Some might expect a man reaching his 86th year to be considering slowing down a little, but Roy has no intention of easing off. On the contrary, he’s looking forward to working on a wall that he’s had his eye on for some time.
So why does he do it? Well, put simply, because he really enjoys it.
Roy, who lives in Kendal with his wife Margery, first moved to the Lake District 29 years ago. A keen fellwalker, Roy has climbed most of the Munroes but he stopped bagging peaks in his mid-seventies and is now passionate about looking after the landscape that has given him so much pleasure throughout his adult life.
‘I can just see things that need doing and I want to look after the countryside. There’s real satisfaction in working on something like a wall that might have been there for over 200 years and knowing that if I do a really good job my work will still be there to see in another 100 years,’ he said.
Roy, whose mother lived to the ripe old age of 101, also attributes his good health to volunteering saying that it keeps him fit in both mind and body, he said; ‘Volunteering keeps you thinking, I get to meet like-minded people and we have lots of fun working together. Some of the volunteer work I do is pretty physical but it’s also skilled and I take real pride in it.’