The 4th March 2011 completed my first six months as a vaper and six months without cigarettes.
Coincidentally, the day before that chance meeting with an e-cig vendor in a shopping centre on 4th September 2010, I had completed a quite gruelling walk in the Derbyshire Peak District. Who knows, maybe the continuing aches and soreness in my calves that day were significant in making me put my hand in my pocket to buy that E-Lites starter kit and it wasn’t a coincidence at all!
Regardless, I did make the switch that day, and sitting in this very chair exactly six months later, it occurred to me that I should really be able to notice some improvement in my health, shouldn’t I? “Healthiness” however is a difficult thing to measure, particularly relative health as compared to six months ago.
Then, in a flash it came to me. What if I were to recreate the most gruelling part of 3rd September 2010? That would give me something to directly compare and should make my relative healthiness blatantly obvious! I unfortunately didn’t have time to recreate the whole walk from 2010, but there was one section of it that I remembered vividly, being the descent from Win Hill Pike to Ladybower Reservoir. Although it was a descent, the steep, precarious pathway edged by a high bank on one side and an often sheer drop to a reservoir tributary, punctuated by waterfalls was definitely the toughest part of that day, so the route was planned!
So, I decided that I would ascend and descend to the summit of Win Hill Pike and see if I suffered as badly as before. Not only that but I’d take a camera, do a PCC and a juice review for www.vapourtrails.tv on the way!
The following video shows how I got on and was originally broadcast in two parts during my VTTV show on 6th February 2011 – full show available at http://www.vapourtrails.tv/?p=639
Sadly, due to the low cloud cover, high winds and some camera problems thrown in for good measure, the stunning views from the summit of Win Hill Pike didn’t materialise with only seven seconds of footage from the peak surviving. You can see what I got at exactly 16m into the video. Fortunately, under the cover of the forest, I managed to get plenty of other scenic shots which run throughout the video.
