Page 28 - feb2024

February 2024 February 2024

that order, on his gravestone, The Church would only allow ‘He loved the Psalms!’
On a school trip to the York Festival, as a teen-ager, I heard the Monteverdi
Vespers in York Minster and decided there and then that I must sing and have
done so ever since. I guess the three of us who went to the concert rather than a
review only wanted to earn ‘Brownie points’ with the music teacher!
I loved rock-pooling and decided I wanted to study Marine Biology – very few
universities did it then, so I reasoned that if I chose a university by the sea, all the
staff would do their marine research there. I went to Swansea and studied
Zoology and it was mainly marine: marine field courses etc. I loved university and
spent most of my time climbing cliffs and mountains, of which there are plenty in
Wales! I must have done some work because I got a reasonably good degree. A
reunion of the Mountaineering Club was ‘interesting’ (some people were stuck in a
‘time warp - pretty much the same as they were 30 years ago only ‘greyer’!). Of
course we knew each other pretty well – camping in Snowdonia most weekends
and a travelling to Scotland, the Lake District and the Alps. I did the student thing
of hitch-hiking to Athens with a friend and now understand what it must have
been like for my mother, waving us ‘goodbye’ to hitch to Dover!
I moved to Dorset because my then husband got a job at East Stoke. When
people come here they don’t want to live anywhere else, so here I am, still here...
I spent most of my working life working for conservation charities. I worked for the
Dorset Wildlife Trust as their Marine Conservation Officer. We established the first
voluntary marine reserve in England at Kimmeridge and I spent 15 happy years
there: giving talks, rock-pooling with children etc. My children had to come to
work with me during the holidays – most kids would give anything to spend their
summers on the beach – mine would have preferred to go to London! I tore
myself away from Kimmeridge and went to work for the Marine Conservation
Society, establishing marine education projects throughout the UK. Training
courses for coastal managers took me to Scotland,
Wales, Northern Ireland as well throughout England
and even the Isle of Wight! A highlight was
working with Sea Gypsies in Sabah, Malaysia and
divers in The Bahamas.
I decided to become self-employed and
contracts took me abroad to Mauritius and the
Seychelles. The Shoals of Capricorn Programme
was run by the Royal Geographical Society in both
countries and I advised them on Educational
projects. In Mauritius we worked on an island,
called Rodrigues, which belongs to Mauritius and
is about 350 miles east of the main island.
Rodrigues is not in any atlas as it would require a
page all to itself! The island has a population of
about 30,000 and there is nothing for its young

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