Really sorry to read so many of you have had to deal with this pain but thanks to everyone who took the time to share with me their own experience. It’s helpful to know and @Nammu I’m heartened to read that surgery helped.

It’s one of those things that can have different causes, so I guess for me it wouldn’t do any harm to go on the waiting list for imaging, maybe it can at least tell me the cause. At the moment my NHS physio is diagnosing a herniated disc but that’s just guesswork. I saw a sports physio who treated me for piriformis syndrome before this. Again it’s guesswork without imaging.