Bio

I took my first steps when I was 10 months old, impatient to explore the world around me. It was a habit that was soon reinforced. During childhood my parents often took me on country walks and I’ve been rambling through life ever since.

My first job was as a tutor in an outdoor education centre, but I soon took a sharp turn into computing, which appeared to be a more secure avenue. When working in an office grew stifling, I stepped out in a new direction as a freelance outdoor writer and photographer, turning hobbies into a career. Since 1999 I have been writing walks guidebooks and outdoors features for newspapers and magazines. In 2015 I bought a campervan and added travel features for motorhome magazines to my repertoire.

Although I am interested in people, and took a psychology degree in the hope of better understanding human behaviour, I am most at home in natural settings. I love exploring on foot and observing plants and animals in detail. Writing about my adventures reawakens my own senses and I aim to give readers a similar immersive experience, fully engaging their imaginations in the natural world. I believe that human happiness and salvation lie in recognising that we are a part of nature, a mindset that encourages greater love and respect for our environment.

I have spent most of my adult life wandering around Scotland’s wild places, learning to read the landscape and understand how it has been shaped by geology, weather and human activities. Trees and woods, wildflowers and butterflies are particular interests. Perthshire has long been my base, but I only recently discovered my own special place in the world—an upland birch wood that I am restoring to full vigour with my partner, Andrew. In July 2022 we buried our much-loved collie Braan here.

Currently I am writing my first narrative non-fiction book, provisionally titled In the Wood of Dreams. It relates what compelled me to buy the land and how my perspective changed when I spent more time becoming intimate with one place.