John Cousins
Chief Executive, Mountain Training United Kingdom & Ireland
Mountain Training provides courses and qualifications in walking, climbing and mountaineering. Its outdoor residential centres offer training for schemes such as Mountain Leader, plus work and connections post-qualification.
“At its heart, Mountain Training believes in residential outdoor experiences for young people. I went to Aberglaslyn Hall in 1973. I remember the smell of the dubbin, wearing plastic Helly Hansen waterproofs and sliding down a grassy slope. I remember so many details of that experience, and feeling about sport in a way I never had before. I discovered an activity where I felt tall, proud and like it was me.
“We provide leaders, coaches, instructors and guides, with many of them working within our residential centres. These centres often provide hubs, work and apprenticeships, formally or informally. They’re proving grounds for generations of outdoor instructors.
“These centres have real overheads which puts them in jeopardy, and when they shut you can’t just bring them back. Most were acquired in the ’50s when North Wales and Cumbria were not the activity venues that they are today, so they were snapped up by local authorities for very little.
“Throughout my career they’ve been threatened in various ways. They’ve morphed and changed, and there are now more commercial providers and fewer local education authority centres. People have successfully mounted campaigns to resist local authority closure, but I don’t think there’s much of that going on right now because there are so many other things demanding people’s attention.
“We had a meeting with a North Wales MP who has now formed an all-party parliamentary group for Westminster about residential outdoor education.
His point was that it doesn’t matter how many jobs you have in jeopardy, there’s always another industry that’s in worse trouble so if you’re trying to persuade government it’s about what else you can do. There are centres, like Outward Bound and others, who have mobilised to become day providers. That’s good if you can be nimble and access a local opportunity, but the
Kent Mountain Centre, which has shut in Llanberis, serves Kent, so clearly it’s quite problematic.
“It’s very concerning and we want to support it, but it’s been a decades-long battle to convince authorities that these centres are worthy of continued investment. Wonderfully, in Wales, the outdoors has become part of the curriculum, so there are efforts to realise the true value of learning outside of the classroom.
“When some of these places are empty they look rather tired. You suddenly realise they’re underfunded and under-resourced. When they’re full of kids, they’re full of energy, and are inspiring, wonderful places.”