James Batchelor is the CEO And founder of Alertacall, which is based in Windermere and Kendal. 

Earlier this summer I spent a blustery day halfway up a mountain talking to some trees.  

Now, before you start worrying, I would like to make clear that there is no need to be alarmed. This column is not a cry for help and there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for my behaviour.  

That explanation is that I was making a film for my company Alertacall, which this year planted 20,000 trees in the Lake District to mark our 20th anniversary.  

As well as marking a professional milestone it was also the fulfilment of a personal ambition I have had for many years. 

I was extremely lucky to grow up spending many childhood hours having fun in the woodlands which surrounded my home in the Yorkshire Dales.  

My friends and I would head out on our bikes to play hide and seek and build elaborate dens, as well as camping overnight and letting our active young imaginations frighten us silly.  

As well as being somewhere to have fun and enjoy the beauty of nature, the woods also played an important part in my early life as a place of remembrance.  

When my cousin Sam, a passionate rock climber, died in a climbing accident in the mountains of Australia at the age of 21, our family came together to spend days planting a wood near his home. ‘Sam’s Wood’ has grown tall and strong in the 25 years since and we regularly visit to enjoy its peace and quiet and remember him fondly. 

It also inspired me to create something similar. 

As founder and CEO of Alertacall I have come to know many of the older and vulnerable people who use our products and services over the last 20 years. I vowed to myself that one day we would plant a forest in the Lake District, filled with enough trees to represent every one of our customers.  

The only problem was that I don’t own any land and I didn’t really have the time, knowledge or connections to set about planting trees even if I did.  

The solution came during a chance meeting at Buckingham Palace in 2022, when I was receiving the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation on behalf of Alertacall.  

The only other company from Cumbria which was getting an award that day was Chimney Sheep, founded by Sally Phillips, which makes draught excluders from local Herdwick wool which people can put up their chimneys to prevent heat from escaping and save energy.  

I soon discovered that Sally had also started Buy Land Plant Trees, a community interest company which does exactly what its name suggests.  

So it was that in a room in Buckingham Palace, with the (now) King Charles and Princess Anne just metres away, that Sally and I agreed Alertacall would buy and donate tens of thousands of saplings to Buy Land Plant Trees.  

All of these trees were finally planted on the gorgeous Low Fell, overlooking Loweswater in the Western Lakes, this winter, and we plan to donate tens of thousands more. 

This, you may be relieved to hear, is the reason I was wandering in the hills with a film crew chatting to the saplings, because each tree really does represent one of our customers. The woodland which will grow there is as much for them as it is for me and everyone who works at Alertacall.  

As a CIC the land and trees Buy Land Plant Trees owns have to continue fulfilling its environmental purpose; they cannot be sold or transferred for profit and the woodland is destined to continue growing, locking up carbon and providing a habitat for wildlife.  

I would love to think that, years from now, new generations of children will spend their time playing, camping and letting their imaginations run wild among the canopy of branches which we planted as saplings today.