About

I had rather a double life growing up. With one group of friends I enjoyed scouting, hillwalking and being on the service crew of a local campsite; with another, I enjoyed putting the world to rights, philosophy and drama.

I’ve carried on wearing those two hats into adult life. For the philosophy stuff, see www.thephilosophyman.com

This website promotes the work of Outspark, my outdoor education business which has grown out of my work with Sutton Grammar School for Boys.

I attended a grammar school in the days when the teaching was rather one-size-fits-all. Fed up with coasting along, I left to teach myself A Levels and gained a place to read philosophy at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. After university, I embarked on a curious career embracing firework shops, the manufacture of garden trellis, online voteswapping and rethinking search engines, all the time escaping to the Lake District whenever I could.

Eventually, I went into teaching, culminating in a couple of very happy years teaching English and other subjects at Sutton Grammar School for Boys. During this time I became deeply involved in outdoor education, and progressed to setting up a business to run expedition leadership courses for sixth formers. Sadly, government funding policy changed and that business, for all its community benefits, ceased to be viable.

I have continued to run an expanding programme of outdoor education for SGS and am now rather chuffed to have been joined in the company by Dan (below) who was on the first expedition I ran.

This rather eclectic CV has given me an unusual set of skills, combining expertise in philosophy and outdoor education with an affinity for the needs of gifted children. More recent interests include storytelling, public speaking through Toastmasters International, comedy improv and playing the ukelele (though I’m suffering from ukelele elbow the moment, which isn’t the most manly injury one could aspire to).