By: Blonde One

 

As an outdoor instructor it’s really important to keep up your skills. It could be easy to get complacent with your abilities and assume that just because you have successfully achieved a walking qualification you are capable of dealing with difficult situations. That might be true in some cases, for some people, but I like to make sure that I am continually refreshing my skills and reminding myself that this is a job to be taken seriously. CPD is sometimes difficult to come by in this industry without paying an extraordinary amount of money but it’s not impossible to find as I have discovered.

Any member of the Mountain Training Association can enrol onto various courses that are being run all over the country. I recently went on a free peer-led night navigation session. It was a mid week session so only lasted for a couple of hours but it was great. It reminded me that night navigation is quite tricky but it also reminded me that I’m quite good at it. We were lucky to be treated to a beautiful starry sky and some sparkling frosty grass. The company was good and the route was good too. Some of it was familiar but obviously took on a new unfamiliarity under cover of darkness. I can’t wait for the next one now!