LUPINE ADVENTURE CO-OPERATIVE LIMITED - Key Persons
Andy is the DofE Manager within the co-operative. He looks after a half dozen schools personally and has the other members of staff reporting to him on issues regarding the Duke of Edinburgh's Award.
Andy trained as a single pitch climbing instructor in 1996 and qualified as a Mountain Leader in 2004. He started getting involved with the Duke of Edinburgh's Award in Leeds as soon as he qualified as a Mountain Leader. His way in was volunteering for the city council Open Award Centres for 6 years and was, for the first 3 years, their only qualified Mountain Leader.
In 2009 he became an accredited assessor at all levels for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award. He is now the DofE Approved Activity Provider Manager for Lupine.
Andy has spent time in Scotland every winter for over a decade now, mainly walking and climbing with groups of friends but also running winter skills courses in recent years. His main summer time personal mountain enjoyment comes from a combination of scrambling and night navigation (and scrambling at night).
Andy is a founder member of Lupine Adventure Co-operative, helping to set up the co-operative in 2007. The plan for setting up a workers co-op to provide outdoor education and recreation came about when Andy and Dave were doing a 10 day winter expedition in the Pyrenees. After a couple of days they had run out of things to talk about during the 14 hours of freezing darkness that they endured each night. The idea of the co-operative came up, they started talking, and the nights just flew by.
Andy also works a day a week at The University of Leeds on one of their discovery modules teaching and coaching rock climbing skills to a group of students each year.
Andy holds the Winter Mountain Leader and Summer Mountain Leader Awards as well as the Rock Climbing Instructor (RCI) Award and has a degree in Sport Science.
Andy's qualifications can be verified on the Mountain Training website.
Ben was introduced to hill walking and climbing as a child before rediscovering it in his adult life. He now enjoys taking his own daughter out to camp, climb, walk and run in the hills and mountains.
Ben holds the ML (Mountain Leader) and RCI (Rock Climbing Instructor) qualifications and is a gold-level DofE assessor. He continues to use these qualifications to work on Lupine's activites in between his duties in the office. He has worked for Lupine Adventure since 2010.
Ben's qualifications can be verified on the Mountain Training website
Cat lives in North Wales, working as a freelance instructor and at Mountain Leader Training, the organisation which manages the outdoor qualifcations such as the Mountain Leader award.
Originally from London, she lived in Leeds for 12 years working as a youth worker on programmes aimed at building confidence and personal development for young women, using a range of outdoor activities, team games and art-based work. A personal love of being in the hills and in wild open spaces led naturally to encouraging others to find such pleasure. She started to run courses on teaching Outdoor Education, and developed to gaining qualifications in Single Pitch rock climbing (SPA) and the Mountain Leader Award (ML). She worked for Leeds City Council at their residential outdoor education centre, Herd Farm, where activities include a climbing tower, high ropes course, mountain biking and archery.
Cat continued to work as a freelance Instructor and youth worker, before packing it all in to travel and work in New Zealand. On her return to the UK, she moved to North Wales, spending every spare moment climbing and walking in the incredible mountains of Snowdonia. And hiding from the rain.
Developing further skills in Alpine and winter conditions, Cat has made successful ascents of mountains in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, the European Alps and Norway's Jottenheim region. She is fortunate to have had fantastic opportunities to travel in so many beautiful places including the USA, Central America, and Spain. Canada is next! The UK, however, holds some of the most unique and inspiring wild areas, with personal favorites being the Isles of Skye & Rhum, Cumbria's Langdale Pikes, the Black Mountains of south Wales and Snowdonia's Cardennau.
Cathy found her love for the outdoors and the adventures it can bring at school. It began with kayaking and sailing, then at University rock climbing and mountaineering adding in running, mountain biking and then skiing before the pace of life changed a bit with the birth of her two sons!.
Introducing her two boys to the outdoors, nurturing their passions and seeing the huge benefits it brought to them was a catalyst that saw Cathy take the leap from the outdoors as a hobby to a career instead.
It started with Forest Schools which has an ethos for learning and development that Cathy is incredibly passionate about, that of supported self discovery and exploration. She went on to run her own business in this for 9 years providing sessions for many schools and groups in her local area.
Cathy then added in paddlesport qualifications for the lakes and the sea, and finally summer Mountain Leader, she now works on the water and in the hills all year round. A career she finds hugely rewarding.
Job Titles:
- Expedition Delivery Manager
Dave Lyons BSc (Outdoor Studies) First Class & MSc Biodiversity and Conservation is passionate about the mountain environment, ecosystem restoration, and working with young people. Philosophically he believes that we should allow ‘mountains to speak for themselves' and avoid over facilitating in our educational practise.
He is a keen climber, scrambler, hillwalker, trail runner and mountaineer. He is a qualified Mountain Leader (Summer) and Rock Climbing Instructor. In addition to these he undertook his Mountain Leader (Winter) training in 2018. He is also an aspirant International Mountain Leader (IML) and undertook the IML summer training in 2017 and passed the summer assessment in 2019. He undertook his IML winter training in January 2020, and he is planning on taking his IML winter assessment in March 2023.
The most satisfying experiences of his life have taken place whilst walking and camping in the Scottish Highlands. Sitting by a Sea Loch birdwatching, walking through ancient Scotch Pine in Glen Affric, or standing on a mountain summit admiring the view. He also is partial to a decent glass of vino tinto or a pint of real ale. He lives in Leeds with his partner and their cocker spaniel.
He is a member of the Mountain Training Association and the British Mountaineering Council. Dave's qualifications can be verified on the Mountain Training website.
Jen's love of the outdoors started from a young age. She enjoyed a pleasantly "feral" childhood, swimming in rivers, climbing trees and not coming home until sunset, which set the tone for her adult working life.
She has worked in the outdoors since 2003 in a variety of roles including DofE leader, Play & Learning team leader, and an Expedition Leader for trips abroad. This variety of experience has given her the opportunity to meet many interesting and inspirational people, visit different parts of the world, and has enhanced her knowledge of the natural world.
Jen feels strongly that one of the greatest privileges of being in this industry is the opportunity to facilitate people's positive experiences in nature. Often working with Duke of Edinburgh groups who may have little experience of the outdoors and nature, she is passionate and focused on supporting them to overcome any challenges they may face, together with assisting each individual to fulfil their own personal goals.
Job Titles:
- Contract Manager
- Human Resources Director
Jo considers herself a bit of a late-comer to mountaineering, despite a life-long love of the outdoors, especially the hilly bits. She became an enthusiastic hill walker in her teens and dabbled in a bit of single-pitch rock climbing when opportunities arose. During a significant interlude, characterised primarily by motherhood, she obtained a BSc in Ecology from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in her native Norfolk, spent some years working on conservation topics as a post-graduate researcher and taught Field Ecology and Research Skills in the UK and Ireland. Hill and Mountain visits formed regular holidays, but there wasn't so much pushing the skill level.
In 2012 with her daughter established in sixth form she made a contentious decision to get back out in the hills with an open mind to where that adventure might take her. Since then she's taken up winter mountaineering, put up her first lead climb, completed her first multi-pitch routes, developed an active enthusiasm for solo wild-camping, trekked overseas for the first time, ticked off her first 40 Munros, worn out 4 pairs of boots and, most crucially to gaining this coveted place on the Lupine Adventure website, obtained a Summer Mountain Leader Award. Somewhere in the middle of this she also set-up a bicycle related worker's co-operative in Norwich, which she worked for and developed for over three years until waving goodbye in January 2017, having seen the enterprise grow from two to five employed members.
She feels a significant debt to UEA Fell and Mountaineering Club, who continued to tolerate her participation as an alumni member, made frequent trips to the mountains practical and affordable, acted as willing guinea pigs to her leadership aspirations and most inspirationally helped re-kindle that special enthusiasm that comes from newly exploring and testing your skills in the mountains.
She especially enjoys visits to Scotland where here favourite areas include Assynt , Skye and Glencoe. She particularly enjoys long, slightly technical ridge routes, ideally where you can see both mountains and sea. Pinnacle Ridge on Sgurr nan Gillean is one recently enjoyed route that exactly fits the bill.
She is particularly keen to inspire more girls and women of all ages out into the hills.
Jo's qualifications can be verified on the Mountain Training website.
Job Titles:
- Admin
- Operations Assistant
I grew up in Leeds, and following a stereotypical childhood spent reading, drawing, playing with Lego, and riding my bike, I set my sights on a career in the creative industry. I gained a place to study art and design, first at Cleveland College in Middlesbrough, then at Bradford University, where I graduated in Graphic Design and Illustration. In the years since then I have had a varied career, primarily as a Mac Operator for such Yorkshire institutions such as the Yorkshire Evening Post and Damart and have travelled for leisure to countries such as Greece, Cyprus and Spain. Following the birth of my daughter in 2015, I took some time away from paid work, a period that was unexpectedly extended by the 2020 lockdown. My return to work saw me take a new direction, and am now enjoying my new role as Administration and Operations Assistant at Lupine.
Outside of work I spend time with my daughter, baking, and cultivating a shared interest in animated films and the world of Harry Potter. I also enjoy swimming, reading, gardening, and making increasingly elaborate birthday cakes.
Jo has been volunteering with cadets for over 30 years. It was with the Air Cadets that her interest in adventure training was nurtured and culminated in her gaining a Summer ML as well as DofE expedition supervision and assessment. As an adult instructor, she had volunteered on DofE expeditions locally and nationally as well as introducing young people to adventure training in the Lakes and North Wales.
Jo has an MSc in Biochemical Pharmacology and pursued a career in science. She also spent several years as a secondary school science teacher and used her DofE skills to good effect running the DofE programme before returning to lab work.
After a move to Yorkshire, she left the laboratory to work at Parthian Climbing Harrogate and still instructs there on a very part time basis.
Jonathan was introduced/dragged into the outdoors and up mountains by his mum and dad whilst still a poor little toddler. In public he has never forgiven them for this. Privately however, he's come to terms with the addictive nature of nature, and loves getting into adventures, large and small. Walking and camping led him to mountain biking, international travel and more recently climbing. Snowboarding also featured quite heavily, taking him all over Europe, New Zealand and Canada.
Having never really settled into a ‘proper' job, it was whilst living in the Lake District that some outdoorsy folk persuaded him that perhaps he should turn his pastime into employment. His lovely wife helped to fund a Summer Mountain Leader Training course at Plas Y Brenin in 2015, and the next spring he qualifed with Climb365 of Kendal.
He's been working as an ML ever since, and to his great joy he has found that nurturing the love for the outdoor lifestyle in others is rewarding in itself. He's currently most looking forward to dragging his baby boy up some hills as soon as the little lad can cling on.
Nicola grew up running around in the woods in Cheshire, traveling the world on container ships, and can recall first falling in love with the mountain environment in the Lake District around the age of five.
She has been working in the outdoors since 2001, initially in environmental education at the Temple Newsam Estate in Leeds. After joining the Leeds Youth Service in 2003, she was soon seconded to outdoors centres where she delivered a variety of adventure activities to a broad range of groups including excluded young people and young offenders.
Since 2007 she has been focused on expedition work, largely D of E. As well as working across the UK, Nicola has led expedition teams in Morocco, India and Borneo, dealing with some highly interesting logistical and medical issues along the way.
Nicola currently combines running around in the hills for a living with facilitating nature based education, and delivering workshops on bushcraft and traditional skills from shelter building to basket making. She also runs foraging courses and is passionate about wild food. She is a qualified mountain leader and D of E assessor, working towards the Winter ML and SPA assessment. She has undertaken recent training in water safety and rescue, first aid, and child protection.
Growing up in Yorkshire next door to the open moors provided me with an exciting playground full of adventures. Having been a Youth worker doing detached work and also managing an off site behaviour management unit at a local secondary school in inner city Bradford for many years I have come across people of all ages who have never had the opportunity to experience the outdoors. This inspired me to develop my knowledge and skills further that I might be able to share my passion for the outdoors with others.
In 2008 I returned to education to complete a BSc in Geography and Environmental Science to go alongside various other professional qualifications including ML and Trail Cycle Leader. I have since brought together all my skills; knowledge and experience to deliver bespoke outdoor activities and experiences in schools, community settings and within the corporate sector.
I am very active within the Army Cadet Force (ACF) delivering a wide range of adventurous training including D of E (assessment), archery and mountain biking and have recently been on expedition to KwaZulu - Natal, South Africa. I currently hold the position of Navigation Advisor for Yorkshire North & West ACF.
Sam has been keen on the outdoors all his life, with a particular passion for mountain walking and trekking. In his youth he spent much of his time on family camping trips in the Lakes or exploring with the scouts closer to home in Preston.
At college Sam completed his bronze and silver Duke of Edinburgh awards and went on to study sport and exercise science at Leeds University, where he was introduced to delivering outdoor education. While at Leeds he gained experience rock climbing and caving, and also got involved volunteering for Leeds city council, helping to deliver their Duke of Edinburgh programme.
Since graduating from University he has gained his Mountain Leader award, Duke of Edinburgh Gold assessor and RLSS water safety management award. He works as a freelance outdoor instructor delivering Duke of Edinburgh, challenge events, outdoor team building and overseas expeditions. On a professional level, Sam has lead expeditions to Peru, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malawi and Nepal.
As well as freelance work he also volunteers for his local Mountain Rescue team.
Sam has a real passion for using outdoor education as a mechanism to stimulate the development of important skills such as team work, communication and leadership and has the ability to adapt his facilitation skills according to the demands of the group he is working with.