I thought I was going mad in the mountains... in fact it was thyroid disease | Mail Online

Writer Neil Ansell lived alone in the Welsh hills for five years

At the age of 30 I was made an offer that I found impossible to resist.

A dilapidated cottage in the mountains of mid-Wales, for a peppercorn rent of just£100 a year.

The cottage was a thousand feet up in the hills, far from any road, and it had no electricity, gas or running water.

I saw it as a challenge. My first book, Deep Country, published last week, is an account of the five years I spent living in this cottage, walking in the hills, chopping wood and cooking over a log fire, drawing water from a well and growing enough food to become almost self-sufficient.

Friends did visit occasionally but the vast majority of my time was spent in seclusion  -  it was possible for weeks to go by without my seeing another person, even in the distance.

By my fourth year at the cottage I was completely at ease with myself and with my way of life. I didn't plan my days, I just occupied myself with the necessities.

I had no telephone, no car. Every now and again I would undertake the three-hour round trip to the village shop for supplies.

What I had not allowed for was illness. It was late autumn when I suddenly developed a whole array of symptoms  -  although at first I didn't even recognise that I was unwell.

I became restless and agitated, unable to sit still for a moment. And I found it almost impossible to sleep; I would lie awake all night in a sweat, tossing and turning and intensely aware of a strange tremor that seemed to run through my entire body from head to toe. I began to wonder if I was having a nervous breakdown but could not see any possible source of stress in my life.

What ultimately took me to the doctor was the weight loss. Not that I owned a set of weighing scales  -  I finally noticed that my ribs were protruding as though I was starving.

In fact, I was hungry all the time, and was often eating five meals a day. I am sure I would have realised the problem much earlier if there had been someone else to see me  -  I had only a small shaving mirror with which to see myself.

I walked down into the valley and crossed the footbridge over the river to the main road and hitchhiked into town. My doctor saw me from his window as I crunched up the gravel drive to his surgery, and I think he had made a provisional diagnosis before I had even opened his door.

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