I've been more or less involved in physical activities all my life and they've always been connected with the outdoors and with movement. My comprehensive school had a yearly activities day and for my first one (age 11) I chose to go on the Christmas walk. It was a circuit starting and ending in Castleton and taking in Mam Tor. The weather was awful and there was a genuine danger of being blown off the side of Mam Tor and at the top all I could do was cling onto the trig point and wait for the teacher to come and drag me off. I really enjoyed it though and it was something I really wanted to keep doing.
When I started the bronze Duke of Edinburgh’s Award I began climbing as the physical recreation part I also got really into mountain biking at the time and between the ages of 14 and 17 most weekends would be a long bike ride on Saturday followed by the climbing centre on Sunday. I kept going on the school walks and met Pete whose family did a lot of climbing and I often went climbing outdoors with them. I used to love climbing although I was never good at it - especially outdoors because I'm not very good at heights.
I went to university at Aberystwyth and part of the reason for choosing to go there was because I thought that there would be plenty of climbing. Actually that's not really true; the roads to Snowdon aren't great and its a long journey and at the time the guide book for mid-Wales was out of print. So the climbing really tailed off.
I took up rowing instead. I'm not talking about the Ox-bridge style boats though - we used celtic long boats. They are around 20 ft, hold four rowers plus a cox and have fixed seats. I had some great times rowing including surfing the boat into the harbour one when we went out in a force 4, rowing along side a pair of dolphins, and the celtic challenge. The celtic challenge is a relay race from Arklow in Ireland to Aberystwyth in Wales. The year I did it the weather was amazing and the sea was totally flat. It took our team around 18 hours and I was lucky enough to be in the boat for both sunset and sunrise.
After uni I moved back home to Nottingham with my girlfriend (now wife) and I did try to get back to climbing but money was scarce so I couldn't really afford to go to the climbing centre and time was also scarce so I found it difficult to get enough time together to get into the Peak District. I still love to get climbing when I can though; I hardly ever go indoors but that's because I can't really be bothered but I get to the Peak District when I can (not often) and just enjoy myself climbing at my standard (low standard).
I am now much more focused on parkour which I found when I watched Jump Britain. Parkour is running, jumping, and climbing in any situation. So when you look at it you'll typically see someone making an obstacle course out of whatever environment they're in. In the background the training is tackled much like a martial art and there is also a strong spiritual and philosophical side. Its parkour that has given me the tools to take running more seriously...
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