to get these catalogs through your door years ago.
With all these attachments for the home and things that
you can put your keckle on, and I'm not decrying them.
They're obviously useful for somebody. My view was, I'm thirty
years old and I'm not having it. I had to
give in for one or two things. I do use
a button hook for my cuffs and my top button,

(01:08:28):
but I can do the rest with my hands. I
was only speaking in a school yesterday where an eight
year old girl said to me, how do you tie
your shoe lacers? Because their view is half your fingers
are missing, so you can't possibly do it. And the
fact was people said to me at the time, would
you like slip on shoes and close up with velcro?

(01:08:49):
And said, no, I want lacers. They offer you the
easy option. I'm just a stubborn old sod who says,
if I have to accept it, a will I have
self openly scissors. But other than that, let me try. Please,
let me try, Let me succeed or fail, and we'll
learn from that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Are you still finding things that that you're having to
cope with for the first time? You know, there's something
that hasn't come up in the last thirty years. Cross
ditch is terrible. What I would say is, I don't
even try. I mean, any instrument really is.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
I can reach the white keys on a keyboard, and
I can't get the black ones at the top. What
I would say is every day's learning experience, because let's
take an example. I take a train and you'll go
to a car park and you'll have a parking meet.
You have to slide the card in and then my
biggest problem is how the hell do I get it
back out?

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
It's things like, oh, there's a funny little handle on
this cupboard. That's all right for you, but it's not
so good for me. And you know, I know I'm
looking at from my perspective. So I've at home. You know,
I won't buy something if it's got a handle and
I can't operate. And I've been to a number of
places with you know, whether it be a car or

(01:10:12):
a camera, a furniture whatever. Oh it's got all these
fancy gadgets, so and I go, that's lovely. But if
I can't open the door at the front, it's a
bit useless, really, isn't it. So I have to still
pick things up and feel them. So every day is
a learning day. You know, I've got lambon at floors
at home. I'll drop a pound coid and I'll screen
for hours trying to pick it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
Up chase it and to find an edge and well,
or you get.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
A piece of paper under it. You know, I drop
money in a supermarket and I'm asking somebody of eighty
to pick it up for me because I can't, And
people glear at you saying, why are you asking that
person to help you? You're in your fifties. Are you
got any fingernails up? And every day is a learning day, Richard,
It really is.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
I would say that must it must keep your brain
in a certain state as well, because you're always sort
of looking for the challenge. You sort of see it
coming up and you go, oh, yeah, that's going to
be an issue because of this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
Well, I mean, just as an example, just recently, I've
had a spat with one of Britain's major banks because
one of their representatives was saying, I've got an issue
with something I've done. All the branches have closed, so
I'm on the phone to them saying, can you help
me with this? I've had a bit of a problem.
And the lady goes on and on about you need
to press this, press that, and I'm going who whoa, whoa,

(01:11:25):
whoa whoa. I'm terribly sorry. I can't keep up with you.
I'm a bit short in the finger department, and she
laughed at me. Now you do not laugh at people,
regardless of what you're doing, but you laugh with people.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
And I have now taken that bank to task and
I now sit on the Disability and Inclusion board because
everything now is on an app, which is great when
you've got fingers and delicate ones at that. And it's
not just me, this, people with arthritis, this people they've
had strokes, people that are visually impaired. Just because ninety

(01:12:04):
eight percent of you aren't even looking at the phone
and can do it, which is lovely for you. It
does something and everybody can.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
I was going to say, actually, yeah, touchscreens when that
must make because more of the world is going over
to a touchscreen interface, that must actually be closing things off.
Whereas buttons were there were often sized for all users
as they were.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
What I would say is touchscreens tend to work for
me if my hands are warm, but my hands can
get cold very quickly with the amount of damage that's done.
And then I could it a touchscreen day and night
and it just looks at you and goes what.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Yeah, there's always that thing in the mountains with touch
screens anywhere I've used my nose to dial things or
to take a photo and stuff like that before now
where it's hear only bit of flesh exposed on a
winter's day. But I suppose even that for you must
be to be touch and go.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Yeah, I'm trying to hit it with my forehead. You know,
it's really not quite working well, is it? But I
get point. I'm just head butting the phone and I
get your point, and it's you know. People now say,
but we've now got gloves and the tips of phone
resilient so you can dial up. I say, yes, but
my hands still don't fit them. And yes, you know,

(01:13:21):
I might be one in one hundred thousand. I might
be one in a million. I don't know. But we've
got to figure we've got to get away from this
fact that everybody is exactly the same. And the issue
I have, particularly with my feet, is that people can't
see them.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
They're in a pair of shoes.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
So for me, I was first shooting the other weekend
standing on a peg for twenty five minutes. That's really
hard work for me. Now I need to walk, so
I tend to dance around the peg for a bit
and people look at you like what you know you're
supposed to be there. I can't stand still that long
because I'm leaning backwards all the time, because I can't

(01:13:57):
lean into the balls of my feet because they ain't there.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Well, let's talk about shooting then, So how do you
get on with firearms? So let's go for shotgun first?
So opening breaking a shotgun must be pretty stumbled because
most of the thumb's still there, isn't it. Yeah, depending
which finger which and you're looking at I think it's given. Well,

(01:14:21):
I think he's giving me the thumbs up, but I'm
not sure.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Stumps up, stump.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
We say, all right, I made an assumption there. Then,
so let's go for it. Breaking a shotgun? Can you do?

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
You can do that, yes, But what I have to
do and again this is back to I need to
pick it up and I need to try it. So
when I first had the accident, a shot double trigger,
and it became very very quickly apparent tumor that that
wasn't going to work anymore. I have the first knuckle
of my first finger and that is good enough to

(01:14:53):
pull a trigger. But what you're good to remember is
my entire hand has rotated around the stock to do
that differently to other people. But two triggers stopped me.
So I had to sell my double trigger. And then
what I found is because also I'm a stubborn old sod,
I want English gulls, so I wanted an old English
single trigger, signed by side, which I managed to find

(01:15:16):
after a tremendous search. It's my most modern, no, it's
my second most modern gun. It's nineteen twenty seven. But
what I found was the quality of the wall up then,
which means the stock. It's a straight stock. I can't
really shoot Pistol Grip or Prince of Wales anymore. It's
so thin that what I've got left of my hand

(01:15:36):
goes round it, and it can pull a single trigger.
If it's too tight, I can put the top lever
across and open it, but it can be hard work.
If I'm just say, on the local pheasant shoot, it's
not so bad. We're not, you know, shooting like there's
no tomorrow. But sometimes it is an effort. And I

(01:15:58):
often shoot with gloves on just to keep hands warm,
so it's even more of an effort. It's even more
of an effort because I'm a silly old side who
likes paper cases. I mean, I met my life really
hard for myself. I really didn't say, you really are
stacking the odds against yourself. But then why not. Life
should be a challenge. It should not be easy, because

(01:16:18):
we learn nothing when it's easy. So I went to
a single English shotgun and then bless them. When I
lost my parents, I treated myself to two Things, which
was a nineteen seventy series two lands over with four
Guea sticks, which even now irritates peoplekus of my hands.
And I bought a pair of nineteen oh four single
trigger Hollands and I can shoot double gun. I can

(01:16:44):
operate the safety. But again I had to feel the guns.
I had to fire the guns, and I had to
get used to the guns.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
What's loading like?

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
It's not bad? Yeah, it's okay. I tend to carry. However,
what we would have called a loaders bag year is
go and put them in pairs. Me going through my
pockets rummaging for a pair of cards is really tough.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
Right, So another reason for the side by side I
suppose as well, it's like this, The easier orientation to
get in it is for me.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
And I'm just an old fashioned Englishman and I mean
I've got an under and over for trap shooting and
you know a bit of rough shooting whatever else. But
all my other guns are cyber sided, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
And you had to adjust your shooting stance, I'm guessing
because of the of your feet.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
Yes, I had to work out where my balance point was.
I can fall backward was really easily, I mean really easily.
So after leaning to the gun a little more, and
what he chose to do is something that people should
do more, which was when I went back into mountaineering,
I got some professional coaching. When I went back into shooting,

(01:17:52):
I got some professional coaching. And don't be frightened of
saying I'm really struggling. Can we have lessons please, because
I learned more from those and the coach helped me
develop that chap called Steve Pounting, and I still shoot
with now. He helped me develop how to balance, how
to move triggers, do all kinds of things to get

(01:18:13):
me back. And I'm not the best shot in the world,
but I am mad. I can knock him out of
the ear when I need to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
What about rifles, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Here's another world. I mean, I don't own a rifle,
but I've taken up stalking and that was through an invitation,
as so many things of these things are, you know,
invitation to go mountaineering. One of the guys on the syndicate,
Mark said to me, would you like to come stalking?
And he was open to everybody, but I was determined
to go. Do you know that sounds great? Let's how
I go? And we still stalk together now and again
it is the before we go out. I need to

(01:18:46):
feel the gun. I need to dry fire it. I
need to work out its balance points, how the bolt works,
all the things actually you should be doing anyway. And
I know when we take the magazine now, people often say,
you know, open the bolt, catch the round as it
comes out. It's not happening. Unclip the front. And again

(01:19:08):
it's can I operate the magazine clip? So what happens
is people help me if I'm struggling. But again we
have that conversation before we start. You know, I can
I can get on sticks, I can get prone, I
can be on the bipod, I can put deer down.
It's not a problem when I'm struggling with the gun.
I will ask, and that's a massive, massive thing. People do.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
Never be afraid to ask. Has it made you a
better communicator one to one with people because you've had
to You have to explain your limitations, and you have
to explain your variations that you need yes and no.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
I mean, some people would say I'm a lot worse now.
Some people will say I never should up. I think
what I do get a lot of people because I live.
One of my big things is living by example, setting
the example, and I hope I set a good one.
I'm sure there are some people that disagree, but I

(01:20:05):
try and our very best. And one of the reasons
I do a lot of work in schools is because
when I talk with pupils, I give them permission to ask,
and I give them permission to question and to be inquisitive.
Rather than sit at the back, you know, put your
hands under your legs and sit on them. Please ask me.

(01:20:28):
Nothing is off the table here. If you want to
ask me about my injuries, what it's like to drive
a car, paddler, canoe, it doesn't matter. Ask me. And
that's why I say the girl the other day with
how do you do your shoe lacers?

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
What's it like?

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
You know, do your hands get really cold? Can you cope?
Can you pick your nose anymore? Not very well? But
the last all kinds of things because they're just inquisitive.
And the problem we have is that as we get
older we stop asking. We feel embarrassed. And you know,
I shoot simulated game days at our Borox glay suit

(01:21:06):
just took the away from me and they know me
well enough. But I might be paired up with somebody
I've never met, so I'll openly say hello, such and
so it's my name's Nigel. And just so you know,
so if I'm having a bit of trouble, can you
give me am today? Would you mind? I never tell him,
I always ask and we get on like hours on fire.
What about fishing, well, now here's another one, Mark, who

(01:21:29):
I go stalking with. We go fly fishing together as well,
and thankfully I had a rod adaptors for me which
was wonderful, partly with an ice ax grip as well
as other things in the handle. It's really quite imaginative
for fly fishing. Because I used to cause fish as
a lad.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
I've gone the fly.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
Fishing now and I can tie a fly onto a line,
but it's quite long winded. So I might often say Mark,
and I'll be a few yards apart. If if I
can do it, I will. If I'm struggling, I'll just
walk up to Mark and say give us Can you
give us hand?

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
And he will?

Speaker 2 (01:22:05):
Or shall we change flies? Yep, that's fine, and we
just work it out by mutual friendship and by the
fact of you know, if you're going to fly fish,
I might stand in the river for a bit, or
I might get on the side of the bank and
I might bring a deck chair just so I can
sit down because I can't stand really well, but I
can still cast. You know, I'm not the greatest fisherman

(01:22:28):
by a long way, but I thoroughly enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
But it is just.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Managing those differences, and that's all it's about.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
Are you working through a list then of things you
want to try and things you want to sort of
work you way and see if I can do this
or with some adaptation, can I do that?

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
Not massively? I mean people often say to me, you know,
do you have a bucket list of things you want
to do? And I've never had one, and that does
surprise some people. What I tend to find is things
turn up. So just as an example, you know, we
made a documentary last year about my accident, and we're
taking that across the world at film festivals and it's
on Amazon Prime. Now there's the advert called Frostbitten. But

(01:23:08):
on top of that, people then say, and would you
like to try this? So I work on a big
run called the Spine Race. It's one of the ultras
where people run the Pennine Way, and I'm one of
the safety crew because some mountain leader trained, and I
will help other people. And then what I see is
I thought my feet were bad until you see somebody

(01:23:29):
six days in with feet that even I can smell,
and my sense of smells bad. And what I help
people with that. I've now been asked to go on
the world's highest altitude marathon in Chile next year. I
have no idea how I will react to that altitude.
I'll tell you I'm not running. That's for people with feet.
But do you know what, Let's embrace it, let's try it,

(01:23:50):
and let's see what happens.

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
This documentary then as well, with that, you went back
to Denali. He went back to it. There was sort
of closing of a circle with.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
That, that's right. Yeah. I wanted to go back for
the twenty first anniversary, and then something called COVID turned
up and that tended to knacker everything, isn't it. So
I came to the twenty fifth anniversary and myself, Helen,
my partner, and a film crew went out. I Askedteven
Anthony if you were interested.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
It wasn't for them.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
That's okay, because again we're quite open about this. We
get requested to do podcasts and things, and as far
as I'm concerned, the three of us, but you know,
I went off and we filmed it, and we got
in contact with a guy called Darryl Miller who was
on the team that rescued us. Daryl's now when he's eighties,

(01:24:45):
you know, and he's the most wonderful, beautiful man you
will ever meet. And I use those terms really well.
He is so kind. He will give you every hour
of his day. He will share things with you, and
he filled in much about my recovery and accent that
I didn't know because when you're a casualty, you don't

(01:25:07):
see the other side of it. You don't see when
they're bringing the chopper in how they're going to get
it up there, you know, erh and he filled in
an enormous amount for me. We also found a lady
called Connie Jensen who was one of my pain nurses,
and we can both remember the moment that she was

(01:25:28):
putting an epijoral lines into my shoulder and spine and
I had two lines in which is unknown. And again
I didn't know this. Connie said to me, you're the
only person we ever did this on and the Alaskans
were on the phone to the fins to see how
to do it and if it could be done. And

(01:25:48):
again she filled me in with all this. I'd never
seen it, I've never heard about it. We also flew
onto the mountain, which was just spectacular. We weren't there
to climb it, We just went to have a look
and do some filming. We bumped into a lady we
all call base Camp Annie. Everybody knows he because she
was at base Camp when we got there and she
now works in Talketner. Again a mind of wonderful information

(01:26:11):
to fill in so so much. On top of interviewing
folk in the UK, my sister at Rose, one of
the physios hell and yet other people as well involved
to fill that story in because though it's an idea
I had and it's about me, it's actually about a
lot of other people who were that village or town

(01:26:32):
of folk around me that's allowed me to be the
fifty six year old ATAYM.

Speaker 1 (01:26:37):
Now, where can we find that documentary?

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
Amazon? Prime, Apple TV, Adventure Sports TV just typed Frost
Bitten into your search engines and it will appear.

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
There will be in the show notes for this as well,
along with links to your website. And I think we
should probably put in the links to all the things
that you're involved with as well. So you're involved in
books and mountain Rescue in the Yes, I'm the team president. Yeah, yeah,
so you're you're in the Mountain Heritage Trust as well.

Speaker 2 (01:27:13):
Yes, I also, like you know, and this is something
people don't see and Mountain otis trustogy of this really well.
When people used to climb, they used to climb in
huh lo and behold tweed and most of them were
shooting jackets and shooting kits. And it actually says that
in the adverts. We've got the original paperwork and we
put this out to folk. These jackets were designed for

(01:27:35):
the field and so I collect old mountaineering kit. My
house is a museum of stuff. Yeah, I'm one of
the ambassadors for them, try and promote it as much
as we can.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
And weirdly, with this world of pfas and microplastics and
things like that, actually people are starting to swing back
towards that kit a little bit as well, for cotton
and marino and ventile and things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
Certainly, when I go to Norway, my contact's over there.
Everything's wall, Norwegian wall. They love it, and I come
back with loads.

Speaker 1 (01:28:10):
Of it and there's just a huge pile of things
that you're you're involved with. So we're going to put
all of the links in there. And I urge everyone
to go and watch this documentary because it really is
a It really is a powerful film, and there's so
much more to Nigel's story than that we can cover
in this episode, because we're already about an hour and

(01:28:30):
a half on the recording now, and there's that I've
got a thousand questions I haven't asked yet, So I
think we'll have to get a Nigel back on or
at least maybe track him down, because next time you
come over to North Wales, let me know, well do
absolutely would delighted. Yeah, and thank you to Nigel for
coming on, thank you to everyone for listening, thank you

(01:28:50):
to our patrons for making this possible, and well just
thank you to everyone who comes together to make this show.
This weird little thing is that it is because I
know we have such a broad audience now, and I
know we will have picked up a few more people
coming to hear Nigel's stories. So most of the episodes

(01:29:11):
aren't as good as this one. This has been one
of my favorites by far. Thank you, Thank you,

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