I thought 2023 was a busy year with plenty going on and lots of change. Pippa took leave from Durham University to pursue a career as an outdoor climbing instructor and we moved from Durham to the Lake District. Read all about it in the 2023 blog! Turns out 2024 was another busy year with even more change! Read on…
House renovations
Late last year we’d had an offer accepted on a house in Kendal, and got the keys at the end of January. It is a lovely old cottage, built in 1850, but in need of substantial renovation. Cue a four month “project” – coordinating lots of tradespeople, making lots of decisions, and dealing with inevitable surprises. We moved in at the end of May and are loving it here. You can read more about the whole project in my house renovation blog post. Friends and family do come and visit!
We still have more going on. The building work on the chimneys wasn’t up to scratch and there is still some damp coming in, so we’ve been getting that fixed – no easy task as the original builder went to ground with a string of barely believable excuses and delays.
We also want to get an electric car, which needs an EV charger, which it turned out meant “unlooping” and upgrading our electricity supply from 60A to 100A. The new supply is in, just need to get the EV charger installed and then go shopping for a new car!! We should also do something with the garden at some point…
Tenants
On the subject of houses, we still have our old house in Durham. We had been renting it out directly. Sadly we got unlucky, and ended up with someone who stopped paying rent, and we had to evict them – no easy task, but after several missed payments, and threats of court action, they eventually agreed to leave “peacefully” (and proceeded to disappear with more unpaid rent than the deposit we kept – they are elusive and I’m not holding out any hope to get it back).
We’ve since gone with a commercial lease to a lovely couple who are running it as an AirBNB. We split some refurbishment costs (it looks better now than it ever did when we were there!), they are nearby to help handle any issues that arise with the building, we have the security of multiple years of lease, and commercial tenants are much easier to evict than residential ones if anything goes wrong! Fingers crossed it won’t. It is available for bookings – cutely named Rhubarb Retreat (after the copious quantity of rhubarb growing in the garden…).
Career change
Probably my biggest change of the year – I’ve changed employers and career! Half a lifetime ago in 1998 I joined Data Connection, which became Metaswitch Networks, and in 2020 was acquired by Microsoft. Over 25-years in various roles.
Then this summer Microsoft made a business decision to stop development on several services we’d been working on, and make roles of myself and several hundred colleagues redundant.
This turned out to be a refreshing change for me. A time to pause and reflect on what next. By some coincidence, there was an opportunity to join my great friend and mountain marathon partner, Shane Ohly, as a “business manager” at Ourea Events. I’ve been there since August and am loving it – a great mix of working in the office in many areas and new projects (the variety is part of what I love about it) interspersed with delivering our amazing portfolio of events (which continues to grow in 2025). You can read more about this change in my career change blog post here.
Orienteering
Orienteering has had its ups and downs this year. I was training well early in the year, then got a strained quad tendon during a long run in February. Off running for several weeks. Just about back to running for the Lipica Open in Slovenia in March (where I still managed to navigate consistently enough to win 500g of honey, and Pippa won 2kg of it!), and more careful rehab and training led to winning the JK in Cannock Chase and the British Middles in Yorkshire.
In the summer we both did Coast & Islands in Scotland – amazing courses and terrain. I then went on to O-Ringen in Sweden, and was pleased to finish top M45 in the group of Brits I was with (ignore the Brit-now-living-abroad…). My brother joined for the last two days, before we headed back to his home in Skåne (Southern Sweden) for a few days. Sadly on the penultimate day of O-Ringen (and my 7th day of O in 10 days) I picked up a calf strain, which I struggled to shake off, before then getting a bad back in September. Getting back into running now (at Christmas Cup as we speak…). I think this is the life of many an orienteer as you move through the senior age classes, constantly managing injuries but still very much loving the sport!
Volunteering
At the big end of the scale I coordinating the British Orienteering Championships in the North East in April – one last thing to see through since our move to the Lakes (and since my previous attempt at coordinating a major event – JK 2020 – was cancelled for obvious reasons!). It was a great success, despite many challenges (especially wet boggy parking fields) and we got to meet Steve Cram! Read about it here.
I also became a Grade A controller, and have jumped into controlling various events – Masterplan Adventure Lakeland Warrior this autumn (one day a WRE), British Night Champs 2025 in Scotland (get your entry in now!), Compass Sport Cup Final 2025 for CLOK in the North East, and just appointed for the JK Long 2026 in Scotland. I really enjoy controlling, getting to work with a variety of people, mostly extremely competent (although always some way you can add value) and on good areas with good maps.
I’ve continued to help with the Orienteering Foundation as an ambassador, with the website and social media. It still surprises me sometimes how little many regular orienteers know about the Orienteering Foundation (although we are also extremely grateful to those who do and support it) – do encourage friends and clubmates to follow us on social media and sign up for our email news (links on the website).
With so much else going on in the last year I’ve kept a fairly low profile with Lakeland Orienteering Club, although did plan one summer series event, and a family fun day (deferred to next year due to stormy weather).
Lakes Climber
Pippa has continued to build her Lakes Climber business for walking and rock climbing adventures in the Lake District. She passed her Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor (MCI) qualification this year. This is the highest level of summer climbing instruction, and allows her to guide and teach all sorts of activities including multi-pitch, sea cliffs and scrambling.
She has had a real mixture of work, including navigation days, intro to rock groups, intermediate rock skills, rescue techniques, 1:1 coaching and more. Also a mixture of direct clients (some of whom have just found her out of the blue) and work for other more established providers in the Lakes. On occasion I’ve also helped out with larger groups, after gaining my own Rock Climbing Instructor (RCI – the old single pitch award) in the spring.
Lakes weather can throw everything at you, but she has always made the most of it, and invariably comes back from a day with clients buzzing with enthusiasm and satisfaction from sharing her knowledge.
Do check out her website including her end of year blog and if you are interested in learning more then get in touch (or recommend to a friend!).
British Orienteering performance manager
As if one of us changing jobs wasn’t enough, Pippa has also taken on something new! Until April she was working two days a week for Vision of Adventure – a charity providing outdoor activities for the visually impaired. Then an opportunity came up for a Performance Manager at British Orienteering, which she applied for and got, starting in May (having left VOA).
Again this is in theory only two days a week, but in practice consumes a lot more time, energy and mental bandwidth. The role had been vacant since 2023 (and before that filled by a non-orienteer who had a very different approach to running the program), so it has taken a lot of effort to steady the ship. It is challenging working with a mixture of paid staff and volunteers, and orienteers who can be highly opinionated (who knew!) and don’t always pull in the same direction. However, upcoming changes in the staffing will hopefully help form a strong team supporting the GBR team as we move into 2025.
Despite the challenges, she has found it rewarding working with the athletes, and seeing the end results as she supported the team at the Europeans in Hungary (with myself too), WOC in Scotland, and World Cups in Finland.
Carbon footprint
After attending a “carbon literacy” course (through some work at Ourea Events), and reading some books, I’ve become increasingly conscious of our carbon footprint, and thinking about what more we can do to reduce it individually (and how I can influence the business I work in, although we already have a keen eye on sustainability). So what can we do?
- Ever since starting at Ourea, I’ve aimed to cycle the 4 miles to work whenever possible, and even when it is raining or freezing cold. I find it a refreshing way to prepare for the day ahead, or unwind afterwards.
- Although I love orienteering events and rock climbing abroad (this year: Lipica Open in Slovenia, O-Ringen in Sweden, helping GBR Squad at Europeans in Hungary, and we recently returned from a wonderful climbing trip to Costa Blanca!) it is increasingly hard to justify all those flights. Can we find a better way?
- At 10 years old, our current car is aging and things keep going wrong (most alarming being the power steering sporadically jerking in the wrong direction…). Our next car will surely be an electric vehicle, and as mentioned earlier we’ve been preparing the way for EV charging at home.
- We’ve been eating less meat, especially from the most greenhouse gas emitting ruminants (cows and sheep), and I have been trying out some dairy milk alternatives (soya, almond, oat – jury is still out on that). I do like cheese though…
- Generally “consume less” of everything: food, services, products, etc. – it all has a carbon impact.
I’m sure there is plenty more that we can do in 2025 and beyond.
