By: Blonde One

If you are easily offended or have a weak constitution do not enter. Turn back now!

Why is there so much snot when you’re climbing a hill?! It’s not that you necessarily have a cold or are recovering from one but you can guarantee loads of the stuff pouring from your nose as you’re slogging away up the hill. What is the point? The last thing you want to be doing when you’re part way up a Scottish mountain is take your mittens off, get your tissue out (which would be reduced to a soggy mess in seconds) and give your nose a good blow. Even if you did this you know for sure that it would need to be done again within a few seconds.

Some people (mostly men) use the ‘snot rocket’ method of nose clearing. You know the one, where you close one nostril, turn your head away from the wind, check that the person behind you is not too close and give the remaining nostril a forceful blow. This expels the snot as a ‘rocket’. Lovely! This method is fraught with danger though. What happens if you misjudge the wind direction? How far towards the person behind you will the wind take the ‘rocket’? How do you clear up any mess left on your nose should your blow not have been quite hard enough? I don’t think I will ever succumb to this method.

Some say that it’s a good thing to have snot as you can see how healthy you are in the colour of the snot; the clearer the snot, the more healthy you are. They also say that it gets rid of any bad stuff like dust and dirt that might be accumulating through your increased breathing levels while exercising.

I try not to use the ‘wipe it on my glove method’ even though some gloves have a soft patch on the thumb specially designed for it. Numbers will be glad to hear this since I borrowed his mittens for my Scotland trip!

The only thing I can do to ease this horrible situation is to use a handkerchief that makes me feel a bit more like a girl!