Toby during Arctic activities.

Toby has had a keen interest and has passionately practiced survival skills from an early age. Given the chance he will recite the story of diligently saving his pocket money aged 11 to buy the ‘newly released’ SAS Survival handbook and the ensuing years of fun transferring the skills he read into practical training scenarios.

The bulk of Toby’s childhood and formative teen years were spent roaming around Cannock Chase with some valuable direction provided by his keen amateur naturalist father. As a competitive and keen sportsman in many diverse disciplines, Toby started a career in Leisure Management largely to facilitate the time required for him to be outdoors as much as possible. To further complement his chosen career Toby joined the reserve armed forces aged 23, of which he is still an active and committed member.

Aged 15 Toby took his first trip to Northern Scandinavia which ignited his ongoing passion for all things Arctic. Whilst living and working in the UK, Toby took every opportunity over the next 15 years to travel back to these Arctic climes, which eventually led to the decision for him and his family to permanently base themselves in this arctic region.

Having continuously strived to improve his knowledge and ability in the ‘great outdoors’, Toby has attained recognised qualifications in mountain guiding, climbing instruction, first aid, snowmobiling, and has a broad competence base in skiing (Nordic and alpine), mountain biking, canoeing, kayaking, fishing, sailing and swimming to name but a few! He has also formally instructed in a variety of both practical and theoretical areas for over 16 years and has a proven ability to communicate key messages to both groups and individuals.  We must also mention Toby is a highly qualified and experienced Health and Safety practitioner (but he say’s please don’t hold it against him!) and provides valuable input on a number of areas in this regard.

Since moving to Sweden Toby’s office is now almost exclusively outdoors, where he spends his time tracking, hunting and researching, practicing and refining relevant survival techniques.  More recently he has undertaken the distance learning Kamana Awareness programme, regarded as one of the most ‘immersed’ naturalist training packages available. Currently at level 3, Toby aspires to be one of the elite few people worldwide to have reached level 4 accreditation.