It was barely an hour into our day at Blacktoft Sands when my son was invited to look through another birder’s telescope. Somewhere across the mud and shallow water of Marshland lagoon was a bird no bigger than a sparrow. With a little help finding the right patch of mud, there it was: a Little …
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Big Data London Sunrise Run 2026: A 5K Through Hyde Park
There are probably easier ways to prepare for the second day of a data conference than setting an alarm for 5:35 in the morning. Especially when the previous evening has involved a Databricks social, followed by MotherDuck’s Duck In, Duck Out afterparty, and you’ve only arrived back at your hotel after 11pm. But this was Big Data …
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Isle of Bute and Cowal Road Trip: Ferries, Walks and Wildlife
Sometimes the best trips begin without much of a plan. We left home with a car containing a two-person backpacking tent, sleeping bags, a small gas stove and enough equipment to wild camp if necessary. From the library I had borrowed maps and guides covering Arran, Bute and the surrounding area, supplementing the pile of …
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A Day Out on the Peak Sightseer
Sometimes the best days out are the ones where you don’t really have a grand objective. You just spot an opportunity, head out and see where the day takes you. This particular Sunday started with yoga and a cooked breakfast before we locked up the house and walked down to Chesterfield to catch the 9am …
How I Became a Winter Mountaineer: Ten Years of Scottish Winter Mountaineering
When people ask how I got into winter mountaineering, the honest answer isn’t about climbing harder routes or collecting impressive grades. It was about repeated exposure, poor weather, failed objectives, and slowly learning to make decisions that kept people safe. This is the story of how that happened, traced through the Scottish mountains between 1998 …
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From SPA Training to Assessment: A Climbing Log, May 1998 to May 1999
Introduction This is the story of the twelve months between completing my Single Pitch Award (SPA) training in May 1998 and returning for the assessment in May 1999. It draws on my climbing logs, supervision records, diaries and contemporary accounts written by friends. Together they preserve a surprisingly detailed record: not just of what I …
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Return to the New Forest and Portsmouth Dockyard: How the Past Shapes Who We Become
I hadn’t been back to the New Forest in years. I’d come with my son for the weekend before his work experience placement started, but there was another reason for returning. This was a landscape where important things had happened to me, and where people who had once been crucial to my life had left …
Liverpool and Port Sunlight: A Family Weekend of History, Ships and Industry
Our recent trip to Liverpool was one of those family trips where the individual parts ended up fitting together rather better than I had expected. On paper, it was a couple of nights in a hostel, some museums, a day trip to Port Sunlight and a few walks around the docks. In practice, it became …
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Cycle Camping the Eastern Moors: Our 11th Annual Cycle Camping Adventure
This year, we finally made it happen though it nearly didn’t. That ill-fated weekend that was scheduled for our annual cycling trip had to be postponed as my son was ill. So my daughter and I salvaged something by heading to Rowsley for a gravel ride and ice cream, but the tradition was too important …
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The Capricorn in Galloway, 1998: Where My Mountain Marathon Story Began
What if a single weekend could quietly reshape your entire relationship with the mountains? For me, that weekend came in the summer of 1998. I was 20, a university student with a love for scrambling, mountains and maps. I thought I was just going for a run in the hills. I had no idea I …
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