Always having been interested in how people decide to do what they do, I can tend to be a bit of a bore at parties and other similar social gatherings.

I’m usually the one, with glass in hand, asking: “So how did you first decide to become a marine biologist?” Or: “A window cleaner, eh? Were you always fascinated by leather and glass?”

I once asked a GP how he’d ended up as a family doctor. “I wanted to be a vet,” he said. “But the study was too long, ridiculously complicated and the exams too hard.”

It’s surprising the explanations you hear when you show interest. They can be illuminating – positively enlightening as to character.


Anne Pickles Nervously, during an appointment with a gynaecologist years ago, I asked: “This can’t be the pleasantest of jobs. What on earth made you choose it?”

“I did initially consider being a dentist,” he said. “But honestly, the idea of having to deal up-close with strangers’ mouths all day every day – well, I couldn’t bear it.”

But a volunteer mountain rescuer? Now, that’s a real puzzle. What sort of people willingly put themselves through danger, in foul weather, at any unpredictable time of day or night, to rescue the foolhardy and careless, with no reciprocal reward other than a mumbled “Thanks, mate”… if they’re lucky?

When not so fortunate, they can expect abuse. And still they don’t walk away, advising the rude, drunk and ungratefully bad tempered to find their own way down the mountain and back to safety.

Recently emergency services and rescue teams spent hours trying to save an inebriated man who had fallen down a mine near Helvellyn. Long, arduous efforts through the night to rescue him and have him transferred to hospital for treatment to suspected spinal injuries, might have been expected to have been met with humble gratitude. And apology.

But in return for their life-saving, the 32-year-old chap – who boasted he’d drunk 15 pints and “lots of vodka” – abused them with offensive language and fighting talk.

Mike Blakey, leader of the Patterdale Mountain Rescue Team, admitted he’d anticipated some thanks but none had immediately been forthcoming.

“We’re not normally critical of anybody,” he said. “It’s just that with this one – I don’t think he realised the implications, in terms of cost, and also that the 23 people who came out to him were volunteers.”

Such is often the case. Even the stone cold sober – who are, perhaps, the most usual wanderers in the wild – frequently fail to appreciate how many lives are put at risk when they chance an adventure in the great outdoors, inadequately equipped.

A good, exciting story of derring-do to tell when they get home perhaps. But it could all have ended so differently. For the rescuers too.

So what is it that drives on the thankless to repeat rescue operations? What kind of men and women are these? The best answer I’ve yet managed to hear came from a volunteer, who merely shrugged and smiled as he replied. “Somebody has to do it,” he said. “But you do sometimes hope you can get through your Christmas dinner first.”

Winter is on its way. Summer hasn’t exactly been the kindest we’ve known and call-outs have been coming thick and fast to teams of volunteers from the feckless, reckless and reliant on expert assistance in times of panic.

Somebody does have to do it. Thank God expert volunteers accept the task without question or complaint. But would it be too much to ask of walkers, climbers, ramblers and drinkers, who venture out into Cumbria’s sensational, perilous terrain, to spare a thought for them – and for their families – before they set off?