CHANGING SEASONS
LOCKDOWN F
LOST IN
Seasonal worker Hannah Mitchell tells the tales of the outdoor community’s unfortunate few falling through the cracks of the hastily erected financial support net.
“IF IN NORMAL CONDITIONS IT IS SKILL, WHICH COUNTS, IN SUCH EXTREME SITUATIONS, IT IS THE SPIRIT, WHICH SAVES.” Walter Bonatti
or climbers and alpinists, you might imagine that being ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’ would be a desirably precarious place to be. Setting off up an exposed ridge [insert alpine jargon] or halfway up a sunny multipitch on the side of a Spanish mountain. Unfortunately, in its most clichéd sense, between a rock and a hard place is exactly where one group of usually indomitable outdoor enthusiasts is finding themselves, forced to navigate their way through unmapped financial terrain. The economic impact of the Coronavirus pandemic is set to be pretty grim by all accounts. Necessary public health restrictions put in place to limit the virus’s spread have seen businesses close their doors across the nation and unemployment spread like wildfire. As the exact extent of the disruption became apparent, the British government set about creating initiatives – The Job Retention Scheme
48 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
(CJRS), Self-Employed Income Support Scheme (SEIS) and the Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) – to provide some sort of a safety net for workers and mitigate the damage caused to business. With any scheme as extensively generous as these, put together with such urgency, there will always be those who ‘slip through the net’. I am one such example, my primary source of income as a seasonal hospitality worker based in the Lakes. I am also a climber and hill walker. I enjoy my job, but I’d be lying if I said that location doesn’t play a part in why I do what I do – the ease of access to some of the best and most beautiful crags and fells in the country and proximity to the Dales is an enormous perk. For the past two years I worked March-November in the Lakes, evading the British winter on extended sport climbing trips to Spain, and returning once again to my job in anticipation of the Easter Holiday madness. This year, my semi-nomadic lifestyle and work choices have
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