Martin is a retired civil engineer who spent his working life in local council highways departments working mainly on the design of bridges and other highway structures. He developed an interest in environmental issues as a teenage angler. Talking to older fishermen, it became obvious that the rivers of mid Wales had deteriorated since their boyhood. This was the start of a more general interest in environmental issues. ‘It’s pleasing to see how a ‘pipe dream’ has since become a reality in my lifetime. I always thought the answer to objections to wind turbines was to bring the benefits more directly to the people who lived local to the turbines and so decided, when I retired in 2017, to put some money where my mouth was and invested a modest sum in Awel Co-op.’