A Great Outdoorsman

Editor, campaigner and hillwalker Roger Smith brought Scotland's landscape to readers everywhere, inspiring future generations

- Cameron McNeish, Scotland's top outdoor writer,

I LOST one of my oldest and dearest friends recently. Roger Smith was the founding editor of The Great Outdoors, a magazine that I later edited for 20 years and one that shaped my life and career.

Roger was not only one of my closest friends, but a mentor, an inspiration and an example of the kind of man most of us would like to be. He wasn't flamboyant or loud, but he was a brilliant communicator in a quiet and authoritative way. He had an extremely kind heart, a desire to do good and a far-ranging intellect.

He was also an athlete in the widest sense of the word, the source of the deep frustration he endured when suffering from the degenerative effects of Parkinson's disease. Roger had been an active orienteer and marathon runner with a load of marathons under his belt. In 1979 he became a member of the illustrious Bob Graham Round, an exclusive club for those who had run the 66-mile, 27,000ft circuit of 42 of the highest peaks in the English Lake District within 24 hours.

First completed in 1932 by Bob Graham, a hotelier in Keswick, Cumberland, at the age of 43, the Bob Graham Round became a testing ground for the supremely fit.

When I first knew Roger Smith he was certainly supremely fit, but as his body slowly shut down due to the effects of Parkinson's, he was robbed of the simple delights of going for a walk never mind a run, although he and his wife Patricia did squeeze out every opportunity to remain active right to the very end of his life.

A year ago Roger and Patricia visited me in Newtonmore. Roger could only walk with the aid of a zimmer-type frame, and the journey to and from the Highlands was a major undertaking using public transport.

Although he was seriously infirm, he still had a twinkle of humour in his eye, wasn't slow to tell me if he thought I was making a mess of something or had written something he thought was wrong, and still showed huge concern over the state of Scotland's countryside.