One life. Well lived!
LAND ROVER LEGENDS 38
“Inever really had what you’d call a plan,” confesses Iain Chapman with a wry smile and a twinkle in his eye, “but I always made a point of embracing every opportunity in life that came my way!” And during the course of the six or seven hours I spend in the delightful and inspiring company of the man forever associated with running the Camel Trophy, it becomes crystal clear that this is precisely what he did! “I left Perth High School in 1964 without any idea of what I wanted to do,” he says. “There was no such thing as careers advice in those days, but I’d been an enthusiastic Rover Scout and was into rock-climbing and hill walking, and I was a passionate Munro-bagger. So when I heard about an opportunity to join the Ordnance Survey as a trainee cartographic surveyor, it sounded ideal. A job that would keep me outdoors and active that involved maps seemed to be a good fit!
“I passed the interview and was told to report to the OS surveying school at Southampton for a one-year training course. The OS would then decide where to post me but because my father had been taken ill, I asked if I could be posted close to home. I was pleasantly surprised when the OS sent me to its office in Perth! I thoroughly enjoyed the work and was given a Series II painted in Ordnance Survey purple as a company car, and I had an official warrant card that gave me the right to go onto any land in Scotland. During the four years I spent with the Ordnance Survey I did a lot of off-road miles in that Series II, and it was the start of my lifelong passion for Land Rovers.
“In those days the Ordnance Survey was run by the British Army’s Corps of Royal Engineers. At an OS event I met a senior Royal Engineer surveyor and we got chatting, and he encouraged me to apply for a short-service commission and I decided to give it a try. I passed the entry board and was sent to Mons Officer Cadet School for six months intensive training and was commissioned into the Corps of Royal Engineers as a Second Lieutenant
