LIKE many of us, Jo Cartmell spent years working at a desk while dreaming of following her true passion.

Now she has fulfilled her lifelong ambition of becoming a wildlife photographer thanks to Twitter.

Growing up in Grove, near Wantage, Jo spent her childhood catching toads and watching water voles in Letcombe Brook.

As a child of the 1950s, she said it was like seeing TV 'star' Hammy the Hamster splashing about in the water in real life.

She dreamed of becoming a wildlife photographer, but never let herself believe the dream could come true.

She got married, raised two children, and worked much of her life as a PA.

But ten years ago she told her boss she was leaving and went out into the wild armed with her camera.

She had never forgotten about the water voles that caught her imagination and she set out to capture them on camera.

After she got the knack, she tentatively set up a Twitter account, @watervole, to see if anyone thought the photos were any good.

Award-winning cameraman Stephen de Vere, who worked with David Attenborough on acclaimed series like Life in the Freezer, followed her on Twitter and liked her photos.

But not only that, he actually got in touch and asked if she would like to help him film some water voles for his next project – a feature-length documentary called Return to the River, Diary of a Wildlife Cameraman.

Last year the pair went out into some secret vole-spotting spots in Oxfordshire and captured beautiful footage of the aquatic mammals at their best.

The finished documentary was released on DVD in September.

The grandmother-of-two, who now lives in Abingdon, said: "I'm quite a shy sort of person, this was a dream I never thought would become an actuality, and it is all through tweeting – I have to thank Twitter, really."

She has now had her first ever article about water voles – published in a national anthology of wildlife stories.

The book, entitled Spring, is a collection of works compiled by The Wildlife Trusts, a national conservation charity represented in Oxfordshire by the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust (BBOWT).

She said: "It's wonderful, I feel over the moon, especially because it's about water voles which I have a real passion for and which I would like to see doing well in this country."

Find out more about the Spring anthology at www.bbowt.org.uk