In our Common Ground series of short interviews, we aim to find out what makes our fellow outdoor enthusiasts tick, the experiences we all share and their hopes for the future. Our latest interviewee is Ilona Turnbull, who grew up in Australia but has already completed both the Munros and Corbetts since she moved to Scotland.
Can you begin by telling us a bit about yourself and your background?
I’m both a non-executive Director for HR, Governance & Equality at Mountaineering Scotland and a lawyer / Company Secretary at a large life insurance company in Edinburgh. I also have an archaeology degree. Whilst I’m passionate about both my jobs, it’s my Mountaineering Scotland (MScot) role that I feel most strongly about. I’ve been lucky enough to work with the super, dynamic and committed MScot team since November 2020.
How did you first get started? Can you remember your first outdoors trip?
I was born in London but grew up in Australia – the land of poisonous snakes and spiders and searing sun, so a bit of a contrast to the Scottish outdoors. I’m one of three siblings and our family holidays for many years involved camping and bushwalking. My first camping trip was to the Lamington National Park in Queensland when I was 5. It felt like a proper expedition and I remember it very clearly: packing the car, tying ropes around the roof rack, leaving at the crack of dawn travelling hours and hours away (it was only two hours in reality and we headed off about 10am!), pitching the tent with my dad having used coloured electrical tape to code which poles needed to go where, feeding the rosellas (type of parrot), seeing my first pademelon (a wee wallaby type marsupial which my brother called a ‘watermelon’), going on long bushwalks with kilometre/timing markers and ranger huts to sign in to make sure you didn’t go missing, seeing bushfires in the distance and wonderful sunsets. I also remember cold showers because the solar powered showers weren’t working and fighting with my brothers over who got the Cocoa Pops mini cereal box in the family variety pack. Most of all, I remember the peace of the campfire at night, the bird song, the vivid colours of the landscape and how much less stressed my parents seemed in the outdoors.
We continued to go camping throughout my childhood and my happiness at being in the outdoors continued even as the walks got longer, the number of venomous creatures increased, bushfires got more extreme (the sounds of millions of year-old rocks exploding and a late night evacuation due to fires was quite something else) and I became the inevitable surly teenager.
My first Scottish hill experience was climbing Ben Vorlich and Stùc a’ Chròin on 7 April 2007 on a brilliant blue-sky warm-enough-to-wear-a-t-shirt day. The views were expansive, the camaraderie was warm, the unique thrill of being able to roam and not have the safety of formal mile markers and ranger huts ran high, the weather was great, the air smelled fresh and that familiar feeling of contentment and peace that I’d had in the outdoors in Australia just came flooding back. Sadly, I was to learn pretty promptly on my second and third Munros (a whiteout in Glen Shiel) that Scotland + sun + hiking doesn’t always add up!
Can you describe your ideal day out in Scotland?
I’ve been to so many beautiful places in Scotland that this is a hard one to answer. If I close my eyes, Assynt is what I think of first. My perfect day would be starting at Ullapool and immediately getting the most joyful feeling driving up the crest of the hill before you drop down to Ardmair and the first glimpse of Ben More Coigach comes into view before the road takes you past the magnificently bonkers Assynt and Coigach hills – Stac Pollaidh, Cùl Mòr, Cùl Beag, Suliven, Canisp, Quinag, Ben More Assynt and Conival etc. A walk up any one of those ancient and unique hills would be a perfect day out. Chuck in an aurora and an otter sighting and I couldn’t be happier.
What does getting outdoors mean to you?
I draw particular comfort and solace from being outdoors. It helps me with depression/anxiety and bipolar, it enables me to wind down, re-centre and put things in perspective. I can be grateful and feel so lucky I get to live in Scotland with our world-leading responsible access rights. I often walk solo and whilst some solo days really stick in my mind clearly, it’s when I’ve been with friends that the days have particular resonance. I have not once come off a hill feeling in a worse state of mind or with cleaner kit than when I started!
Have your outdoors’ experiences changed you in any way, perhaps affecting other areas of your life?
Yes; I use it to help my mental health and attitude as I can be quite intense, and I am frankly, more pleasant to be around when I’ve been outdoors for a bit. It’s helped build self-confidence which carries though into my work and personal life. As an ‘outsider’ to Scotland, it’s helped me find a community of like-minded folk and gives me a sense of belonging. To quote people 20 years’ younger than me, I’ve found my tribe! My sense of self-worth has also improved and I can now take quiet pride in my hillwalking exploits, and there’s really something more than ephemeral about being on the top of a summit or at a beautiful viewpoint on a Scottish hill knowing that you’ve only gotten to see what you’re seeing under your own steam – it’s all you. All the money in the world can’t buy that kind of an experience; it’s truly yours. My desire to know more about Scottish geology, geography and history has also increased substantially since I began walking.
Looking forward, if there was one thing you could change about Scotland’s outdoors – whether that be in something in the environment itself, or in the culture around walking and mountains, what would it be?
Increasing the diverse community of Scottish hillwalkers. I’ve got, and continue to get so much from being in the Scottish outdoors and I want people of all ages, stages and backgrounds to discover the joys of the Scottish hills and outdoors. This is partially because of my background and not being born and raised in Scotland, my own personal experience of having mental health conditions, and feeling incredibly lucky to live in a country with astonishing landscapes that are generally pretty accessible. Visiting Scotland is on a lot of people’s bucket lists but we have it there – always – provided we look after it too. Walkhighlands itself has helped with accessibility to /in the Scottish outdoors – the focus on different types of walks, tips on where difficulties might lie with routes e.g. chain fences which might mean kids need to be lifted over and the sheer volume of free routes and descriptions is world-leading. Demystifying walks and access rights, providing tips on how you might start your first hike, what walking groups might be out there for you to join, advocating and agitating for more all-abilities paths all helps open the Scottish outdoors to a wider group of people. If a problem shared is a problem halved, then surely uplifting outdoor experiences shared must be exponentially better!
