About Me

Background

Whilst younger I participated in Scouting at local groups in St Albans, Herts where I grew up. Through a range of activities this lead into a passion for exploring the outdoors taking part in overnight hikes, orienteering competitions as well as mountaineering trips to Lochearnhead Scout Station in Scotland before culminating in a trip to Chamonix climbing Mt Buet.

At this point I continued to follow my academics and went on to study Financial Computing at Brunel University West London. It was here I developed my love of the outdoors through TROGs (The Real Outdoors Group) and later went on to join Brunel Climbing and also take up kayaking.

Whilst at University my course offered a year on placement which I took up as an IT Technician at Slough Grammar School, little did I know this would be the tipping point to change where life was headed - going away every weekend as well as gaining my Summer ML this year and taking leading roles in both TROGs and Climbing, I soon realised that the office 9-5 was not for me.

I had a semi-conscious battle in my head and decided to stick out what was already 3 years work as I enjoyed the subject, and it would give me something to fall back on should outdoor pursuits not work out.

Moving from retail work at Cotswold Outdoors, my first proper job in the industry was working at High Adventure the summer I finished University, working on their summer camps for multi activity school residentials & NCS programmes. I developed a love for this not only enjoying work but also sharing downtime with like minded people out in the Peak District on evenings and at weekends.

I joined onto High Adventures Trainee Instructor Scheme - and 3 years later left with huge amounts of experience and a huge range of knowledge, but most importantly, a decent range of NGBs.

I then spent the first four months of 2017 living in my van in Scotland, and sure enough in March I passed my Winter ML with much jubilation, but also almost concerningly a lack of stress in terms of the assessment.

From April 2017 I have been freelancing for a range of centres, providers and private clients on a range of DoE, Yorkshire 3 Peaks, paddlesports and multi activity programmes.

Throughout the pandemic changes meant that work moved to focus on outdoor education within the social care sector working 1:1 with young people providing them with opportunities for learning outside the usual classroom settings.