I've retired after working full time in higher education for 19 years as an educational technologist.
My dad gave me a good grounding in maps on the OS 1" series and I remember using maps at school. When I reached the grand middle age of 50 I decided to take my love of walking and specifically mountain walking to a more professional level so that's what I've been doing over the last few years.
I started off by taking a holiday in France to see wolves in the wild in the Alpes Maritimes. This was with Space Between holidays and Mel Jones resparked my interest in navigation. I went off and took a week long navigation course in the Cairngorms with Scot Mountain Holidays in Boat of Garten. This inspired me further so I enrolled on a 5 day, 1 night training course for the Walking Group Leader award, this has now become the Hill and Moorland Leader award. The assessment for that was 5 days and 1 night too, I did all this at Plas y Brenin.
That all took about 3 years and rather than just settle I decided to go for the Mountain Leader (summer) award. This took a similar amount of time to achieve but I finally got there in summer 2014. I trained at Plas y Brenin and did my assessment with Paul Poole Mountaineering.
My business partner and I have started teaching people to navigate in the South Pennines. We are really enjoying this and are now offering the National Navigation Awards Scheme (NNAS) at Bronze and Silver levels.
