My earliest memories of the outdoors are not especially heroic. I wasn’t a child obsessed with climbing mountains or poring over maps. I mostly remember being dragged away from my games console and informed that we were going to the Lake District to walk up something, usually a hill and occasionally a very large one. At the time, I couldn’t understand why anyone would voluntarily leave a perfectly comfortable house, drive for hours, walk uphill, then eventually turn around and walk back down again. Thirty years later, I see those trips rather differently.
Somewhere between childhood and my mid-thirties, the outdoors went from being somewhere I was dragged into, to somewhere I increasingly wanted to escape to.
Arriving Late to the Party
When I thought about the outdoor industry, I'd imagine a certain type of person. They grew up climbing mountains, spent their twenties wild camping and can casually discuss waterproof membranes without needing to Google anything.
That isn't me and at first that was incredibly intimidating. There will always be someone who has climbed higher, walked further or spent three weeks eating dehydrated food somewhere considerably colder than I would ever willingly visit. Imposter syndrome arrives fairly quickly when you are surrounded by people whose outdoor CVs make your own look like a pleasant Sunday stroll. It is easy to assume everyone else belongs there more than you do, but being relatively new to the outdoors has its advantages. I remember what it feels like not to know. I remember standing in a shop wondering why there are fifteen different kinds of walking trousers, and I understand that most people aren’t aspiring mountaineers. They simply want to spend more time outside without feeling as though they need a qualification first.
Scafells from Red Pike
That perspective is useful, particularly in an industry that can occasionally make going for a walk sound much more complicated than it actually is.
Thirty Years of Hindsight
Looking back, I appreciate those childhood trips more now than I ever did at the time. I genuinely thought my weekends were being stolen from me, sacrificed to another day of hills, waterproofs and being told we were “nearly there” when we very obviously weren’t. As I got older, my parents gradually stopped dragging me along. For years, I assumed they were doing me a favour. With hindsight, I’m fairly certain it was just as much for their benefit. There is, after all, only so much enjoyment to be had from a beautiful day in the Lake District when a teenager is following ten metres behind making theatrical sighing noises.
At the time, I saw those trips as something I was being forced to endure. As an adult, I understand exactly what we were escaping from. Life becomes noisy. Emails, deadlines, bills, phones, notifications and the general expectation that you should always be doing something productive gradually fill the gaps. Suddenly, walking up a hill for no particular reason begins to sound incredibly appealing. There is nowhere particularly important to be, nobody needs a quarterly report from the summit, and no one cares how quickly you got there. You just walk.
Age 10 at Grand Canyon National Park
Finding My Way Back Outside
I wouldn’t say I suddenly rediscovered the outdoors and became completely consumed by it. I still enjoy plenty of the same things I did before, and I’m not spending every spare weekend chasing summits. What has changed is that I understand the appeal now in a way I never did as a child. Those trips to the Lake District didn’t turn me into an adventurer, but they did leave me with memories of being somewhere completely removed from normal life. As work, screens and routine have taken up more of my time, getting outside has become less about achieving something and more about getting away from all of that for a while.
I’m still figuring out exactly where the outdoors fits into my life, and perhaps that is why entering the industry now feels appropriate. I’m not coming at it as someone who has spent a lifetime immersed in this world, but as someone rediscovering why being outside mattered in the first place. I know what it feels like when life becomes dominated by work, screens and routine. I understand why getting outside matters to me now in a way it probably couldn’t have when I was ten, and I also understand the people who are curious about the outdoors but still feel slightly intimidated by it. So yes, I entered the outdoor industry in my mid-thirties without an impressive adventure résumé, and I’m still learning. That no longer feels like a weakness.
Blea Tarn Eskdale
If anything, it reminds me of the people the outdoor world should be trying hardest to reach: those who are interested, unsure where to begin and wondering whether they really belong there. They do. It just took me about thirty years to realise my parents might have been onto something.
I’d prefer not to tell them.
