Home Life.
Growing up in the countryside with grass fields and farm tracks provided me with the ultimate practice ground for learning to drive, also having a brother of a close age meant I had some tough competition, it was the perfect combination for lots of fun and developing some skills along the way.
Along with riding ponies, my brother John and I were forever messing around on quads and motorbikes until the day arrived when we could finally reach the pedals on our field car, a knackered old thing but with the help of a cushion on the seat and some battered old cones we had ourselves an autotest so the competition was on.
Mum (Louise Aitken-Walker) and dad (Graham Walker) would always keep a watchful eye on us, more to see who was winning I think, however with a handbrake that worked and the will to win we could be out in the fields for hours. When we thought we were getting pretty good at the J-Turn and handbrake turns mum and dad would appear and show us how it was really done, just to keep us in check.
Growing older and taller the next step for us was go-karting, this was interesting as there was now other competitors involved. I’m still not sure to this day what they thought of our competitive ways and most importantly brother/sister rivalry, but we both managed to get ourselves some nice trophies and onto the podium, so all’s well that ends well.
Throughout school John became more interested in rugby and I always had a passion for horses, we both went on competing but in totally different disciplines. During high school I competed in British Eventing on my horse and 2 years following school, getting him to a level that qualified us for Badminton grassroots.
Unfortunately we never did make it due to injury and following this a few more injuries to both horse and rider, this then led me to believe that life was trying to point me in different direction. Whilst horses are still a huge part of my life to this day it is now in a recreational sense, so I can still very much enjoy riding out but Motorsport has entirely taken over the competition aspect.