Mountain Air Daniel Aspel

> Find galleries, blog posts and many more episodes at www.mountainairpodcast.uk

“Once you slow down you see it all”

Interview recorded 24/01/24

On the latest episode of Mountain Air, Dan catches up with Patrick Davies, a writer, long-distance walker and charity fundraiser whose latest book “Where Skylarks Sing” recounts a 2250km walk across the UK mainland in the summer of 2021. “Skylarks”, which touches on Patrick’s experiences caring for his father as he succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease, issues of identity and belonging, and the healing power of walking, explores the “hope of finding escape and answers”.

As you might expect, Patrick’s epic walks aren’t limited to 73 days spent walking across Britain, and over the last three years he’s not only traversed 1280km across the Pyrenees (carrying on afterwards to reach Barcelona on foot), but also made a 1120km trek from Strasbourg to the Mediterranean coastline too. What’s perhaps less expected, and makes these achievements all the more unusual, is that Patrick hadn’t done any serious walking until 2021.

Prior to the pandemic, you see, the focus of Patrick’s life was as a civil servant in the foreign office - through which he served from 2013-2018 as the UK’s Deputy Ambassador to the United States of America. His experiences working with the Obama and later Trump administrations led him to write his first book, “The Great American Delusion”. A speaker and commentator on American politics, there can be few people who have had more of a front-row seat over a uniquely turbulent decade for the world’s largest democracy.

Hear about all of this and why, when it comes to long-distance walks of your own, you should “do it, without question” in Mountain Air Series 3, Episode 6.

> patrickjdavies.com
> linktr.ee/patrickjdavies
> alzheimersresearchuk.org

00:00 - Introduction.

02:40 - Welcome. Introducing “Where Skylarks Sing”, recounting 1400-mile walk from Lizard Point in Cornwall to Dunnet Head in Scotland. Reasons for eschewing LEJOG. Personal motivations for the walk and the book.

08:40 - “... about three or four weeks later I found myself in Lizard Point with a very heavy backpack”. Discussing experiences of caring for a close relative with Alzheimer’s disease, fundraising in response.

12:25 - Choosing a more mountainous line: “it seemed a little unfair to miss out the whole of Wales if you’re trying to walk across the country… and it got me into the Lake District as well”. Paring back 2-3kg after three days of walking.

16:40 - “Everything doesn’t have to be perfect at the beginning”.

18:00 - The mentality of a long walk: “It’s a slow pace, it’s a slow rhythm, and it’s repeated… to me it feels a bit like meditation. You just calm down, and slow down”. A revelation to notice things, to see things, where previously the mind would be too busy, “once you slow down you see it all”.

22:40 - Highlights, including: the South West Coast Path, the quiet, open spaces of Mid Wales, the Lake District and (of course) Scotland.

31:30 - Advice to those considering similar walks: “Do it, without question. Once you start it’s addictive”.

34:30 - Previous career as the UK’s Deputy Ambassador to the United States, from 2013 to 2018. Writing “The Great American Delusion”. Working amongst American politics, trying to explain Brexit, witnessing the polarisation of views across the country.

42:00 - “I hanker back to a time when politics was really boring… civil service is about delivering things for the general public”.

46:15 - Recalling two great treks following walking the length of Britain: Biarritz to Barcelona via the Pyrenees (partly following the GR10, partly the haute route between it and the GR11), and from “Strasbourg to the Sea” (involving the GR5).

53:20 - Witnessing the result of serious drought in the Alps.

56:00 - Greatest Mountain Memory: Climbing Morocco’s Mt

> Find galleries, blog posts and many more episodes at www.mountainairpodcast.uk

“It’s about being prepared for what nature throws at us”

Interview recorded 27/09/23

Since 2009, Mark Diggins has been the coordinator of the Scottish Avalanche Information Service (SAIS). This valuable role means overseeing hazard forecasts for Lochaber, Glen Coe, Craigh Meagaidh, Torridon and the two halves of the Cairngorms… as well as being part of the team that inspects “the most unstable” slopes and snowpacks on a daily basis. In part thanks to this excellent service, Mark is keen to highlight that being avalanched in Scotland is actually “a very rare event”, and that one of the guiding principles of the SAIS is to inform and encourage people to make sound judgements about their own winter adventures, and to be more likely enjoy the icy peaks as a consequence. In his words: “the mountains are a really important place where we can learn and develop as people”.

If you’d like to learn more about how avalanche hazard is measured and judged - and how the formation of a snowpack can lead it to becoming unstable - you’ll find plenty of fascinating insight in this episode. What you’ll also find is a comprehensive picture of how a person finds themselves in the head of such an exciting and essential public service.

Mark’s life has seen him inspired by early youth hosteling trips (where he’d load himself up with heavy tins of peas and beans and sleep on piles of bracken), to serving an apprenticeship with his local climbing club, to being mentored in “how not to be blown over” by climbing great John Cunningham. Having dedicated himself to qualifying as an IFMGA Mountain Guide, he spent 16 years living and working in the European alps, eventually taking up other projects working alongside film and TV crews on remote and challenging projects across the globe. His adventures have taken him: across “poorly mapped” Greenland; “caving” down Low’s Gully on Malaysia’s Mt Kinabulu (and climbing up vines when reaching the jungle terrain that followed); to volcanic acid pools in Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression; and to the echoing sounds of the Bedouin call to prayer in tall desert canyons.

> sais.gov.uk
> markdiggins.com
> bmg.org.uk/guide/?mark-diggins

00:00 - Introduction

02:00 - Welcome. What is the Scottish Avalanche Information Service? Taking over as Co-ordinator in 2009, now “we have forecasters going out into the field, every single day, in six mountain areas”

06:40 - In praise of the SAIS winter conditions blogs

08:40 - “Getting avalanched is actually a very rare event”, why experience and confidence (and “ignoring signs”) might lead to risk

13:00 - “Go into those environments with an open mind, and being ready to change and be flexible”

15:10 - Reading avalanche charts, and understanding the complexity of avalanche hazard, heading to places that are “the most unstable” to find out the truth

18:10 - Technical chat: Explaining how the snow pack develops, and why it fails

23:50 - “Risk” vs “hazard”

26:00 - “What we don’t want is for people to go out in the mountains in the winter and be scared out of their wits”, the need to inform without frightening, and appreciating the value of spaces where hazards are real (“the mountains are a really important place where we can learn and develop as people”)

32:07 - A personal history in the outdoors: life as a forecaster and IFMGA Mountain Guide; youth hostelling trips; carrying tins of food and sleeping on bracken above the Lake District’s cold, hard ground; being supported and encouraged by older members of a local climbing club

40:28 - “John Cunningham was able to stand and not be blown over, and I couldn’t quite work out how he did that! I’ve since learned, and it is a bit of a trick…”, being inspired to become a Mountain Guide

44:00 - “I would recommend that if people are going into the outdo

> Find galleries, blog posts and many more episodes at www.mountainairpodcast.uk

“It sounds a strange thing to say about a 400 million year-old mountain like An Teallach… but it’s fragile”

Interview recorded 06/07/23

Dougie Baird has spent his working life building and repairing mountain paths. That makes him the the perfect person to help protect one of Scotland’s greatest mountains.

That mountain is the ever-popular sandstone group of peaks we call An Teallach - a mountain area eroding quicker than you might expect not just due to “rainfall, footfall, scars, and cycles of erosion” but also under the twin pressures of climate change and funding cuts. This is why the environmental charity Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland, of which Dougie is CEO, has teamed up with Mountaineering Scotland and other partners to raise a much needed £300,000 path repair fund for An Teallach, as well as awareness of the peril facing so many peaks across Scotland and beyond.

In this hour-long interview, Dougie discusses more about and why there’s a need for this three-year campaign, but also goes into great depth and detail about how paths help protect mountains, how anyone with the time and inclination can help volunteer to build and repair them, and what the joys and challenges are of a life dedicated to just this cause.

He’ll also explain what 10 consecutive 10hr days working in the high mountains look and feel like: how “you’ll get most of your best work done in the morning”, how powerful a thing it can be to close your eyes “for just five minutes”, why the worst thing about it is the chilblains, how working in conservation can feel like a form of “national service”, how rare and precious it is to see the mountains as the sun goes down and all the walkers have left, and how fulfilling it is to work on a project that’s “going to outlive us”.

Hear all of this and more in Mountain Air Series 3, Episode 4.

> https://savemountainpaths.scot/
> https://www.outdooraccesstrustforscotland.org.uk/

00:00 - Introduction

02:22 - Welcome, all about “It’s Up to Us” (https://savemountainpaths.scot/), “there’s not really any organisation or government body that’s there to care about this problem”, complex funding models and the loss of European money

09:30 - “... it’s physically very hard, the conditions are often unpleasant to say the least…”

10:34 - Why is it important to repair and maintain the paths on An Teallach? Rainfall, footfall, scars, and cycles of erosion… “some of it looks like it’s been shelled”

13:50 - “It sounds a strange thing to say about a 400 million year-old mountain like An Teallach… but it’s fragile”

18:50 - Is it possible to repair every path on every hill? And how to volunteer

21:55 - A day in the life of a path repair team

30:10 - “There’s nothing worse than having a bag of helicopter stones even fifty metres away from where you want them. It’s a nightmare”

33:13 - “The few days where it’s nice to just lie back and enjoy the scenery and soak up the sun are so rare that you’ll take a bit of time off for them, you really will. More often than not it’ll be quite cold. Possibly raining. Possibly snowing. Possibly hailing”

37:45 - “Day eight was a killer. You felt like you were working three times as hard, but your productivity definitely dipped. Your effort didn’t, but your productivity did”

38:25 - Women in path work

40:20 - Getting started in path repair, being an “unemployed youth in 1980s central Scotland”, working with redundant miners, discovering conservation “I’d just seen land as a thing I grew up in that you used to be able to work in and couldn’t anymore”

46:59 - “My gear was… so bad”

49:00 - “I’ll never forget watching the sun go down at 11 at night in late May, with the eagles circling… the mountain you see after all the visitors and hillwalkers have left… I thought it was

> Find galleries, blog posts and many more episodes at www.mountainairpodcast.uk

“Underpinning it all was this ridiculously amazing team behind me… two years of planning was spent gathering an army of friends and strangers.”

Episode 3#03 meets Jamie Aarons, who on 26 June 2023 became the fastest person ever to have completed a self-propelled round of the Munros. In doing so, she covered more than 2,576km of ground by foot, bike and kayak and recorded more than 135,000m of ascent. The entire round of Scotland’s 282 highest peaks took her just 31 days, 10 hours and 27 minutes.
… but all of this you may already know from reading about it in the outdoor press and even the national media.
What you won’t know, however, is the story direct from Jamie herself. And here she is to do so - during a lunch break from her day job in social care, no less - for the latest episode of Mountain Air. In this hour-long interview, Jamie explains how she feels after such a mammoth undertaking, her motivations for attempting it in the first place, and just what it took - both from her and from her extensive support team - to claim such an astonishing record.
So, if you’ve ever wondered about…
• how powerful the “micronap” can be
• whether it’s possible to fit a challenge like this into your annual leave
• just how inspirational a force an army of friends and well-wishers can be
• which Microsoft Office product is key to tackling a Munro speed challenge
• what it is that draws outdoor people to the Highlands from across the globe
• … or if “hating running with a bit of a passion” precludes you from winning an ultra race…
… you’ve come to the right place.

> Read all about Jamie’s record-breaking round here: jamiesmunrochallenge.run

> … and here: ukhillwalking.com/news/2023/06/jamie_aarons_sets_new_munro_round_speed_record-73379

> Follow Jamie on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube…

instagram.com/jamieaaruns
facebook.com/people/Jamie-Aarons/100090560726414
youtube.com/channel/UCpjvRJ9lrOlPbTGSjgIUTdQ

> Donate to World Bicycle Relief here: justgiving.com/page/jamiesmunrochallenge

Listen, enjoy, tell your friends, subscribe to the podcast if you get and chance, and thank UKHillwalking.com for their kind support of this series!

[episode recorded on 05/07/23]


00:00 - Introduction.
03:14 - Welcome, fastest ever self-propelled Munro record, “it’s all still a bit surreal”, feeling “quite lethargic, a little less narcoleptic”, falling asleep during meals, an overview of the challenge.
07:40 - Sleeping “considerably less” than four hour a night, the skill of “micronaps” for periods as little as 60 seconds.
11:24 - A 2,576km route… and other stats, “the terrain isn’t conveyed in those stats - not every kilometre is equal… the most efficient route was to connect many hills in ways that are not commonly done (or never done)”. An “incredibly special” challenge.
14:04 - What does it take to complete such a challenge? The “glimmer of maybe”. A lifetime of building endurance. The enjoyment of the planning, spreadsheets, friends and logistics, “coming to grips with new aspects of Excel”.
17:20 - “Underpinning it all was knowing that I had this ridiculously amazing team behind me… that two years of planning was gathering an army of friends and strangers”.
18:12 - Gathering supporters. A hiking challenge, not a running one, a “continuously putting one foot in front of the other challenge”. An overview of the support involved.
22:20 - “Lots of chat… it was about sharing time on the hills with friends old and new… it’s a lot easier to take a 60 second nap when there’s someone hovering over you, waiting to wake you up”.
23:20 - “Even before we started we’d made what I knew were lifelong friendships through the planning. Even if we hadn’t been successful, there’s success in finding these kindred spirits of cyclists and hillwalkers”.
26:40 - Th

> Find galleries, blog posts and many more episodes at www.mountainairpodcast.uk

“There’s no greater feeling than finding people alive in the mountains.”

Episode 3#02 meets a legendary figure in Search and Rescue circles. A member of RAF Mountain Rescue for 37 years, David “Heavy” Whalley has attended more than a thousand call-outs, and saved the lives of so many people in the hills that he’s routinely been approached by rescuees during his lecture tours in the years afterwards. He’s managed rescue teams across the UK’s mountain ranges, ice climbed in Canada, helped orchestrate a successful expedition (and incidentally saved multiple members of less fortunate teams) on Everest’s north ridge, and been awarded numerous honours from an MBE to a Distinguished Service Award.
But there’s been a darker side to his career too. Amongst the impressive statistics of his time on the hill there are nearly 70 aircraft crashes which he’s attended in person. He was senior team leader during the recovery efforts following the Lockerbie bombing. He’s been part of teams attending tragic mountain-related fatalities throughout the hills across multiple decades. He’s no stranger to post-traumatic stress, a term which only came into common use once his career was underway.
And yet, hear Heavy speak about this lifetime of service in the mountains, and he’s as effusive now as he was as a “wee, skinny laddie” who joined the RAF in 1971 (aged just 17 years old). He’s close to completing his ninth circuit of the Munros, and though he may be retired from RAF Mountain Rescue, nothing gives him greater pleasure than seeing the young generations of rescuers find the same joy in the job that he did for all those years.
Hear all of this, and enjoy an inspirational hour of a life lived to its fullest, in Series 3, Episode 2.

> Find out more about Heavy here: http://www.heavywhalley.com/

> Read Heavy’s blog here: https://heavywhalley.wordpress.com/

> See Heavy’s recent award for “excellent in mountain culture” here: https://mountainfestival.co.uk/culture-awards/david-heavy-whalley-2023

> Follow him on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/heavywhalley

Listen, enjoy, tell your friends, subscribe to the podcast if you get and chance, and thank UKHillwalking.com for their kind support of this series!

[episode recorded on 23/03/23]

00:00 - Introduction

02:50 - Welcome, Heavy: “I was told to go away and put some weight on”, 5’4” but still able to handle himself.

05:35 - A lifetime in RAF search and rescue as an air crash expert. Losing aircraft crews training in the mountains. Handling nearly 70 aircraft crashes.

09:54 - “You can have the best team in the world, but if you’re searching in the wrong place you’re wasting your time”.

10:20 - “We’re working in conditions when other people don’t go out”... and avalanche warnings only started in the late 1980s. The benefits and challenges of technology.

14:20 - Working on the Lockerbie bombing, no knowledge of post-traumatic stress disorder and at the time, “It took me 25 years… and I’ve never got over it”.

18:37 - Mountain rescue “is an amazing system, that we should all be proud of. But it’s a dangerous game”.

19:03 - Plenty of individual awards, but “unfortunately I don’t believe in these things. In the military you don’t have an option. They should be team awards”. Losing friends.

21:15 - Why did you turn to this career? The son of a Scottish Minister, but “I was a wild child… and it was join the air force or get into trouble”.

22:44 - “There’s no greater feeling than finding people alive in the mountains. It’s unique and it’s wonderful. The joy of it is phenomenal”.

24:40 - Celebrating the rise of women in the outdoors.

26:10 - “Sandals, shorts and t-shirts on the top of Goat Fell”.

28:27 - Joining the RAF at 17: “I was a wee, skinny laddie, but I was very fit”.

31:17 - “Thrown in

> Find galleries, blog posts and many more episodes at www.mountainairpodcast.uk

“I get excited about something and I say yes, and then I do it. And I enjoy doing it, so I keep doing it.”

Episode 3#01 of Mountain Air stars Steph McKenna, winner of the fabulously titled 2023 Fort William Festival “Scottish Youth Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture”.

Steph was caught unawares by the award (mainly because she had not idea she’d been nominated), but look into why she won and it’s hardly a surprise at all. Though only 22-years old, she has lent emotional support to those that need it volunteering and mentoring for her local charity Lochaber Hope, overseen positive changes for young people and helped them grow a sense of “camaraderie, place and purpose” in the Lochaber Youth Theatre, worked as a seasonal ranger for the John Muir Trust on the Nevis range, co-founded the Fort William Foxes (a mountain biking group focused on encouraging and empowering women riders), and even found time to gain a first-class degree in Psychology for which she wrote an award-winning final year dissertation entitled “An Interpretation of wild swimming in the Scottish Highlands. The relationship between flow, the therapeutic landscape and wellbeing”.

How does one achieve so many things by so young an age? Where does the energy to tirelessly help others come from? Which Lord of the Rings character did she pretend to be as a child? Can you ever run out of adventures in the Lochaber area? How does Utah compare to the West Highlands? Are you ever too young to be covered in mud or submerged in an icy river? What ties together carbon sequestration and the future of the highland water vole?

The answers to all these questions and more feature in this first episode of the third series of Mountain Air.

> Read more about Steph McKenna here: https://mountainfestival.co.uk/culture-awards/stephanie-mckenna-ya-2023/

[episode recorded on 10/03/23]

> Listen, enjoy, tell your friends, subscribe to the podcast if you get and chance, and thank UKHillwalking.com for their kind support of this series!

00:00 - Introduction
02:50 - Welcome, winning the Fort William Festival “Scottish Youth Award for Excellent in Mountain Culture” award… but not having a Fort William accent. Also, Utah.
08:38 - Volunteering and mentoring for Lochaber Hope, “teaching people that they have it in them to heal themselves”. Building a “garden of hope”. Using the landscape and green space.
14:37 - Lochaber Youth Theatre “a real sense of camaraderie, and place and purpose… and the positive changes in the kids involved… that made me want to study psychology”.
20:40 - Motivations for volunteer work: “I just get excited about something and I say yes, and then I do it. And I enjoy doing it, so I keep doing it … I just enjoy the vibrancy of meeting different people and opening up the dialogue about wellness”.
21:43 - It was Benjamin Franklin!
22:20 - Seasonal Ranger(ing) for the John Muir Trust on the Ben Nevis range. Spending days “absolutely covered in mud”. Sequestration. Water voles. Raptors.
28:38 - Mountain Biking, working with bikes and riding for pleasure - Fort William Foxes, “opening up a space for those just getting into biking, maybe being a little nervous, and just wanting to ride with some other ladies”.
33:30 - “It’s a little bit easier to be silly and embarrassed about some of the girly stuff… or simply beings scared… women’s spaces in the outdoors open up the conversation for women to be a bit goofier, or less formal, or just a bit gross!”.
35:00 - Pretending to be Frodo Baggins, with the dog.
36:20 - Discovering outdoor sports. Wild swimming (“I was always swimming in the river as a kid”), falling through ice.
39:00 - Hillwalking and mountaineering, an epic sunrise around Steall Falls. Ice climbing. Scotland as a “huge open space with limitless potential”.
43:10 - Greatest mountain memory: a child