I started out at the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh, working with documents, checking materials, comparing handwriting, that kind of thing. It is fairly quiet work most of the time. You spend a lot of hours looking at details that most people would skip over.

After a few years I went freelance. Now I get sent all sorts of things, charters, estate papers, copies of copies, usually with some question attached to them. I try to ignore the story that comes with it and just look at the document itself first.

Lately I have been working quite a bit with older Highland charters, pre-seventeen hundred. They tend to be messy, different versions, missing bits, later edits. I keep notes on anything that stands out, ink, margins, layout, small changes. I prefer documents that have not been over-restored, once they are too clean it is harder to tell what is original.

I got into rural valuation in Galicia in the late two thousands, working out of a small office near Lugo. It was mostly small plots, family land, things that had been split and passed down without much paperwork. You get used to the gap pretty quickly, between what is written somewhere and what people actually use.

Skye came later. I was looking into some family history, MacKinnon stuff, and ended up staying longer than planned. That turned into a bit of work with croft land, shared grazing, cases where everything looks clear until you try to line it up properly. It felt familiar in a different way.

Now I go back and forth. Galicia is one kind of work, Skye is another, but they overlap more than you would expect. I keep notes from site visits, sometimes just small things, weather, access, anything that does not quite fit. I usually go back more than once before finishing anything.