Kay Willis is the director at Beyond Boundaries, an organisation that provides opportunities for people with learning disabilities in the beautiful setting of Commondale, North Yorkshire. My ride to the farm took me (after a terrible night's sleep in a gale in a wood) up and over impressive, empty moorland and the first massive hills of my trip. It was a stunning location and extremely peaceful. The farm exuded an atmosphere of warm, welcoming kindness. I was invited in for a cup of tea amidst the busy bustle of getting ready for the day; choosing activities to get stuck into and preparing to feed all the farm animals.

Kay described the work of Beyond Boundaries, which she runs along with her husband Anthony. "Our service users range in age from 14 to over 65. We also provide a service for people of school age who are perhaps finding school very difficult and need a day or two of practical work.
We offer a wide range of activities and like to be outside as much as possible, either looking after our animals or perhaps activities in the private woods on the farm. One popular activity is cycling and we have a range of inclusive bikes so that everyone can have a go. Some service users enjoy working with tools and we have a well equipped workshop for those activities.
We have donkeys, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, pygmy goats and llamas which our service users help to look after, there are also cows on the farm."

Kay and Anthony were made redundant after 20 years of teaching. This difficult event has eventually led to a new life for Kay, of uncertainty and fun. She no longer wants to take time off, loves coming to work, and is enjoying this new chapter of her life now that her own kids are leaving home.

Morning at Beyond Boundaries was fun, informative and thought-provoking. I am sorry to say that I do not know very much about the world of profound mental and physical disabilities. Kay gave me some fascinating perspectives on adventure, challenge and achievement for the disabled people she works with. I loved how much Kay had learned from working with such a variety of characters, and the lively cheerful banter of the farm. It was a happy, kind and inspiring spot, nestled into a beautiful Yorkshire hamlet.

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Show Notes

• If you enjoy listening to this episode over a cup of coffee and think it might be worth the price, you can buy me a coffee here: www. ko-fi.com/al_humphreys
• Keep up to date with future episodes (and my other adventures, projects and books) with my free monthly newsletter: alastairhumphreys.com/more/subscribe
• Say hello on Twitter and Instagram: @al_humphreys
• Beyond Boundaries offers fully inclusive training, activities, sports and courses for people with a range of disabilities in the beautiful countryside and coast of North Yorkshire.
• Find out more about Beyond Boundaries on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/beyondboundariesNYorks/
• The main difference from working in mainstream education is the never-ending stream of questions.
• "I've never really noticed things [slow worms] before, because I haven't looked".
• "They've not learned to hide their curiosity because they don't want to look foolish".
• "They are more spontaneous" than we are.

Transcript

Below is the transcription of our conversation. It's done by AI so is perhaps a wee bit ropey here and there. If these transcripts prove sufficiently useful then I will make the effort to clean then up and make them better. Do let me know if you think it's worth my time to do that. (Or, better still, do it for me...!). If you'd like to listen as you read along you can do that here:

https://otter.ai/s/r6ZEdxD-SWm8WhbxuJf6sw

Alastair Humphreys
Well, hello, hello. Introduce yourself.

Kay
Okay. I'm Kay. I run a small business called Beyond Boundaries, where we look after people with learning disabilities and physical disabilities.

Alastair Humphreys
But you haven't always done that. So can you tell me about your life? In the olden days? What was your life?

Kay
I was a teacher in mainstream education, and I taught business and economics for 21-22 years, something like that. And until my daughters were grown up, when I felt I needed a change.

Alastair Humphreys
And and what was that change?

Kay
Well, when I first left, I took a redundancy payment and spent a year doing not very much really trying to work out what I wanted to do, I met up with a lovely lady called Lucy, who ran a business very similar to the one that we run now, at the same place that we run it, who needs somebody to help her out and we get

Alastair Humphreys
to go back. So you went from being a teacher in a normal school, being a mom as well, for 20 years pretty normal routine kind of life with it's the excitement's and dramas of being a teacher. Today, and I only just met you this morning. And I arrived Monday, early Monday morning into what I think I described as a very happy chaos. It's a there's people all over the place doing stuff. And this is running around. There's a lot of energy here, but but it feels to me, like a totally different world to life as a teacher in normal school.

Kay
Absolutely. I think you've probably summed it up better than anybody else yet. Chaos, but happy chaos. And I never thought I'd have a job where I actually don'...