After 36 years working in London, a rural charity's new Norfolk trustee is bringing big city expertise back to the countryside - completing a journey inspired by her godmother's legacy.
Susan Lake, who moved to Tibenham, near Diss, in 2016, has been appointed as a trustee for the Countryside Regeneration Trust (CRT).
She hopes to reapply the skills she honed in the capital, where she worked in corporate governance and compliance within the insurance and reinsurance industry, to help improve the management of the conservation charity.
She said her determination to protect nature was nurtured while growing up in rural Hertfordshire.
But her links with the CRT began with summer holidays on a Sussex farm owned by her godmother Alison Mountain, a world-renowned breeder of Welsh mountain ponies, who donated her farm to the trust when she died in 2013.
"I spent a lot of my childhood having holidays at Twyford Farm in Sussex and I became very familiar with the CRT when my godmother decided to give the farm to them," said Ms Lake.
"When I saw the trust was advertising for new trustees, I thought: Now is the time.
"I definitely saw a gap. Speaking to former colleagues and contacts in the city there is a feeling that charities mean to do well, but are not always equipped with the knowledge of current standards of governance.
"Improving the management structure is certainly something I can contribute to.
"You are not going to see me driving around on a tractor. That is experience I don't have. But I can certainly bring something to the management of the trust, and I can contribute some knowledge of the trust because of my experiences at Twyford Farm."
Ms Lake still keeps a small herd of ponies descended from her godmother's famed animals.
"I took on four from her farm when she died, and I now have my own little herd of Welsh mountain ponies up here in Norfolk, descended from Twyford ponies," she said.
"I have sold one that I bred, to a riding school up in King's Lynn, who is hopefully now beginning to teach children to ride up there, and I have a couple of broodmares so I can breed a couple more over the next few years. It is a nice piece of continuity."
The stark challenges facing farmland biodiversity were outlined in last week's State of Nature report, which warned that nature-friendly farming needed to be implemented at a much wider scale to reverse a shocking 19pc decline in UK wildlife since 1970.
The CRT aims to help tackle the "biodiversity crisis" through its 17 properties across England, where it works with tenant farmers, wildlife monitors and volunteers to develop and implement "sustainable farming methods and conservation practices".
One of them is the 40-acre Mayfields Farm at Themelthorpe, between Reepham and Fakenham.
Ms Lake said she has already discussed the need to develop tailored long-term "masterplans" for sites like this, to encourage management to visit them more often, and to maximise their education potential.
"I think it is very important to have the right management structure and the right people in the team who can help educate the farmers, as well as the surrounding population, about what they want to do, and why it matters," she said.
"It is really important that we all understand what it takes to feed us, and that we also need to look after the wider habitat, otherwise we will lose animals and biodiversity and what we need for the countryside to function going forward - because if we lose diversity it ultimately becomes less productive."
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