Coping with a bad cold is like sitting out a storm

Travelling on foot, Ralph takes in some of the stunning north coast views. He enjoyed ‘brilliant blue sea below grassy slopes spangled yellow with primrose’.

I’M fortunate enough to enjoy pretty good health and haven’t been to the doctor for years. But I have at least one Achilles heel – I take colds badly. Maybe it’s a legacy of being brought up in an area where you could cut the pea-soup fogs with a knife. Anyway, when I get a cold, either it’s just a sniffle or it’s the full works.

Tesco has to make a special delivery of boxes of tissues. Constant sneezes and coughs echo round the neighbourhood and soon the starlings are making good imitations. Sweat can be wrung out of the bed sheets in the morning after sleepless nights of sipping hot drinks and swallowing aspirins. I sit out in the sun, thinking about having a walk round the garden but somehow never manage to move. That’s Morven in the distance. Have I ever actually climbed it? Impossible!

I’d been planning a short break kayaking in the north-west. The thought of an Eskimo roll in cold water sets off another bout of sneezing. But I’m not seeking sympathy, I just give thanks I don’t get anything worse and though I might feel like death it’s only a cold and I’ll be fine again soon. I hope we don’t get a cure for the common cold. We need them to force us to slow up and realise a day or two spent doing and achieving nothing isn’t the end of the world.

Setting out from Sandside harbour, Ralph heads west along the coast to Melvich.

When at home and there isn’t anything that absolutely has to be done, I can just sit and let the virus pass, like sitting out a storm in a bothy.

It’s the times one of my bad colds has developed on a trip that are seared into my memory. One November weekend, snatched between weeks at work and the increasingly busy Christmas season, I’d cycled out to Tongue on an early Saturday morning, my destination being Freisgill bothy.

Heading up the long hill of the Moin, a pedal snapped off the bike. To cut a long story short, instead of abandoning the trip I carried on, eventually leaving the bike as planned at the Moin House and walking out to the bothy as I’d often done before. For some reason I was very tired and didn’t make the usual sortie along the magnificent coastline towards Whiten Head before retreating to the bothy.

As evening came on, so did a sore throat, soon to be raging. The next morning, feeling pretty grim, I had to get myself the five pathless miles back to the Moin House and then attempt the long ride home on a one-pedalled bicycle. Somehow I made it as far as Bettyhill before finding a taxi. I still remember sitting on the step at home in the afternoon trying to summon enough energy to unpack the bike.

THEN the time I was cycling Groats to Land’s End. The cold came on at Perth, but I was determined to soldier on, down through the Borders with the icy February air wracking my sinuses. One of the highlights of the trip was finding a special offer of a free second pot of tea at a Little Chef near Lancaster, desperately needed with my dry rasped throat. I was still so full of cold on finishing the trip that the man sharing a sleeper compartment with me from London to Inverness had to ask that I stop blowing my nose as I was keeping him awake...

On another occasion I was having a camping and cycling trip on Orkney. The early September weather had turned to the usual Orkney mists. Camped on Westray, those familiar symptoms started...

Time for a break – Ralph’s kayak is capable of negotiating some tight spots.

Already having decided to spend a couple of nights at the hostel on Papa Westray I took the boat across, my colds are best mollycoddled but I was determined to walk round the little island on the only fine day. It probably made no difference, I was worse the next day and spent most of it sitting on boats to Eday via Kirkwall, just managing the little bike ride down Westray from Pierowall to the ferry. Perhaps, I hoped, I’d soon be over it.

When Eday harbour finally loomed out of the fog I was glad it was only a couple of miles to the youth hostel, arriving shivering to find I had the unheated, barn-like building entirely to myself. (The hostel is now vastly upgraded.) By turning the cooker on and leaving the oven door open, I managed to keep warm in the kitchen, spent the night soaking the hostel blankets with sweat and decided belatedly I’d better head homewards on the first morning ferry.

There remained, though, 15 miles to cycle from Kirkwall to Stromness, feeling weak as a kitten, before at last reaching the warm sanctuary of the ferry terminal and the boat to Scrabster. Indeed typical of Orkney bike trips, which usually seem to end up with some desperate struggle in wild weather to get to the ferry at Burwick or Stromness. Cycling on Orkney is not for the faint-hearted.

I WAS pleased to hear of several folk taking advantage of the glorious weather on “Wedding Avoidance Day” to climb Morven or Scaraben, take a bus outing to Tongue, or do something else out of doors. My choice was a little sea-kayak trip from Sandside Bay along the coast to Melvich, then a gentle jog back along the cliff tops. It was an idyllic day of totally clear air and unbroken blue sky as I paddled out of Sandside harbour and rounded the overhung headland. Large rafts of guillemots were on the water, most are now ensconced on eggs on their cliff ledges.

The dark sea caves didn’t appeal with too much swell to get close, some calm day with others I must investigate what are reputedly some of the longest in the world. A few puffins provided company on the water, only diving below the surface or taking off when a few yards away. Already quite a few were in position by their burrows on the puffin stack halfway along this coast.

It was fairly sheltered here and for the first time I managed to paddle down the narrow channel between the stack and the neighbouring cliff and land on the boulder beach, a favourite spot often visited by land and even, occasionally, on a rushed lunch break from Dounreay – taking a car to within half a mile on the main road. A forecast of rising south-east wind meant I planned to be out of the water by twelve, even so by the headland at Bighouse the boat was surfing along in a good force four and a following sea, with the tide to help.

Colonies of seabirds are now settled on cliff edges, protecting their eggs.

MELVICH beach looked glorious from the sea, empty but for one person and a dog in the distance. I surfed into the river mouth on the breaking swell but with the tide low a better landing spot was across the bay at Melvich pier. I hauled the boat out over the seaweed, changed into shorts and jogging shoes, and set off with a small bag of sandwiches back along the coast towards Sandside.

Those days of unbroken sun we experienced already seem like a dream, totally cloudless as I jogged along the beach, crossed the footbridge and climbed up over the moor to the headland with views of 50 miles to the Sutherland peaks as well as east to Orkney. The wind was picking up, south-east winds on a fine afternoon in Caithness are always stronger than forecast.

This coast, though exposed cliffs with sea stacks and geos, always to me has a friendlier aspect than the austere greys of the eastern cliffs, especially between Lybster and Wick.

On a sunny day it’s a grand walk, or jog, from Melvich to Reay and, as with most of the coast, a day is needed to see it properly, visit all the headlands, look down all the geos and scramble down to the two or three beaches that are accessible.

Knowing it well I was taking a few short cuts, just enjoying the exhilaration of one of the best days of the year, brilliant blue sea below grassy slopes spangled yellow with primroses, the calls of kittiwakes and shags echoing upwards.

A flask of tea was waiting in the car at Sandside, then just a 10-minute drive to Melvich to pick up the boat. And that’s another thing the odd bad cold does, it makes you appreciate how fortunate you are to have good health most of the time, with usable legs, eyes, ears and arms.

If you are in that lucky position, don’t squander what you have. Get out there in God’s country and make the most of what He has given you!

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