More cycling? Less motoring? Vote now please!

[Pebble]

I'm just about to leave for a 120 mile round trip to take my wife to a hospital for a CT scan. Some advice, please, as to how I can reduce this travel. Other than walking 2 x15 miles to the station then 2x15 miles at the other end.

At the moment you may well be creating less CO2 going by car.
Trains create 35g co2 per km per passenger (so the two of you 70g of co2 per km)
If your car can achieve 60mpg (mine can) then the two of you would be creating 125g of CO2 per KM
https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/184 ... 019-20.pdf

And for your journey going direct by car will be considerably shorter than the car+train+taxi option. may be 120 round trip as opposed to 180 mile? Back of the fag packet calculations would suggest 24kg co2 by car, or 25.8kg by car-train-taxi


I do think train is best whenever possible and that is our preferred method, but it is very rarely the practical way to get anywhere. But for us the train option is nearly always more expensive in both money and co2 output.

[Oldjohnw]

Thanks and most interesting. We prefer train but too often it just doesn't work and nothing to do with the cost.

A Sunday afternoon would be impossible. And think for a moment why hospital appointments may be needed. A five hour day would have been ten hours.

[Pebble]

Best of luck with the scan, a very stressful time for the two of you.

I think I would prefer a car for that journey, if you get delayed at the hospital for 2 or 3 hours you won't be missing the train.

[Oldjohnw]

Best of luck with the scan, a very stressful time for the two of you.

I think I would prefer a car for that journey, if you get delayed at the hospital for 2 or 3 hours you won't be missing the train.

Many thanks indeed.

An irony is that there is a general hospital much closer - half the distance - but it is the wrong side of a border!

[peterb]

It does mean that there will be one more cyclist in the Cotswolds. But one less in Northumberland at the Scottish Borders.

- I'll be your replacement up here, not quite the Borders but not far away, and we moved from the Cotswolds to be closer to family in Northumberland. Lots and lots of cyclists for you to meet down there too, not so many up here. As for car v public transport - my wife has a hospital appointment soon 'down south' 350 miles away - 700 mile round trip, virtually impossible by train and public transport.

[Pebble]

Best of luck with the scan, a very stressful time for the two of you.

I think I would prefer a car for that journey, if you get delayed at the hospital for 2 or 3 hours you won't be missing the train.

Many thanks indeed.

An irony is that there is a general hospital much closer - half the distance - but it is the wrong side of a border!

Indeed, it would have been a far less stressful place to visit.

I wonder what the rules are regrading where you are sent, if you had been Cornhill Wark Mindrum you would be going to BGH, may be it is post code as I think they are all TD****. or may be where your doctor is based?

[Jdsk]

An irony is that there is a general hospital much closer - half the distance - but it is the wrong side of a border!

I wonder what the rules are regrading where you are sent, if you had been Cornhill Wark Mindrum you would be going to BGH, may be it is post code as I think they are all TD****. or may be where your doctor is based?

Is this for a patient who lives in in NE England and a hospital in Scotland?

Jonathan

[Pebble]

An irony is that there is a general hospital much closer - half the distance - but it is the wrong side of a border!

I wonder what the rules are regrading where you are sent, if you had been Cornhill Wark Mindrum you would be going to BGH, may be it is post code as I think they are all TD****. or may be where your doctor is based?

Is this for a patient who lives in in NE England and a hospital in Scotland?

Jonathan

Yes, the 3 places I mention are all in North Northumberland but seem to use Scottish health care which saves them massive journeys. I have often wonder if I come off the bike just over the border, (where I often cycle) would I be taken about 80 mile from home down to Cramlington on Tynesdie, or would I end up 10 mile from home in the BGH.

[Oldjohnw]

An irony is that there is a general hospital much closer - half the distance - but it is the wrong side of a border!

I wonder what the rules are regrading where you are sent, if you had been Cornhill Wark Mindrum you would be going to BGH, may be it is post code as I think they are all TD****. or may be where your doctor is based?

Is this for a patient who lives in in NE England and a hospital in Scotland?

Jonathan

NE England as in North Northumberland but not quite Mindrum or Wark. Our post code is TD but 15 (largely Berwick) which is usually a Wansbeck trip AFAIK. Much of the borough is NE. I believe in exceptional circumstances they allow cross border medical traffic but not usually an option. BGH is still a trip but about 25 miles. I don’t actually know the rules but we are never given an option.

When I had a hernia operation about 5 years ago my options were: North Tyneside (65 miles) or Hexham (60 + miles) . Tortuous journeys.

[Jdsk]

It's a great question but I don't know the answer.

There's a good description for England and Wales here:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/part ... er-health/
but I don't know anything similar for England and Scotland... anyone?

For "specialist services" provided in England for Scottish patients it's as here:
https://www.nss.nhs.scot/specialist-hea ... rvices-uk/

Jonathan

PS: This is an enormous issue for tertiary services in Mid and North Wales because of the lack of provision, and referral to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool is common.

PPS: And I once attended a planning session in Northern Ireland which included the overwhelming sense of cross-border access with the Republic. I don't now how much was ever implemented.

[Oldjohnw]

When I had surgery last year in Newcastle Freeman Hospital people were there from not only all parts of the UK but Europe. The NHS driver who took me had just taken a patient home to Inverness. He had also been to Germany.

My wife will require some surgery and the consultant has advised that, even if we have moved, she has the surgery in Newcastle which has much shorter lists. This will mean a 500 mile round trip, gladly undertaken for her health's sake.

[Oldjohnw]

It does mean that there will be one more cyclist in the Cotswolds. But one less in Northumberland at the Scottish Borders.

- I'll be your replacement up here, not quite the Borders but not far away, and we moved from the Cotswolds to be closer to family in Northumberland. Lots and lots of cyclists for you to meet down there too, not so many up here. As for car v public transport - my wife has a hospital appointment soon 'down south' 350 miles away - 700 mile round trip, virtually impossible by train and public transport.

Well fancy that!

As you will see in an earlier post, I was unable to find a way of living both near to the hospital, near to my son in Lanarkshire and my daughter in Warwickshire . We did our best.

[Vorpal]

It doesn't happen only in sparsely populated areas, either. We had a good local surgery in our Essex village, and most hospital services in the closest town (I had a minor surgery there). However, with consolidation & privatisation of specialist services, referrals could be some distance away. The furthest we ever had to go was about 20 miles, but a neighbour (a few houses down, actually) who had a son with special needs had referrals for him as far away as 50 miles.

[peterb]

Inevitably some less common conditions have specialist facilities only available in very few centres, hence the need to travel long distances for treatment.

[Oldjohnw]

But in a very rural spot like up here you can’t even get a plaster cast without a 60 round trip to Alnwick.