Finding My Way Outside

People often assume outdoor instructors find their calling in their late teens or twenties—maybe after a gap year or a big adventure abroad.
My story started much earlier. In fact, it began before I even knew what a “career path” was.

Growing Up Outside: The Early Years

I grew up in the Scouts from a very young age.
While most kids were learning times tables and spellings, I was learning how to pitch tents in the rain, tie knots with cold fingers, light fires, and navigate with a map that always seemed bigger than I was.

And climbing?
That started when I was just four years old. While other kids were climbing furniture, I was already on real rock, finding holds, learning trust, and falling in love with height and movement.

By eight, I had discovered biking—and that quickly became another obsession. Riding gave me the freedom my restless mind craved: speed, balance, focus, adrenaline, and the sense of being unstoppable, even if only for a moment. What I didn’t realise then was that biking would become one of the biggest threads running through my life.

So while school was teaching me about kings, equations, and grammar, the outdoors was teaching me something far more important: who I actually was.

ADHD, School Struggles & Finding My Real Classroom

I was diagnosed with ADHD at nine years old.
School often felt like trying to fit the wrong-shaped puzzle piece into a board that clearly wasn’t designed for me. I was told to sit still when my body needed to move, to focus when my mind needed variety, to listen quietly when I had a hundred thoughts racing through my head.

The outdoors, however, didn’t ask me to be still.
It didn’t require silence or strict rules or a perfectly organised mind.

Outside, movement was normal.
Questions were good.
Energy was accepted.
Adventure was encouraged and exciting.

The outdoors became my escape from the “real world,” but ironically, it was far more real than the world I was escaping from. It was the one place where I wasn’t “too much.” I was just… me.

From Participant to Instructor: When Passion Became Purpose

My years in Scouting, climbing from a toddler-sized harness, and riding bikes everywhere I could became more than hobbies—they became the foundation of who I’d eventually become.

Bit by bit, the shift happened:

• First helping younger Scouts

• Then supporting outdoor sessions

• Then taking small leadership roles

• Then discovering how much I loved teaching skills I’d grown up with

The real turning point was this simple realisation:
The outdoors changed me. And I wanted to help others experience that same transformation.

So I turned my lifelong passions into something bigger.

Today I teach:

• DofE

• Navigation

• Climbing

• Hillwalking

• Paddle boarding

• Mountain biking

• Bicycle guiding

And every discipline connects back to a part of my own story.

Why I Believe So Strongly in Leadership, Confidence & Self-Belief Through the Outdoors

I’ve lived it.
I’ve been that kid who didn’t feel engaged, confident or capable inside a classroom, but who came alive outside.

I’ve seen first-hand how the outdoors pulls things out of people they didn’t even know existed:

• Leadership from someone who thought they had none

• Confidence in someone who never believed in themselves

• Self-belief in someone who’s always been told they’re not good enough

• Teamwork in groups who barely spoke to each other in the morning

That’s why I’m such a strong believer that the outdoors builds people in ways traditional environments can’t.

A climb can teach resilience quicker than a textbook.
A navigation task can teach leadership more honestly than any meeting room.
A tough hill walk can teach self-belief in one afternoon.

And for some young people—kids just like I once was—these moments are life-changing.

Living the Life I Needed When I Was Younger

There’s a certain poetic symmetry in becoming the instructor I once needed.

I get to show people the same truths I discovered as a child:

That moving your body can quiet your mind.
That challenge reveals strength.
That the world is bigger and more beautiful than the walls you feel trapped inside.
That you don’t have to fit into a classroom to have something valuable to offer.
That confidence can be learned.
And that nature welcomes every kind of mind.

Why I’m Proud of Where I Came From—and Where I Stand Now

Not every outdoor instructor has a story tied to ADHD, or a childhood spent on crags and bikes, or years growing up through Scouting. But all of those pieces shaped me.
They made me resilient.
They made me resourceful.
They made me a leader.
And they made me understand people who don’t fit into neat boxes.

The outdoors gave me a place where I wasn’t judged.
Now, I give that place to others.

And honestly?
There’s no job in the world I’d rather be doing.