Meet the Instructors: Part 4

Whether you’ve been on one of our courses, have been considering coming to us to learn, or are just passionate about the outdoors like we are, you might be wanting to know a bit more about the team here at Glenmore Lodge! In this blog and over the three to follow, we’ve asked our core instructional team a few questions to help you get to know them better

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Andy Townsend:

Introduce yourself – what do you do at Glenmore Lodge and how long have you worked here?

I’m Andy Townsend, I’m a Mountain Guide and I’m head of the Snowsports department at Glenmore Lodge. So I spend some of my winters on skis, some on foot, and I work in the Alps and on the crags in Summer

What do you love about working at Glenmore Lodge?

So I’m really lucky that I’m able to work on a lot of different courses from rock climbing to skiing, in Scotland and the Alps and all over the world. And the variety is what’s kept me interested in the outdoors and instructing for so many years.

It might seem a bit cheesy but helping somebody achieve a goal or an ambition, or their wildest dreams in the mountains actually is really inspiring and keeps me motivated to go climbing and skiing for myself

Glenmore lodge is a great building in a great place, with really great mountains and access for some amazing Scottish skiing. The staff are a lot fun and very experienced; there’s always somebody with lots of knowledge to pick and borrow, and it’s a very supportive and fun place to work

What do you do in Autumn to prepare for the colder months?

What are you looking forward to about winter?

So working in the Scottish winter is always a challenge, the weather, the conditions and the environment challenge us and work us really hard

I’m most looking forward to the first ski turns of the year. The variety of snow in Scotland always makes it challenging with the weather and the conditions, visibility is always a challenge, but the skiing is always amazing and so special

What are your top 3 places for outdoor adventures?

Three favourite places; it’s really difficult to narrow it down to my three favourite places, but if you twist my arm and make me, I would say Chamonix. It’s the first place I went to in the Alps, I love it; great coffee, cable cars that whiz you up the mountain where you can ski and climb amazing mountains steeped in history.

Another favourite place would be Lofoten in Norway, it is picture perfect, granite crags rising straight out of turquoise blue fjords. It’s an amazing rock-climbing venue, I’ve not been there skiing but its on my list, and it was where I had my honeymoon!

And my third favourite place, it might sound a bit cheesy, but its Scotland. We moved here as a family just after I qualified as a Guide because we could do amazing skiing, climbing, biking, whatever we wanted to do. We’ve raised our family here, we still love it, the adventures we have here are exciting and so special.

Best/favourite adventure you’ve ever been on?

So my favourite adventure ever, might seem a bit weird but I actually enjoyed training and qualifying to become a Mountain Guide. It’s not one adventure but it was pretty adventurous! I started with a great group of friends who became the best friends I’ve ever had; we got to go rock climbing in the Lakes, North Wales, winter climbing in Scotland, skiing in the Alps, Alpinism all over Switzerland, France, Italy. And although at the time it was quite hard work, in hindsight I really enjoyed that period of my life and I would love to repeat it again.

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Matt Haydock:

Introduce yourself – what do you do at Glenmore Lodge and how long have you worked here?

My name’s Matt Haydock, I started working at Glenmore Lodge in August so I’m a pretty new addition to the team, and I do anything on the water basically. So anything involving wearing a buoyancy aid, floating around in boats, falling out and getting back into them, paddling on rivers, lochs and the sea

What do you love about working at Glenmore Lodge?

Glenmore Lodge is just an amazing place to work, mainly for the team ethos that we’ve got here. Everyone is such a great crowd of people with shared interests, and working with a fantastic team of instructors, and everyone in the wider team as well is just brilliant. It’s a really nice social atmosphere and a great place to work

I just love working with people to be honest. It’s just fantastic to support people to have their own adventures, and for me that involves taking them out onto the water inspiring them, and allowing them to go on their own journeys, learn new things, master new skills

And just that feeling when somebody gets it and achieves what they wanted to achieve, and it puts a big smile on their face. So I just love doing that, and helping people do that on the water!

What are you looking forward to about winter?

So wintertime for me is maybe a wee bit different from some of the others in the instructor team, its an opportunity for a wee bit of downtime so I’m looking forward to going to see my pal Luke in Lake Louise, so going for a wee holiday to Canada for some skiing

And it totally depends on the weather, so if the weather ends up being mild, I’ll probably do quite a bit of paddling still and I’ll look forward to that. And its an opportunity to maybe get out on my skis a bit for myself as well if the winter comes up good

But work wise its very much a time for chilling out a wee bit and also towards the back end I’ll be preparing for the paddling season ahead next summer

What are your top 3 places for outdoor adventures?

So top 3 places to go on adventures; I guess one of the top ones would be something really local to me so one of my favourite rivers to go paddling on, and that could be on a kayak or a canoe or indeed a SUP, would be the Findhorn especially in the autumn. I think the colours you get on the Findhorn are second to none they’re pretty unique, the colours of the trees. And you often get really good water levels at that time of year, and I’ve had some really cool adventure days there.

A wee bit further afield I just love the north coast of Scotland for sea kayaking. The cliffs, the rock architecture, and the fast tides; it’s a really committing place to go paddling, and you always feel like you’ve achieved something quite big when you go on a trip there because its such an exposed location

And then internationally, I just love heading out to the French alps with pals. So in the summer time catching time to go to the French Alps on a boating holiday, I’ve had some really great memories there so that’s always a cool place to go in the summer as well

Best/favourite adventure you’ve ever been on?

So favourite adventure would definitely be when we went on a paddleboarding trip around Malta to try and circumnavigate Malta. I guess the reason it was a really cool adventure is because back when we did it as a team of friends, we didn’t really know much about paddleboarding at all, so it was totally discovering things as we went along, had no idea how it was going to go. We had some really close shaves, but also just a fantastic time exploring new place and some great stories as well

An adventure is going out into the unknown, and there was so much unknown because we didn’t really know how to control the craft that we were on, we’d never been there before, we didn’t know whether we’d achieve it or not, and that was really cool!

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Nathan White:

Introduce yourself – what do you do at Glenmore Lodge and how long have you worked here?

Hi my name is Nathan White, and I work in the Rock & Mountain department here at Glenmore Lodge and I’ve been in my position here as a Senior Instructor for the last 6 years

What do you love about instructing at Glenmore Lodge?

The thing I love most about working at GL is the opportunity to work as part of a team who all share a love for outdoor sports.

What do you do in Autumn to prepare for the colder months?

I don’t particularly do anything myself to prepare for winter – usually my autumns and winter are spent rock climbing and working on rock climbing projects that I have, whether that’s trad climbing or bouldering. And then usually when it comes to winter, I’ll usually have one or two days out to brush the cobwebs off, generally get really scared on a mixed climb somewhere and get all the faff out the way, of being all clumsy with my winter gloves, pre going out and working with clients in winter conditions.

What are you looking forward to about winter?

The thing I’m looking forward to most about winter is the opportunity to do some winter climbing, and go and experience and tick off some of my ski touring projects that I’d like to do this winter

But most of all, I’m looking forward to winter coming to an end so I can go back to my favourite activity, which is rock climbing

What are your top 3 places for outdoor adventures?

My top 3 favourite destinations would be, one in the UK which is the Loch A’an basin and in particular the Shelter Stone, which is a big cliff situated there which is amazing for summer and winter climbing. Squamish in Canada, which is absolutely amazing for all types of adventure sports, including my favourite (rock climbing, of course). And my last favourite destination will be my next future destination, wherever that may be!

Best/favourite adventure you’ve ever been on?

My favourite trip I’ve been on is to the north part of Norway, where a good friend I went and did some rarely repeated big wall rock routes. It was just an amazing adventure!

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Check out our blog to read the first three parts of this series and meet the rest of our team.