Doctor’s Orders
March 29 2025
We have been back in the UK for a little over 2 weeks now following our abortive Norwegian ski trip. A journey that was supposed to last 8 weeks and see us ski around 400 miles. In the end we were in Norway for just 3 weeks and three days.
The four days that we did ski were, with hindsight, pretty good (see my blog What is the opposite of a resounding success? for more details and fun photos). Everything we did on our days in the mountains went well. We navigated well, ate well, stayed warm and dry. The tent was excellent and we worked efficiently as a team. Those days were definitely Type 2 fun, as someone commented on the blog.
Type 2 fun, for those who don’t know, sits in the middle of the Fun Scale, a scale that seeks to categorise activities that are planned to be fun:
Type 1 Fun: Activities that are just plain and simple fun, both at the time and with hindsight.
Type 2 Fun: Activities that are hard, grim, miserable and possibly even downright dangerous at the time but, in retrospect are declared ‘great fun’. The ‘retrospect’ view is important. It can either be immediately after or many years later. I once competed in the Tough Guy Challenge, a now defunct and much harder version of the Tough Mudder events that happen around the UK. This event, after almost two hours of grimness, left me a gibbering, cramped up wreck unable to hold a cup of hot tea from shaking too much who swore, through a mudcaked and frozen mouth, “Never Again!” but just 2 hours later, once warm and dry was happily discussing tactics for a return the following year. That is Type 2 fun. It is Type 2 Fun from which personal legends are made.
Type 3 Fun: Activities that are neither fun at the time or in retrospect.
These are of course all relative and the line between type 2 and 3 can be pretty thin, especially as time passes.
Anyway, I digress.
Our trip home went remarkably smoothly considering how much kit we had to drag around with us.
85 kg of kit (and 55kg of Mrs P).
Back Home
The pain in my groin had not improved with resting and possibly unsurprisingly got worse when we skied, walked, lifted heavy things or… well just about all activities. So, back home the first task was to visit the doctor to find out what was wrong. My local GP (doctor) was unable to find anything conclusive, but he recommended further investigation and referred me to a specialist (Consultant). The consultant identified an inguinal hernia (look it up. I had to). A scan, after a bit of rummaging, (I think that is the medical term) confirmed this.
So we were right to return to the UK. At the least I would have become more and more uncomfortable as time progressed, at the worst it could have led to a medical emergency.
So what next?
“So what next?” I hear you ask.
Back to work eventually I suppose. But first I need to get an operation to fix the hernia. I am hoping to get this done soon and there will follow a 4 to 6 week period of recovery.
The future
It’s not exactly living the dream, but we did put our learning from four days in the mountains to good use on our return and have already packed for next year as the following photos of the two pulks (Pulky III and ALP - Amanda’s Little Pulk) show.
My next blog will provide a full list of our kit in part to help others heading to the mountains for ski touring, but also to demonstrate just how nerdy/ anal we have become over our packing lists.
