From Tidelines to Trails. The hard way.

words by Dominic Ferris

Welcome, fellow Procrastinators

It's 08:32am on July 9th 2026. My MRes graduation ceremony - taking place in the Hogwarts esque PJ Hall of Bangor University, in North Wales - at 14:30pm, and I’ve just remembered that my iron doesn’t work. 

I also haven’t started writing my 800 word blog piece (that I suggested to our Comms team, Rach and SJ, more than 2 months ago), a fact which will perhaps, become obvious as we meander on.

I believe these are examples of what’s called time-blindness, or in old-fashioned parlance procrastination. Some might even call it laziness. Whatever you call it, one thing is true. I am excellent at it, always have been, the evidence (this is a blog about scientific research after all) is irrefutable: I once took over 6 months to refill my car windscreen wash (I live in Wales), my 2002 USA summer work visa arrived on the morning of my flight, I missed two driving tests in 1999, and I even found myself mildly homeless at the start of Covid, because (once again) I had failed to act on the fact that 6 month Caravan rentals don’t last more than 6 months. 

And, as a final example, I once took 210 words to begin a blog about my Masters by Research graduation. I imagine the question that you’re beginning to ask is “why?”. The primary reason will be glaringly obvious to fellow procrastinators, and perhaps even more so to those of you who have to live with them.

"I am making excuses. Plain and simple."

However, there is, I hope, a little more to it. 

The Curse of the Mind Map

Whilst I was procrastinating about writing this, I got to work on one of my tried and tested tools of procrastination, the infamous ‘mind map’. In classic style my initial intention just to jot down a few prompts snowballed wildly, as I immediately set about overwhelming myself by attempting to map out a complete timeline of my entire MRes journey. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s full of far more relevant stuff than the above; the wonderful, incredible fact that something like 8000 people have removed and recorded more than 650,000 items of SUP from almost 18,000kms of trails. Providing the 2500+ citizen science datasets that my MRes is built upon, the project’s strategic importance to Trash Free Trails, musings on the perfection of the scientific method.

In 2015, that there were literally zero studies of the prevalence and impacts of SUP on trails (there are less than 5 still to this day), which is why I felt that it was vital to hold ourselves scientifically accountable from minute one. The map continued off into spirals of how I had to use paper for our first ever SoOT Report because I didn’t have a computer, meeting my MRes supervisor Martyn randomly in Portugal in 2019 (he told me off for saying ‘prove’). Founding Trash Free Trails 10 days before Covid struck in February 2020, pitching the State of Our Trails Report to Chris from Bosch in Bristol’s Tobacco Factory in March 2020, realising that Covid meant that our plans for a proper academic student to take on the project were in flames and subsequently my ill-fated ‘idea’ to do it myself.

However, this list alone doesn't even get us to March 2021, when I moved back to Wales and ‘started’ my MRes, so hopefully you can appreciate my word-count dilemma?! (it’s also now 10:46am, and I have to set off for my graduation ceremony at 12:00). So, for better or worse, I’m not going to do any of that. I’m going to come at it from a different angle.

Where ambition is best placed

One phrase that I kept hearing throughout my MRes journey went something like; “are you perhaps being a little over-ambitious?”. I believe the first person to issue this gentle warning was my great friend, former SAS colleague, current TFT Steering Group member, Buglife Science and Policy Advisor, and actual scientist David Smith. He was responding to my initial MRes proposal, where I confidently outlined my plan to address the causes, prevalence, composition, impacts and solutions of SUP on recreational trails. All on my lonesome.

Over the next 5 years, I heard multiple versions of this from a wide variety of people, many of whom were far more qualified than me to make such an assessment. As the years progressed, the evidence to support this piled up too. In 2021, I ‘made the decision’ to ‘jettison’ my opening ‘Causes’ chapter, where I planned to gain an understanding of the awareness of, and attitudes towards SUP of people visiting our trails and wild places. In early 2025 I had to finally admit that, due to the fact that it couldn’t be tested, I would not be able to include a chapter that demonstrated the pivotal role that ENGOs like us play in ensuring that environmental monitoring based science such as, is actually applied and sustained, in the real world. 

I will concede that this steady refinement is a normal, necessary and positive part of the academic process. However, for me it had unintended consequences.

"I have never felt so out of my depth, for such sustained periods, as I have during this process."

I was almost totally convinced that I couldn’t do it for about four and half of the 5 years. I felt stupid, upset, angry, resentful, blameful, trapped, wasteful and all manner of similarly uninspiring feelings to boot. One thing’s for certain, I rarely, if ever felt proud of myself for the work I was doing…

Narrators note: 11:43am - Author pauses here, because he’s about to be late for his graduation ceremony, and has also run out of time to iron his shirt.

Who needs an ironed shirt anyway?

…Ok, so where was I? It’s now 15:06 on the 10th of July, the day after my graduation. I’ve got the faintest hint of a hangover (I only had a glass of champagne and a couple of pints, honest guv!), and I feel subtly, yet significantly different about the MRes, and myself than where I left the story yesterday.

I was intending to talk about how, even when my certificate came through my letterbox in late March, I found it almost possible to feel good about what I achieved, at best I felt blank, at worst I felt like a fraud. “Is this it?”, my egotistical shoulder chimps screamed! I was going to talk about how I began to beat myself up about my ‘over-ambition’, how my self-confidence died a death of a thousand cuts, and how my ability to take leaps of faith was paralysed by the relentless need to be methodical. 

However, I feel different today, and I think the reason is pretty simple. Because the 3 people I love most in the world came to my graduation with me, and I could see and feel how proud they were of and for me. And that is enough.

"If nothing else, this process has helped me realise what I am good at, what I can be proud of myself for."

I am ‘over-ambitious’. I do have ideas that are perhaps unreachable, but when I’m at my best, when I'm feeling good about myself - I go for them anyway! It is ok to go down paths simply for the sake of it. Moreover, I have realised that it is this instinct to explore, experience and respond that compelled me to start Trash Free Trails in the first place. And that’s worked out pretty well so far.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. And if you are one of the thousands of people who have supported me and Trash Free Trails since 2014… I have no worthy words.

Thanks,

Dom

ps.

In case you were wondering, my MRes is called: Single-use Pollution on Recreational Trails: Establishing an Integrated Inland Evidence Base for Ecological Monitoring and Policy Equity. 

PPs; You can read the abstract HERE, and please do give me a shout at dom@trashfreetrails.org if you’d like to read the whole thesis (Public Health Warning! It’s 34,320 words long).

PPPs; I will be aiming to submit two papers to academic journals for peer review in 2027.

PPPPs; We’re going to be continuing what I’ve tried to kick-start in this study, alongside Bangor University, through post-graduate research projects. If this sounds like the kind of Masters, MRes or PHd that you’d fancy, give us a shout.

PPPPs; Thanks to Chris at Bosch, Jez formerly of Trek, Martyn of Bangor University and all of the Trash Free Trails partners who funded our State of Our Trails Research programme.

PPPPPs: Thanks to the 8000 citizen scientists who submitted their data. Now it’s time to go again, to replicate our science. The next 5 years are where we use what we learn to create a future where our trails are so cared for, that there are days when we can ride, run and roam, without encountering single-use pollution at all.

See you out there :)