Mental health – out in the open
“I’VE ALWAYS KNOWN THAT THE OUTDOORS IS MY HAPPY PLACE”
David Mellor is an Ordnance Survey GetOutside Champion from North Wales, where he and his wife do their utmost to raise an outdoor family. He also runs wellbeing walks for families and groups of fellow dads to get away from the pressures of life, share outdoor skills, and talk openly about mental health.
My love affair with the outdoors began at about 6 or 7 years of age, when my mum started taking me along with her walking group. Weighed down by a knee-length wax jacket and the heaviest boots known to man, I have vivid memories of getting stuck in Peak District bogs! Looking back, being raised by a strong singleparent mum who worked full-time, it’s clear that the outdoors, even then, was a vitally important escape for us. That’s something that has never left me. Growing up, I graduated to mountains and multiday wild camping trips where I can truly leave the pressures of life behind.
For my mental health
I’ve always known that the outdoors was my happy place, but many years of dealing with failed IVF treatments, despite finding success eventually, resulted in a breakdown in 2015 that manifested itself in severe anxiety and panic attacks. For someone who spends every available hour outdoors, for the first time in my life I felt trapped indoors. Slowly but surely, I accepted the help that was offered to me but the thought of bumping into someone I knew was debilitating so, more and more, I found solace in wild places far away from beaten paths. This was crucial. It gave me the time and space in nature to process everything. Walking was my saviour. Since then, I’ve formed a walking group of my own, and one of the things that we do is take a group of dads on wellbeing walks and wild camps where we share our experiences of mental health and parenthood. We’ve had bivvy nights along coastal paths and nights spent in caves in National Parks. We share outdoor skills along the way, but the primary purpose is always our mental health and laughing. A lot.
For family time
With both my wife and I having busy full-time professions, it’s imperative for us to plan as many opportunities for pure, unadulterated family time with our two young children as we can. We’re not anti-screentime or TV, but we also know that memories (like getting stuck in bogs) won’t be forged on gadgets. Ever since they were old enough to support their own heads in a carrier, our two have been exploring the outdoors. Our eldest was just 3 when he did his first father-son wild hammock camp, while our daughter loves taking the lead and deviating from the planned route for an opportunist bit of gentle scrambling, followed by a picnic with a view. We’ve also developed a family walking group so that other families can come out with us, learn new skills, make friends and eat lots of cake.