The Red Mitten

Stuart Montgomery grew up in southwest Scotland and studied at Stirling and Aberdeen universities. He spent a summer working as a furnace operator in Norway, then returned to Scotland and worked in turn as a psychiatric social worker, social researcher and lecturer. Then in the course of a belated gap-year that has still not ended, even though decades have elapsed, he became an itinerant mountain leader and a teacher of cross-country skiing. He has helped to run two specialist travel companies, Waymark Holidays (until 2004) and XCuk (until 2014).