Nov 24th, 2024

Author: donich_admin

Bye Bye Bert

Storm has abated today.  R and I walked over to Drimsynie.  The plan had been to find a flight of stairs to walk up and down and also to go on to the high path to see how rough under foot it is.

We found some stairs, unfortunately neither were ideal for my purposes because the first one the treads were so wide that descending them normally you would only go one stair at the time.  The others were normal treads but there was no handrail.

Anyway this did as a trial because a major challenge has been to find any steps to practice on.  After the surgery I have had, some people can go down stairs normally and some can’t, with the key ability being total flexion of the foot/ankle of about 40 degrees. With less than this you can only descend one stair at a time, good foot first and obviously this is a significant restriction.

I thought I had enough flexion, and sure enough I can go downstairs fine, though I am still a bit nervous without the handrail.  I need to overcome this, and I will.

Unfortunately we then ran into the aftermath of Bert as the path we had been going to use to connect to the high path was completely washed out.  We could perhaps have gone round but it wasn’t particularly nice weather so we just went back by the community garden.

There were lots of sheep next door, and only a little snow on the mountains.  Hopefully all will be well with J and his cross-country travel tonight.