Up a mountain, out at sea...

We rarely see our Training and Development Manager sitting still!  Paul is relatively new to the Xplore family but with his passion for the outdoors and voluntary work he is already a much loved member of the UK Head Office team!  Here, he tells us about a few of the things he loves to do. 

'Where do I start……having worked in outdoor education and the travel industry for nearly 10 years I’ve had the pleasure of living all over the UK from the Lake District down to the Isle of Wight.  Working in the industry also gave me the opportunity to manage a chateau in Northern France for a few years which was an excellent cultural experience and learning curve! 

One of my most exciting and moving travel experiences was Croatia in 1998 with the Venture Scouts.  We took a lorry loaded with aid and worked at an orphanage for three weeks.  Getting to know the children, who were around the same age as me, really put the teenage struggle of a young Mancunian boy in perspective as I learnt about their different and challenging lives.  We spent our time socialising and playing with them, we went fishing and did soap carving but mostly we just showed them that someone from outside their country was aware of their circumstances.

Nowadays I enjoy playing on mountains as everyone in the industry does and I try to get to them as much as possible.  I have a memory of being 11 years old and traversing Striding Edge in the Lake District in high wind! Another challenging time was the assent of The Old Man of Coniston where conditions changed and we were too close to the top to back down. Lots of people came down past us and we had to crawl the last 100m, we then ran back down! 


Another fun travel experience was a little shorter and was my first trip on the Sheringham Lifeboat I’m currently crew on, only a short (and fast) trip but travel all the same.  There are two things that keep me going to training and make sure I have my pager on me when I go out, the first is the immense sense of internal pride I get from volunteering for an organisation like the RNLI and the boat is pretty quick so hitting the waves on it is immense fun!

Aside from life boats and mountains, I travelled to Martinique last year, just to relax! Most of the year I use a 5mm winter wetsuit to play in the waves or my RNLI dry suit, neither of which were needed in Martinique… warm water and big waves!  I had coconut sorbet served in a little kart which is made by the locals from the coconuts on that beach. I also watched the start of a boat race between Martinique and St.Lucia in traditional boats.'

So where next for Paul? He says in 2014 I would like to climb Mt Elbrus, a 5,642 metre mountain in Russia... We'll keep you posted!