Shaun Callaghan

Route: Yorkshire Dales

Shaun started his working life as an electrician. Twenty years later, after attending Huddersfield, Vienna and Cambridge Universities he became a teacher and a part time youth basketball coach.

Lynda has worked in laboratories in the woollen industry and as a paediatric nurse on a neurosurgery unit.

They spend many days a week walking in the area from short strolls to 20 mile hikes, often dragging some of their grandchildren with them. They are keen gardeners (well Lynda is, Shaun just provides the labour) and have just started their own allotment, so it looks like more digging for Shaun. Lynda is also an aspiring bee keeper. They both go foraging for fruits and herbs when in season and even have a GPX file of the best locations.

They enjoy long trips to Europe to walk, sightsee, try local foods and occasionally to relax, often visiting several countries on each trip. As part of their trips they have walked a total of 16 On Foot walks over the past 11 years.

Shaun believes that with input and suggestions from Lynda, he has designed a route which encompasses some of the best walking in the area, taking in the varied Yorkshire landscapes of gritstone, limestone, dales, moors and fells with the opportunity for an ascent of Ingleborough built into the final day’s walk.

According to famous writer and walker, Alfred Wainwright ‘It is every Yorkshireman’s birth right to climb Ingleborough at least once in their lifetime’. Or several times a year when it comes to Shaun and Lynda.