Born: 3 November, 1930, in Mitcham, Surrey.
Died: 12 February, 2008, in Stanley, Perthshire, aged 77. DON Aldridge FRGS, FRSGS, FSA, had an exceptional gift for explaining how the shape of the countryside evolved. Using his p
osition as the assistant director of conservation education in the then newly created Countryside Commission for Scotland at Battleby, near Perth, Don provided a focus for training in countryside interpretation through his writing and specially designed courses.
The post-war growth in country parks throughout Britain demanded a public which understood what they were for, how the countryside (natural and man-made) worked, and why caring for it was important.
Don was at the forefront of what came to be called countryside interpretation in the 1970s and the training of countryside rangers, at that time a novel type of employment. He designed the programme and content of training courses for countryside interpretation in Britain, and at individual sites demonstrated where to focus on the essentials of a place so that the visitor would immediately grasp why it should be conserved.
In 1954, following two years at the Sutton and Croydon School of Art, Don obtained a degree in geography and economics at the London School of Economics, followed by a year at London University's institute of education for a postgraduate certificate in education. It was at LSE where he also acquired a love for mountaineering, becoming president of the mountaineering club in 1953 and recently being recommended for full membership of the Alpine club in recognition of the number and difficulty of his alpine climbs.
After assisting Professor Dudley Stamp in cartographical research at LSE and acting as the glaciologist on the Lyngen Winter Arctic expedition, Don undertook teaching posts, including lecturer at Bath Technical College in geography, printing and (an innovative subject at the time) liberal studies.
It was this rich experience and background which led to Don becoming information officer at the Peak District National Park from 1963-8, at a time when the large urban populations surrounding the park were renewing pressures on the landscape for recreation.
During these five years, Don developed a wide range of training courses for staff involved in interpretation, as well as taking heritage and wildlife conservation into schools in a new popular form.
During this period, Don visited national parks in the United States under a Churchill Fellowship and returned with a backpack full of ideas that he developed in the very different social climate of Britain.
His success in this pioneering work was due to his exceptional gifts of explaining how the scenery in front (wherever that was) had come into existence, from the geological structure of ancient rocks to the effects of ice and erosion on land forms of the present day. He could do this with equal facility outdoors, where the sky was the roof, or in an auditorium, using what were then the latest techniques of two projectors and "lapse dissolve".
In the US, Don became a lifelong friend of Marc Sagan, the internationally respected head of interpretation in the American National Park Service, and he and his wife, Val, were with the Sagans in Alaska only a few months before Don's sudden death.
With the creation of CCS in 1968 and a move to Scotland, Don used the inspiring architecture of the new auditorium at Battleby to publicise novel ways to explain the countryside. His clients were the public and private land managers, such as local authorities and the National Trust for Scotland, looking for cash grants and advisory expertise.
He was particularly active in the last of the three Countryside in 1970 conferences initiated by the Duke of Edinburgh.
Never one to sit on his hands, Don led from the front in encouraging land-managing agencies and private estates to provide high standards of interpretation at visitor centres throughout Scotland, and to do so in a way that avoided duplication of the same themes in neighbouring centres.
After retiring in 1985, he became a successful consultant, completing assignments in several European countries and in Iceland, Australia and Canada. In 1999, his book The Rescue of Captain Scott was published. His many other publications included a Guide to Interpretation published by HMSO and an entertaining illustrated Monster Book of Environmental Education for the Council of Europe. In 1972, he gave the keynote address at the National Park centennial conference at Yellowstone; he was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and the Society of Antiquities.
Friends lucky enough to have been the recipients of Don's Christmas cards over many years will treasure his beautifully executed landscapes using scraper board and ink.
Last autumn Frames Gallery in Perth held a one-man show of his intensely personal interpretations of Scottish landscapes. His entertaining account of a recent trip to Alaska ended with a prophetic quote from John Muir: "Leave Alaska to last as all else pales into insignificance." He has left a legacy anyone would be proud of, and many friends bereft of his stimulating conversation and amusingly instructive cartoons. He is survived by his wife, Val, and son, Christopher.
