Name: David Norman
Mountain Experience: 12 yrs
Where did you grow up?: London
Current Home City: London
Favourite Mountain: Tryfan
Favourite food to pack in your rucksack: Chocolate
Favourite National Park: Snowdonia
Q. How did you become interested in the outdoors?
A. My cousin came down to London, he had fallen in love with the mountains during his time at university up north and persuaded me to start climbing and hiking with him – I then fell in love with climbing and mountains….
Q. What is one lesson the mountains have taught you?
A. The best mountain stories hurt and can be intimidating but they are generally the stories that you find yourself daydreaming about on the tube on the way to work on a dreary Wednesday morning.
Q. Other than boots, if you had unlimited money to spend on one piece of kit, what would it be?
A. After nearly getting hyperthermia going up scsrfell Pike it would be a good waterproof every time.
Q. What is one thing you pack in your rucksack, whatever the season and whatever the weather?
A. Again that Waterproof!
Q. What advice would you give to someone going out into the mountains for the first time?
A. Go with someone that knows what they are doing – if they say they’re using an iPhone as their form of navigation run away quickly and don’t look back.
Q. What is your favourite season to be out in the mountains and why?
A. Difficult one, the great thing about being outdoors is the changes in the flora, fauna, light and weather you experience at different times in the year but maybe midsummer – you have so much time to walk and camping is bloody awesome!
Q. Name three mountains on your bucket list.
1. Don’t
2. Like
3. Bucket lists
Q. What do you do like to do keep fit when you’re not in the mountains?
A. Climb at my beloved castle climbing centre and cycling to work from south to north London – much more dangerous than being in the mountains!
Q. If you could go anywhere in the world that you hadn’t been, where would it be?
A. The great thing about the world is it’s so big that you can’t do everything in one lifetime. And although it’s a bit boring these days I try to weigh up how much I want to see something with the environmental impact it will have on the world. At the moment though I would love to get to know the alps in a similar way to the way I know snowdonia or the lakes.
Q. What is your favourite mountain/expedition/adventure book? (fiction/non-fiction)
A. The old ways, by Robert Macfarlene
Q. What is your favourite City Mountaineering memory?
A. Being on top of Cadair idris with my friend and cousin Stu early in the morning – the most amazingly complete cloud inversion was all around us - then slowly but suddenly the warm sun made part of the cloud rise and crash in slow motion into the side of the mountain. It was a once in a lifetime moment for the eight of us who had shivered all night on our own at the top of that lovely old mountain in the south of snowdonia.
Stuart Shipp
Founder, City Mountaineering
