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Jay was brought up living on East Blagdon Farm near Cranborne and I was brought up in Canford Heath near Poole - so both of our early childhoods were set against the backdrop of the Dorset landscape in one way or another. For Jay, the ancient woodlands and chalk escarpments of Cranborne Chase were all around him until the age of ten. For me, whilst the heath and woodland that backed on to my childhood home certainly became a key part of my growing up, it was probably more the numerous weekend family walks on which I was taken that inspired my life-long love of the county.

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Jay and I first met at Poole Grammar School in 1998 at the age of 12 and became great friends from the word go. We both had a lot in common - not least, a keen interest in music, with Jay playing saxophone and me playing trumpet and piano. And it was at PGS that we really first explored music together. We formed a covers band with some other school friends and played locally for three or four years before the inevitable reality of A-Levels hit. In the background to this was the constant musical influence of my Dad, Bob: he's a keen folk musician and folk club organiser and his regular 'sing-around' gatherings at our family home meant that Jay and I were frequently exposed to a fantastic variety of folk musicians and songwriters from a very early age.

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After secondary school, I went on to read English Literature at Cardiff University and Jay studied medicine at St George's in London. During my time in Cardiff, I took a lot of inspiration from the music scene there - I became the pianist in a blues band, explored singer-songwriting and also ran an open mic night in the city. On occasion, I even managed to turn in my coursework on time!

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Maintaining a long-distance relationship for so many years meant that we'd talked a lot about what was going to happen after we'd finished uni - and we were both adamant that we wanted to return to Dorset. We never really considered any other option and countless visits home, where we'd inevitably look forward to walking in the Dorset countryside, fuelled that even further.

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On completing our respective degrees, music fell by the wayside for some time. I became a full-time primary school teacher in 2008 and Jay qualified as a doctor that same year. And things trundled on like that for some time! At this point, we'd also fallen in love with The Lake District and were bagging Wainwrights, with the goal of summiting all 214 across the next decade. We're still working on it, two decades later - but we're on about 196, so not too many left now! 

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It wasn’t until 2012 that Jay and I began singing together again, after being inspired by visiting some particularly excellent festivals that summer and Ninebarrow took off in a pretty serious way from that moment onward. Across the next four years, things just grew and grew and in 2016 we took the decision to step back from full-time teaching and doctoring to pursue  musical careers.

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In 2018, the idea of Ninebarrow Musical Walking Holidays was born. We'd long had the notion that we'd like to write a book of 'musical walks' but the idea of 'musical walking holidays' came out of a particularly lovely BBQ in a little cottage in Corfe. Jay's Mum and her partner Kev had hired it for the week and invited us over, and we just got talking about the idea. We've been working to make it a reality ever since! 

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