Spring Newsletter: Sunshine and New Faces!

Spring has sprung, the sun is shining and we are looking forward to getting stuck into more adventures here at Adventure Oban. We’ve got a few updates to share and some new faces to introduce you to. Say hello and a warm Oban welcome to Aidan Doherty!

Aidan joins Adventure Oban this April and brings bags of experience from Ardentinny OEC and NatureScot.

Aidan has just started in our Community Development Co-ordinator role for the Out and About partnership with Atlantis Leisure. Aidan may be a familiar face to quite a few folk in town as he headed up Ardentinny Outdoor Education Centre for about 25 years and more recently has been working with NatureScot. Aidan has a wide raft of qualifications from years of working in outdoor ed, from sailing and kayaking, mountain biking, abseiling, climbing, orienteering and so much more. He’s even a qualified marine mammal medic so if you see a stranded otter, you know who to call!

He’s excited to get stuck into a programme of activities and events for the coming year to get our community outdoors and experiencing the joy from being out and about in our epic natural playground. This will include our usual wildlife clubs, the Big Bike Weekend and ReWild walks and much more. To get in touch with Aidan, just email hello@adventureoban.org.

We are also delighted to welcome two new board members and adventure enthusiasts to the team, Christina Wood and Emily Austin. 

Christina Wood out on a local trail up Ben Lora.

Christina is an active member of the North Argyll Trail Association and North Argyll Cycle Club and has been a very active volunteer already, getting her hands dirty with Adventure Oban on all things mountain biking and exploring the potential for a purpose built trail centre in the area. In her day job, she is a glacial geomorphologist with NatureScot and lives in North Connel with her family.

Emily Austin enjoying an adventure on Lismore.

Emily Austin is a Non-Executive Board Member for NHS Highland and also works as a freelance consultant supporting charities, social enterprises and other small businesses across Scotland with their governance, strategy and finance. 

Emily lives in Connel and is a keen runner, hiker and kayaker. She is a member of Oban Canoe Club and a regular volunteer and Race Director at our local parkrun, Ganavan Sands. 

We want to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you and cheerie-bye to Hannah Shaw, our first ever Community Development Co-ordinator for the Out and About project. Hannah hit the ground running with us as she had already volunteered and worked with both Adventure Oban and Atlantis Leisure before starting in this role in January 2024. Hannah made a huge impact in her time with us, from establishing the North Argyll Trail Association and being absolutely instrumental in designing and establishing the trails at Ganavan through the Big Bike Weekend, securing funding and supporting our ‘Active Routes to Schools’ Active Travel project, taking on the ReWild walks and organising our first ever Oban Trail 10k event, to name a few achievements!

She has left a great legacy for Aidan to pick up and really make his own going forward. Hannah has moved away from Oban up to the Cairngorms and is working at Laggan Wolftrax (an epic trail centre well worth a visit!) as well as pursuing her creative pursuits and freelance adventure photography. 

Hannah being presented with a golden mattock as gesture of our appreciation of her dedication to the trails!

In other exciting news, our pilot Active Travel project, ‘Active Routes to Schools’ was meant to be wrapping up in March 2025 due to short term funding but we are delighted that HITRANS have agreed to fund the project for a further year! This allows us to keep up the momentum built up in the project so far and keep our super Active Travel Coordinator, Phil de longh in post to keep up the good work with primary schools that’s already in train. So far this has included delivering active travel workshops in primary schools with students, teachers and parents, route and infrastructure mapping, Bikeability training, Dr Bike mechanic sessions and STEM education classes with ACT on bike maintenance. Get in touch with Phil at activetravel@adventureoban.org to find out more.

We are very grateful of the support of our funders of the pilot project: Paths4All, Argyll and Bute Council, DRAX and ACHA. Huge thank you to HITRANS for supporting us in this next phase!

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