Robin Barratt fell in love with the lake district when he worked at Keswick School in the nineteen sixties. Later, whilst working at an outdoor centre at Howtown, Ullswater, he and some of his colleagues started an environmental study group to help people working in the outdoors to become more conscious of their own responsibility to the countryside.
Rodney Key was born in Brockstones Farm, Kentmere in 1933 where his father was a farm manager. In 1942 the family moved to Brunt Knott farm where Rodney worked alongside his father for several years. He remembers the hard winter of 1947.
Born in October 1921 in Carlisle, early schooling in Devonport, then returned to Carlisle and attended Robert Ferguson School. Ron’s father was a Chief Petty Officer whose work took him to the far east. Ron’s first venture into the Lakes was with a scout group to camp near Braithwaite, his chief memory was of the views from the top of Grisedale Pike.