After more than 20 years as an Emergency Department Consultant, Dr Ursula Mackintosh has retired and plans to spend more time in her kayak and cycling on her bike.
She moved to Stirling Royal Infirmary in around 1999 and then transferred to Forth Valley Royal Hospital when the Emergency Department moved there in 2011.
Ursula has had considerable successes with kayaking. They include a gold medal in the British Marathon Kayak Championships for the women’s over 44 age groups and a month later a bronze medal in the women’s over-50, both in double kayak (K2) category at the World Marathon Kayak Championships in Copenhagen
In the build-up to the Nationals in 2013 , Dr Mackintosh, who says she was the worst imaginable at sport at school as it was all team event which involved throwing and catching balls, trained on the water five or six times a week. She regularly paddles the River Forth in Stirling, where she says she has seen seal, porpoises, otter and 14 species of birds.
Due to restrictions on numbers, Ursula’s farewell was held on MS Teams and she is pictured with some of her many gifts. Determined to keep fit and keep training, she says the oldest age group at the World Kayak Championships is for over 80s and you have to be able to paddle 18 kilometres. She is hopeful to be able to continue until an octogenarian – remarking that that is still a long way off!
