My office!

The thing I was most excited about, before coming onto this course, was undoubtedly working on Ben Lomond. The highest munro on Loch Lomond, an iconic peak and one of the most famous in Britain. My first day on site, an English bank holiday, saw streams of people hiking past us up and down all day, commenting on our work, asking questions, many amusingly asking the same thing: could you not put a stair lift in instead!? To climb this mountain is a challenge in itself, something I've enjoyed and been invigorated by several times in my personal life. But to, in effect, be paid to climb it and paid to work on it took things to a whole new level. Imagine the attached view as your office, not bad right? I like that, in the distance down the winding path, you can see some walkers. There were many more like them. The work we are doing, and the work carried out year round by National Trust for Scotland, enables people to better enjoy this famous landscape, to ease the path up and down. Being so popular, however, brings its challenges. Footfall. Sheer pressure of people on the stone pathways. Wherever it is too eroded, to work by boots and the weather, wherever it is not longer comfortable, is when people will step off the path, create their own shortcuts, just the things we want to avoid in seeking to protect the wider habitat. So our work in the coming weeks, putting comfortable stone step pitching in place, with blocking and landscaping work to the sides, will hopefully keep more water off the path and more people on it. We want people to enjoy this stunning landscape, while ensuring said landscape is protected. I picture the number of people stepping on my new stone steps over the coming years and feel a surge of pride in playing some small part in the successful life of a famous and endearing landscape. It is a case of giving something back to a place I have taken so much from, in terms of satisfaction and fitness and health. This is definitely the best ever office I have worked in. I can even forgive the lack of cafetiere options.