A passion for walking, climbing other things outdoors.

I was born in 1957, started school in 1962 and senior school in 1968. The only relevance of these dates is that when I was growing up school sports were cricket, rugby and when it was too wet to be on the rugby pitch, cross-country running.

The only sports I was remotely good at were gymnastics and swimming but despite have an excellent gymnasium and swimming pool I can only remember using them a handful of times. There were no other options, outdoor pursuits in education didn’t exist and even if I’d got the opportunity to visit an Outward Bound Centre I’d have hated being organised and told what to do.

But I was lucky, I found walking almost by accident, on a holiday with friends in the Lake District.

From being the least sporty kid in school, I found I was good at something physically exciting and challenging; walking and very soon afterwards climbing.

This blog will, I hope, allow me to communicate some of my passion for the hills. Primarily it will be about walking, because that’s what I do most of these days. My days of alpine climbing are probably well behind me and even rock climbing, once a huge passion is now something I can look back on and thing, “How the hell did I survive that?”

There may be the occasional foray into kayaking, I’ve a lovely boat but it’s not a sport that Arthur the Lurcher can do so I rarely get the boat out.