I've always spent my time outdoors. I grew up surrounded by fields with forests, rivers and fishing ponds on one side and a long, golden unspoiled beach on the other. Pretty lucky. Even luckier, my parents took us on holidays to mountain areas and most weekends of the summer we took road trips to pitch and putt tournaments next to beaches, tennis courts, orchards, rivers, swimming pools and all manner of cool outdoor activities. As a third stroke of luck our town had an Adventure Club run by a legendary local teacher, Pat Monaghan. Pat took groups of us to hostels in the mountains of Wicklow a few times a year, where we went walking in the hills and learned about nature, navigation and self-sufficiency. It all added up to a fantastic grounding and I took advantage by becoming an independent mountaineer, lead climber, Mountain Leader and Rock Climbing Instructor.

After that, I got myself into an unrelated career with a bit too much time indoors, which put many of my ambitions on hold. I still climbed all over Ireland, Scotland and Wales, in the Alps and up Elbrus and Toubkal, but the fire to finish my training as an instructor still burned and I had ambitions to take on longer, higher, harder projects in my own time, so in 2022 I quit my career, started climbing full-time and signed on a course as an outdoor instructor. Happy days. Unfortunately it didn't last long. Shortly into that process I was diagnosed with cancer and as I was recovering I found I had diabetes. Coming so close together, they were the end of my plans and back to the drawing board....but not for long. I may not be able to do everything I wanted, but I can do a lot and I just have to prioritise my list of mountains, trails, races, places and adventures I want to get to. I won't manage all of them, I'll have to make choices, some things will slide, but I'll get out there and challenge myself and show you the results on Facebook and Instagram,

Thank you again for your support in doing this, however you show it, it really does mean a lot.

See you on the hills, Kevin.