ROGER’S RUMINATIONS by Roger Wheeler

Living dangerously

Naturally everyone enjoys a walk on the wild side even if it’s just a stroll round the park. Obviously we all need fresh air and some gentle exercise from time to time. But let’s not get carried away. There is a huge industry trying to tempt us outdoors to spend money on new clothes, shoes and hats. Not to mention the guide books and maps.

Climbing mountains has always been very popular; the adrenaline rush must be quite something. They call it a sport but it’s a pretty dangerous one. You can face falling rocks, ice, avalanches, crevasses, and the dangers from altitude and sudden changes in weather. Quite why climbers should want to put their lives at risk for no apparent reason is quite worrying. Do they ever give a thought to the mountain rescue teams that have to go and bring them down?

There are actual queues to climb Everest. The price for a standard climb ranges from £20,000 to £62,000. A fully custom climb will run to over £84,000. Sounds great, I’ll think about it, but there will be a television programme to save me the trouble. The guardians of almost every famous mountain now want large sums to allow you to risk life and limb to climb it. They say it’s a challenge and exciting, I simply don’t understand.

Today there are plenty of people who are making money from wandering around and disturbing nature. All except of course St David Attenborough, who stated the whole thing off many years ago undoubtedly for the best of scientific reasons and has now become a national treasure. But this genre has turned into a television monster with dozens of attractive, young, mainly male presenters trekking to some extremely inaccessible parts of the world to bring their daring deeds to your sitting room. On most nights there is at least one television programme featuring acres of rolling hills or arid deserts, so you can sit in the comfort of your own home and look and admire and think how lucky you are not to actually be there. Never mind about the many wild animals intent on doing them harm.

Of course sex outdoors can be fun, if only for the possibility of being seen. We found a meadow once in, what we thought was, the middle of nowhere, and so started to enjoy ourselves. Within a few minutes the 2.15 Brighton to Southampton trundled past about 20 feet away, we hadn’t noticed the railway line. If they had been looking, the passengers wouldn’t have been the least surprised.

Ben Fogle’s television series New Lives in the Wild is enough to put anyone off ever leaving their house. We have always said that it’s great having all that lovely countryside so close, we can go and look at it anytime and then come home. We are constantly told that regular exercise results in a healthy mind and body, you can get both by simply resting quietly and thinking nice thoughts.

The call of the wild? It should keep quiet.