Brought up to be a Cotswold farmer, a career of fresh air and exercise, cattle and corn, pursued until almost forty. At which point I made the transition to full-time outdoor writer.

In my early twenties caught the bug of producing hand-drawn walking guides from mentor Alfred Wainwright ultimately at fifty-one got the chance to move to the best of all walking counties, Cumbria, to fulfill a life-long ambition to explore the Lakeland fells from tip to toe. This year 2012, seeing the completion of the eighth and final title in this thorough survey ‘Lakeland Fellranger’.

Am presently working on two titles for Northern Eye Books to the Yorkshire Dales, a landscape very dear to my heart. Before heading back down to Derbyshire in the early Spring to produce a completely new version of my 1980s Cicerone guide High Peak Walks, though now to be called Dark Peak Walks.