PROFILE DAVID SMITH

At Unicorn Trails we are very pleased that horse riding holidays are amongst David's many interests. David's involvement with Unicorn Trails has been in existance for a number of years and has recently expanded. As well as being a director and undertaking the internet marketing, David goes on exploratory rides to assess new locations and acts as an escort on larger group rides. Amongst others he has ridden in Morocco, Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Sweden. David also owns several horses - see below for a list with pictures of horses he owns or has ridden on his many riding holidays.

Apart from horses David also has time to be a model engineer, to ride his horses and occasionally to visit steam railways.  David was an active volunteer on the Ffestiniog Railway in the 1960s and has long been an advocate for the restoration of the Welsh Highland Railway, in North Wales, where he now volunteers as a steam fitter and fireman for an occasional weeks during the summer. David also helps to manage Rushymeade, 20 acres of wildlife in Pulloxhill, Bedfordshire, for which he has two old tractors (Ferguson TED20 and MF35X) and a few contemporary implements. 

David started his career in Agricultural Engineering with a a four years honours degree (1974) at the National College of Agricultural Engineering (later Silsoe College, Cranfield University), where he was President of the Students' Union and was one of the six students to do voluntary work in Kenya on an early SAFAD expedition in 1973.  He was then taken on as a Research Officer to undertake studies, funded by the Wolfson Foundation, on the logistics of procuring surplus cereal straw for industrial use.  Over two years, this work resulted in several refereed papers that set him on a good start for an academic life.

In 1976, David took up a Graduate Teaching Assistantship in the Department of Agricultural Engineering at Iowa State University, where he gained my MS degree.  David then joined the staff (faculty) of the Department of Civil Engineering where he gained his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering and a post as Assistant Professor to teach and undertake research in soil mechanics.  In undertaking the research, he developed and patented a low stress triaxial apparatus to evaluate the stress-strain characteristic of agricultural grain.

Upon leaving the USA in 1983, David took up a research post at the Scottish Institute of Agricultural Engineering, which was set in an idyllic location in Pentland Hills to the south of Edinburgh.  Here he developed a numerical soil compaction model as an aid to designers selecting tyres and axle combinations, for which he still receives requests for more information.  David also devised a method for assessing the strength of shallow, upland forest soils, which involved trenching around a felled mature tree and twisting the stump as in a huge rotational shear-box.  IAlthough he was quite pleased with that, the method was not pursued, as far as he is aware.

After only three years, when the future of the Scottish Institute was very uncertain, David accepted a lectureship at Silsoe College, Cranfield University, from where he had graduated 12 years earlier.  At about this time he gained Chartered Engineering status (UK equivalent of PE in the USA) through the Institution of Agricultural Engineers.  David taught a variety of engineering subjects (including thermodynamics, which I found particularly rewarding) and continued his research on soil compaction and into soil tillage with help of several good research students.  In 1988 he was invited to speak on models for soil tillage and soil compaction at a NATO-sponsored conference in Minneapolis.

Although David acquired tenure, after four years he 'moved across the road' to the Silsoe Research Institute (formerly NIAE) and took up a post as a Principal Research Scientist investigating the flow properties of solid-liquid food mixtures; this may sound a long way from soil mechanics but David was contributing the aspect of particulate behaviour to a discipline more familiar with fluid rheology.  This was fine, and he was privileged to work with some very clever chemical engineers from the University of Cambridge and Unilever Research. 

After about six years of this, all the research institutes in the UK were being subject to a very severe, politically-motivated, free-market-type scrutiny by Central Government and David spent a fascinating few months seconded to work for the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) to defend the interests of a sister institute, the Institute for Animal Health.  Apparently, as he was quite successful at that, his own institute (which was particularly vulnerable) persuaded him into business development to try to bring in more commercial funding to supplement the strategic science money that was won annually from the Research Council.  David recalls this as the most uninspiring job that he has ever had so when, after another few years, the opportunity arose to take 'early retirement' with a sizeable financial incentive he took it and left in 1999.

Sadly, the Silsoe Research Institute closed its doors early in 2006 and Silsoe College also closes this summer, as the site is more valuable as a housing development than a university campus, and the vestiges of the courses and faculty will be transferred to the main Cranfield University campus.  The offices of the Institution of Agricultural Engineers will also move to Cranfield so Silsoe, for so long the home of agricultural engineering in the UK, will become a dormitory village.

Having left academic life, David was not sure what to do next but, as he had enjoyed teaching at university and there is still a severe shortage of science teachers in England, he explored teaching math and physics at high school by taking a three day 'taster' course for mature people looking for a second career.  It soon became clear that, to be qualified to teach in a state school, it was not acceptable to teach a subject at a high level because you were passionately interested in it and wished to pass this enthusiasm on to young people, rather you had to teach the 'whole child' potentially any subject from age 12 to 18. 

Fortunately, on the course David met someone who was similarly disillusioned but this person had an idea for a business.  Now, if he was to have made a list of 100 things he might do next, starting a business would not have been on it!  Nevertheless, David and his new friend founded Receptional, which has proved very successful and certainly more lucrative than being in the academic world.  There are now ten people working at Receptional, which is an internet marketing agency that promotes websites. David has worked for only four days a week since the beginning of 2005 but ended his day to day involvement in the summer of 2006, whilst retaining his role as a director and a modest salary, so that he can now follow other interests which fortuntaely for us includes horse riding.