COVER STORY Robin Mills met Nick Tomlinson near Longburton, Dorset
© Nick Tomlinson Photograph by Robin Mills
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ike a lot of people in my line of work I grew up obsessed with the natural world. My childhood was spent on a farm in the Lake District with wonders like toads in the garden and crayfish in the stream, and I spent hours and hours just pootling in the garden, seeing what I could find, and revelling in it. I found school a bit of a distraction from what I really wanted to be doing, so didn’t achieve much academically at that time. I joined the Navy at 16, a life which took me away from my childhood interest, but even then, out at sea, there were the birds to watch, so that fascination’s never completely gone away. I had started work in a hotel kitchen and thought I was going to be a chef, but a lot of my mates joined the forces at that age and I did the same. I was in the Navy for over 10 years, and loved the life, seeing many different parts of the world. But looking back I think of that time as having been a bit asleep, and when I left my fascination with nature reawakened. I went back to college and got an OND, then went to University and got a degree in physics. Studying for a scientific degree, although in a subject not directly connected to what turned out to be my working life, fulfilled something which has always been a Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine December 2021 3
