16/10/2021
It has been a great shock to us all at Walkabout to find out this week that Andy Davidson has taken his own life. He ran many tours for us from 2012-2015, mainly the Big Highland Tour, Skye and Highland Railways - mostly when we had lots of French guests. We also sometimes mixed our Ben Nevis Weekend guests with his own local clients.
Afterwards, he preferred to work more on his own project Up and Down Guided Walks and we were happy to see it become successful. He was the first of our guides who really pressed to help clean up the summit of Ben Nevis, always coming down with a bin liner full of other peoples cast offs, a practice which we all try to continue.
Only a few weeks ago, he answered our call to help out with guiding the Highland Railways on 26th September - meeting out clients over at Aviemore to save a day trip to the city. He had great, weather affected week with out group blog with his dog Jura. I then drove him back to his car at Aviemore along the "Laggan Road" avoiding the deer and badgers whilst catching up - Covid had pretty much stopped Up and Down but things were starting to look up again. He had been able to get work at Fort William Backpackers hostel, the guests were starting to come back for the walks, his house was starting to be booked up and he was talking about starting a country ranger course in the winter.
We will miss his amazing knowledge of the hills, deep love of Scotland and his Doric accent! I'm sure plenty of our guests over the years will have many great stories of wild days out in the hills with Andy.
His family can be contacted through his website:
https://www.up-and-doon-guidedwalks.co.uk
Andy's instagram
If you would like to make a donation to Support in Mind Scotland I am sure this would mean a lot to Andy given they operate in the Lochaber area.
https://www.supportinmindscotland.org.uk