I’ve\u00a0spent most of the last\u00a010 days in\u00a0near confinement to the house, and the chance to deal with lots of things that don’t always get enough time when I’m fit and active.<\/p>\n
The reason for my confinement was a knee injury that I suffered back in March 2011 while we were offshore, carrying out a transect survey as part of the Northeast Cetacean Project<\/a>.\u00a0 I was the only surveyor standing up, as I was trying to photograph a Common Dolphin<\/em><\/strong> that had just passed across the bow, when we hit an unexpectedly large wave.\u00a0 That collision was followed quickly by one between my knee and the back of the seat in front of me \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 Lots of pain initially but it quickly eased, and I put all the subsequent twinges down to\u00a0the inevitable consequences of getting older.\u00a0 Then, earlier this year, a client who just happens to be a nurse noticed that I was limping slightly and asked if I had any other symptoms…so, in late July I found myself having x-rays and an\u00a0MRI scan, and trying to find a 2-week slot without any bookings so that I could have surgery.\u00a0 Now I’ve got a knee that’s pain-free and has a greater range of movement than I’ve enjoyed for nearly 2 years \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n I’m not renowned for being a good patient\/invalid (as Sarah would attest), but my lay-off has let me focus on a number of things that have kept me from becoming too crotchety about having to stay in the house; last week we had our Grading Visit for the Green Tourism Business Scheme<\/a>, so as soon as that was over we started looking at the suggestions made by the assessor.\u00a0 We’re involved in several conservation organisations\/projects and it’s really important to us that the environmental impact of our business is minimised as far as possible.\u00a0 Thursday evening saw me in our office, with ice-pack on my knee, in a conference call about the Northeast Cetacean Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n As it’s December, Gift Vouchers<\/a> have been prominent, and we’ve got a special offer until December 17th – Gift Vouchers at our standard trip price (without a charge for the Gift Card and postage).\u00a0 I’ve used my ‘free’ time to make a few changes to the website;\u00a0I’ve added next year’s Pelagic<\/a> trips to our online shop<\/a>, changed some of our site content, including adding our Green Policy and Responsible Visitor Charter<\/a>\u00a0and tidied up the layout of the Pelagics page so that trip reports are all listed together, and next year’s trips are all listed together.<\/p>\n Just 4 more days and I should be able to drive again \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve\u00a0spent most of the last\u00a010 days in\u00a0near confinement to the house, and the chance to deal with lots of things that don’t always get enough time when I’m fit and active. The reason for my confinement was a knee injury that I suffered back in March 2011 while we were offshore, carrying out a transect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[521,361],"class_list":["post-1427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-and-friends","tag-green-tourism-business-scheme","tag-northeast-cetacean-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1428,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions\/1428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}