THELMA Edwards’s letter relating to outdoor pursuits and swearing (April 13) reminded me of a day hill walking in the 1960s. These were in the days before websites were available advising routes, and we relied on a book by WA Poucher, whose guides did for Scottish hills, what Wainwright's did for the Lake district.
This day we were using it to climb Ben Nevis by the more interesting route via Carn Mor Dearg and the arête which joins the two mountains.
We were about two-thirds way up Carn Mor, when we took a break, all of us breathing rather heavily. Hugh, one of our number, whom we had never heard swearing, suddenly said, "Poucher grades his walks as easy, hard and severe. Has he never heard of f******g severe?"
Bert Peattie,
64 Bowhouse Drive, Kirkcaldy.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here