In this episode of the Adventure Diaries, host Chris Watson welcomes renowned adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys. Alastair shares his incredible journey from a conventional teaching career to embarking on some of the world's most thrilling adventures. From cycling around the world to rowing across the Atlantic, Alastair's stories are filled with inspiration and insight. He also discusses his latest book "Local," which encourages finding adventure close to home. Join us as we dive into Alastair's grand expeditions and the wonder of local exploration.
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In this episode of the Adventure Diaries, host Chris Watson welcomes renowned adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys. Alastair shares his incredible journey from a conventional teaching career to embarking on some of the world's most thrilling adventures. From cycling around the world to rowing across the Atlantic, Alastair's stories are filled with inspiration and insight. He also discusses his latest book "Local," which encourages finding adventure close to home. Join us as we dive into Alastair's grand expeditions and the wonder of local exploration.
Key Topics Discussed:
Quotes from the Episode:
Call to Action:
Links and Resources:
Thanks For Listening.
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a comment and subscribe for more exciting content.
Follow us https://linktr.ee/adventurediaries for updates.
Have a topic suggestion? Email us at ideas@adventurediaries.com.
AdventureDiaries.com
#AdventureDiaries #AdventureStories #NationalGeographic #Discovery #NaturalWorld
Chris Watson (00:00.83)
So it's live now. So Alistair Humphreys, welcome to the Adventure Diaries. How are you?
Alastair (00:06.3)
I'm good. Thank you for inviting me on.
Chris Watson (00:09.606)
Yeah, no thank you for giving us your time. I am beyond excited. I've interviewed a lot of great people, but there's a number of reasons I'm excited. I mean, gonna fanboy a little bit here. I've got some of the books, micro-adventures, local and Ask an Adventurer, as well as my own single map, which we'll come onto. So we probably don't have enough time to cover all of that. But...
Alastair (00:27.988)
Nice.
Chris Watson (00:38.678)
purpose of today is really to touch on a little bit of your own journey from a kind of conventional background and teaching through to some of your larger adventures and then maybe we'll spend a little bit of time at the end talking about some of the work you've done over the past year or so with the book local so yeah just a question Alastair you went from teaching into adventuring how did that come to be and why
Alastair (01:08.132)
I guess I went towards teaching after university at Edinburgh, partly because I guess I thought it would be quite an interesting job, but also fairly significant currently because I had no idea what to do with my life and it had really big holidays. So I wasn't, it was probably not necessarily the most sensible reasons for choosing a career, but that seemed to be what I was doing. So while I was training to be a teacher though.
I was really daydreaming about adventure, reading adventure books and stories and thinking, oh, I'd really love to be off doing that. And it got me far more excited than a proper job did, to be honest. So I thought, right, what I'll do is I'll go do an adventure, get all this nonsense out of my system and then come home and get a proper job in a real life like, like everyone does. So, so that was very much my plan was to go. I ended up cycling around the world, but I was always assuming that
After that, I'd come home and I'd have sort of got all of that out of my system. And then I could just get on and teach. And, and I also did think though, that traveling to lots of different places, doing interesting stuff would make me a better teacher. And I think that part is true, but I managed to somehow manage to. Delay the onset of real life. So I taught proper teaching for a year. But then I thought, no, I can, I could be, I could be a good teacher when I'm 40 or 50 or 60 or 70, the adventuring's got a bit more of a
limited shelf life. So I should try and do a bit more of this now and maybe come back to the teaching at some point. But I've been managing to put it off for quite a long time there.
Chris Watson (02:40.238)
Well, I suppose you're doing a little bit of it through your writing, aren't you? So there's some, I mean, even in the book, the book Local, which we'll come on to. I mean, there's certainly things that I've learned how to calculate the age of a hedge roll, for example, so punctuating some of your stories with a little bit of education has been has been really interesting.
Alastair (02:52.732)
Hehehe
Alastair (02:58.565)
Yeah, I enjoy doing that little bit of education stuff. I do like that. And it's even better that I don't have to do any marking afterwards or tell anybody off. I can just sit in my shed in peace and quiet, drinking tea and do the bits of teaching that I like.
Chris Watson (03:12.45)
Fantastic. So rolling back a little bit then, was there any, what was your first adventure or what was your inspiration as a kid? What did you want to do when you became an adult and got the chance to get off out into the world?
Alastair (03:27.448)
I had no idea when I was a kid what I wanted to do beyond sort of being an astronaut or a football. I mean, literally no concept at all. And that really extended to me even after leaving school, going to university. I just had absolutely no idea. I didn't have any particular strong passions in any direction. I just absolutely no idea. So I guess between school and university, I went to teach in a little village school in Africa for a year. And that was a really big.
deal for me that year. So growing up you do in your 18, 19. Also my first time far away from Britain and my first time in a country that was so different in every way to what I'd grown up with. And that really opened my eyes to the excitement of seeing other countries and other parts of the world. And then when I was a student, I got really into reading travel and expedition books. And that then got me interested in maybe I can combine this new interest in traveling, which lots of young people have.
We're doing it in ways that's physically challenging and testing in that kind of way, which appealed to me and also had the added bonus of being quite cheap. If you travel by bike with a tent on the back, then it becomes much more affordable for young people.
Chris Watson (04:42.938)
How did you find that travelling back then, doing those adventures before the mobile phone, before real GPS and stuff? Do you miss that and do you look back fondly on that compared to some of the technological ease that we have to do things today?
Alastair (05:01.284)
Yeah, I mean, at the time, I had no idea that it was a sort of old-fashioned way to do it. It was just the way everyone did it. But yeah, my first bike trips, cycling around the world even, I did without a laptop, without a phone and navigating using paper maps. But now when I drive to the supermarket, I put Google Maps on, even though I know the way there. It's just everywhere I go, I do like that. When I come out of the London Underground, I just look on my phone for the blue dot and follow it like a moron.
So now the thought of me having to say cycle into the middle of Cairo or Tokyo or Los Angeles or Mexico city with a paper map and some written directions, I find absolutely terrifying. I really would. And so I look back with immense gratitude that I, uh, that my sort of traveling and adventures bridge that digital era. I, When I cycled around the world, I would about once a month, I'd find an internet cafe and you pay a little bit to use someone, use the internet for an hour.
and this rubbish connection and there's a load of teenage kids blowing everyone up with them on their computer games smoking cigarettes and I'd be sort of emailing my mum, hi mum I'm in Africa, I'm still alive, I'll email you in another month when I make it to the next country and it's just, I would find that terrifying now but I'm very grateful for it.
Chris Watson (06:19.298)
Yeah, internet cafes, there's a blast from the past, geez, geez. So what age were you when you cycled around the world? Because that was quite a fairly long kind of expedition adventure, wasn't it? Like four, three, four, four or five years or something.
Alastair (06:22.151)
Yeah, yes.
Alastair (06:34.768)
Yeah, I started when I was 24 and I got back just by my, just on my 29th birthday. So yeah, it's a big chunk of time and a big, it's a formative time of your life as well, so mid 20s. So I often thought of it as not that I was away on an adventure, but it felt to me like I was just living my life. I was living my life on a bike in these different parts of the world with all the ups and downs you have in, in your life. Um, so.
Yeah, it really just felt like that was my life, not I was away on an adventure, if that distinction makes sense.
Chris Watson (07:05.714)
Yeah, no it does. I mean it's a fair, you covered what 50, 60 countries or something, it was a fair old distance that you went and what wasn't it so what stands out is key memories and lessons that you learned on that.
Alastair (07:21.349)
Well, I'm looking now at the poster behind your head of the Torres del Paine National Park. That's definite a world highlight is cycling up through Patagonia to the Torres del Paine, through Patagonia. So yeah, the sort of wild, wonderful places that I spent months immersing myself in stands out. I suppose what we've mentioned this of doing it in a digital, a pre digital era. Another aspect of that is that
Chris Watson (07:27.382)
Yeah.
Alastair (07:46.408)
I, these days I love photography and I take loads of pictures. I really like it. But when I was cycling around the world, I didn't really care about photographs. I just, I was interested in writing. So I'd write down my diary at night in the tent, but, um, my camera broke in South America, so all of Patagonia, I had one disposable camera and I took 24 pictures going through all of Patagonia. Now I would take a thousand photos if I went camping for a weekend in, by Loch Lomond or something. So, which is so totally different. And.
I quite appreciate that sort of just living in the moment aspects of what I was doing then because I wasn't trying to be posting on Instagram or anything like that. I was just doing it for the for the heck of it, which is brilliant. And then I think a thing that's really important to mention, which sounds a bit cliche, but it's really important for people who haven't traveled to be aware of it's just the kindness of strangers. How when you look on the news, it seems that the world is becoming ever more polarized and
Chris Watson (08:26.734)
Oh dear.
Alastair (08:43.156)
mistrusting and unsafe and yet the reality from traveling solo through countries which you might have preconceptions as being pretty dangerous were some of the most generous and kind and welcoming places. And I think that's a really important aspect of traveling and traveling slowly and traveling off the beaten track and bikes a brilliant way for doing that.
Chris Watson (09:03.598)
Yeah, absolutely. I've actually spoken to a couple of people that have done long distance cycles like Charlie Walker as well. And he talks about that, like, you know, you're kind of going a lot slower and you really get the chance to connect with, with the locals and, you know, been taken in and been fed and, you know, all sorts of wonderful, wonderful scenarios, the human connection is fantastic. What, so what, so how did, how did, just curious to know how you planned all that out.
Did you have a plan when you went or did you just go as the wind took you and what kind of fancied? What you fancied at the time?
Alastair (09:41.144)
I think when you're planning an adventure, it's quite a good thing to aim for, is to get a balance between being organized and prepared enough so that the trip can be successful and that you can travel safely, but not being so massively prepared that you remove all surprise and spontaneity and freedom to change your mind. So the way I try and look at planning my adventures is to plan enough to be safe.
and to plan enough so that I dare get out the front door and begin, because I wouldn't dare just disappear off with no idea at all. So I need a little bit of structure to give me that courage to get going and then dare myself beyond that to leave everything else up to chance as much as I possibly can. And geez, I mean, this is seems so long ago now, but I set off on my bike ride in August, 2001.
And the plan, which I planned quite carefully, was to cycle through Iran, through Pakistan, through Afghanistan, on my way to Australia. And I planned all that part quite carefully. Two weeks into my bike ride, the 9-11 attacks happened in America. The whole world goes crazy, and suddenly my carefully planned scenic route through Afghanistan didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. So then when I got to Istanbul, instead of carrying straight onto Australia, I turned right instead, rode through the Middle East and down Africa to Cape Town. So I did enough planning
gave me the confidence to get out the door, but then the reality of it was quite quickly, all of that planning went out the window and from then on I was just winging it. But I wouldn't have dared wing it from the start, but once you start going on an adventure, you realize that actually they're not that complicated. It's just ride your bike, find some food, find somewhere to sleep, repeat that for a thousand times and you get around the world. But it's easy to say that, but it's quite hard to believe it until you actually are doing it.
Chris Watson (11:31.51)
Yeah, did you ever think about quitting at any point throughout that? Was there any point you just thought that, oh, I saw this, I'm going home.
Alastair (11:39.62)
I thought about it a lot of times, I really did. I found it, so I think I'd set off assuming that what I was going to have was a physical challenge. Can I cope with big mountains and deserts? And that was what I was interested in. What I hadn't given any thought to and totally underestimated was the mental side of the trip. I'm now on my own for four years, no friends, no family, literally a stranger every single day.
loneliness of it really quite overwhelming at times. The good side of the loneliness is the solitude at times and I think wow this is incredible to be here but the downsides are pretty sad and lonely. So yeah I came pretty close to quitting quite a lot of times for about the first two and a bit years and then once I'd done once I'd gone on for some two and a half years I thought I might as well just carry on now there's no point quitting now.
Chris Watson (12:32.795)
Did you make any friends or any characters that joined you along the way? Because it's such a long journey, you must have been in places for a longer period of times. Was it that difficult at all?
Alastair (12:42.6)
I had a few friends who came out and joined me for a little bit, so that was really nice to have some company and it's a very interesting way of measuring yourself, seeing how you have changed, because of course you don't realise that you're changing, but when suddenly an old friend from an old bit of your life comes out to join you for a few weeks in some foreign country and you look at them like they're some sort of completely wimpy, wide-eyed innocent, and it makes you realise how you have changed. But I also wrote...
Every so often when you're in certain parts of the world, there's sort of bottlenecks for long distance cyclists and you bump into people, which is always such a thrill. When you see coming down the road towards you, is that a bike? Usually it turns out to be a donkey with two water barrels, but occasionally it is a cyclist with a bag, so it's lovely to have that connection. And also if you're going the same way, then you can ride for a little while. I had a couple of good achievements in a backpacker place.
Bariloche in Argentina, I met this young French backpacker and I was saying to him, oh, cycling so much more interesting than backpacking, you should try it. So he's like, okay, I will. So he went to the market and bought a bike and joined me in road for a few weeks. And then a couple of weeks down the line, we found another backpacker and we persuaded him to buy a bike and carry on riding. So did a bit of forest group, forest gump recruitment along the way.
Chris Watson (14:05.899)
I think there's something in that. You could orchestrate around the world really somehow by getting backpackers in every geography to commit to something.
Alastair (14:12.821)
Yes.
Alastair (14:17.488)
Well, there's a guy called Dom Gill who cycled from Alaska to Patagonia on a tandem, but with nobody on the back. And he would just pick up passengers along the way and take them for a ride. It's a great idea. He made a film of it.
Chris Watson (14:19.95)
Ahem.
Chris Watson (14:30.576)
Wow. So, I mean that is pretty epic. But following that you also rode the Atlantic as well didn't you? Which was a bit... Were you into sailing or kayaking and canoeing or whatever before that?
Alastair (14:49.336)
Well, when I cycled around the world, I got across the Atlantic Ocean on a sailing boat, crewing on a sailing boat, so I'd already sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. And in 2009, I rowed across the English Channel from England to France with a disabled British soldier for a help the hero. So I'd done sort of dabbled with watery type things and rowing an ocean is one of those sorts of iconic tick in the box things for people in the adventure world.
Realistically, I never thought it was the sort of thing I would do, primarily because it's really expensive and requires a huge amount of organizing and faff and preparation. All and all of those are things that's just set the alarm bells ringing for me. They're not in my nature. So I never thought I'd get to do it and never really gave much thought to be honest. And then one day I got this email from some random bloke in Slovenia who I'd never met before, um, who was planning to row the Atlantic and crucially had done all the prep and got the boat and was all sorted.
their team of four, unfortunately, one guy had to drop out just six weeks before departure. So clearly he'd gone through all his mates and they'd all said no. So he started emailing random bloggers and he emailed me saying, Hey, do you want to come join three total strangers who you've never met before and row across the Atlantic? And I think the key thing when you receive an email like that is to say yes, to seize the opportunities because the time is never right. Nothing's ever quite perfect. We've just got to say yes and go for it. So
Chris Watson (16:07.766)
Yeah.
Alastair (16:14.664)
So I did it and it was spectacularly miserable. It was horrific. It was simultaneously boring and terrifying, claustrophobic and agoraphobic. There's a lot of seasickness, vomiting, very sore buttocks, it was awful. And yet, also once those sorts of memories fade, then there's just the wonder of being out mid ocean and then to share an experience with three other guys rather than the solitude of the bike trip was just made the whole thing a really...
Chris Watson (16:37.23)
Yeah.
Alastair (16:43.656)
special thing I'm so glad to have done but I've no desire to do another one but I'm very glad I did one.
Chris Watson (16:49.868)
Yeah, it sounds very much like the type two type of fun. You look back on it very, very fondly, but yeah. Did you have any sort of wildlife encounters or anything when you were out there? Do you see any sort of whales or anything like that or?
Alastair (16:54.202)
Yes, definitely.
Alastair (17:04.516)
Yeah, we saw some whales, dolphins, loads of some turtles, there was tuna, what's the word, swordfish, millions of flying fish. So yeah, all that is absolutely wonderful. One thing that was sad, I felt sort of sad, no, actually sad, was we didn't see a single shark. And just before we set off, we met this guy who'd rode the same route as us 40 years earlier. And he was telling us how he saw a shark almost every day.
Chris Watson (17:14.382)
swordfish here.
Alastair (17:34.008)
and I'm kind of scared of sharks, I didn't really want to see too many, but the fact that we saw zero I found very sad, just a reminder of the way we're wrecking our wild places.
Chris Watson (17:48.715)
Yeah, on that, you mentioned the swordfish actually seeing something, not a week or so ago and it was on Instagram and it was a swordfish attacking someone in a kayak on the ocean, which I didn't think they were that particularly aggressive, but yeah, it was quite, it was interesting.
Alastair (18:07.728)
Yeah, I've heard of ocean rowers having their boat spiked through, which is a pretty alarming thing.
Chris Watson (18:15.43)
Yeah. Excellent. So before we can move on, there was one other kind of, there's a couple of big adventures before we can move on to some of the kind of micro stuff in your book Local. You walked across India as well. And did you, you done some teaching? Did you do some teaching when you were doing that walk across India or was that your?
Alastair (18:38.012)
No, I didn't do any teaching there. And when I say walk across India, if you imagine India shaped like a big triangle, I was quite down near the bottom. So it wasn't the big old massive bit across India. And actually, to be fair, the way I calculate worked out the trip really, was I thought how much time do I have available? I had about six or seven weeks that I could spare. So I sort of look, if you look at the triangle of India, if you go to the very bottom, you could walk across that in a day.
Chris Watson (18:43.146)
Yeah. All right. OK.
Alastair (19:02.032)
you go up to the top it would take you six months to walk across. So I think quite a nice idea is just see how much time you got available, move up the triangle a bit, found a holy river to follow and followed that for about 500 miles, the Kaveri River across southern India which is a really fantastic experience. I think the simplicity and the slowness of a long walk is really a really good thing to do although it is very painful and I definitely overall prefer travelling by bike.
Chris Watson (19:04.511)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (19:30.022)
Yeah, I mean, how was that contending with the heat and such and water supplies and stuff? How did you cope with that provision planning?
Alastair (19:35.414)
Ah, yeah.
Alastair (19:39.804)
Yeah, I really struggle in hot places, being pastier even than a pasty Scotsman. I really struggle with hot places. So that's always been hard for me in a lot of my trips. Like rowing the ocean, the guys I was with, they were all getting stripped off and topping up their tans, a lot of butt naked rowing time. And I was hiding away from the sun.
So yeah, that's a difficult part of India of all countries. But I think what's uniquely difficult in India is that there are literally people everywhere. I mean, continuously, you think you're in the middle of nowhere and some little kids pop up, hello, how are you? Do you like cricket? Just continuously, you try and get to the toilet behind the bush, someone pops up and starts asking you about if you're married and how many children you have and how much you earn. It's just the relentless in your face.
humanness of India which is both the wonderful part and the infuriating part of travelling there.
Chris Watson (20:34.934)
Yeah. Did you get any followers when you were doing that? I can just imagine a stream of kids just following you for miles on end, like the Pied Piper.
Alastair (20:43.664)
Yeah, yeah, definitely get kids, kids following for a while, sometimes random people walking alongside with you. And often this is really nice. You have a little chitchat, but it can get particularly really hot day, get a bit annoying and that was something I used to quite enjoy on my bike was that same thing would happen. You get these little kids or people join you. But after a while I could just gradually sort of step on the gas a little bit and burn them off and get a bit of peace and quiet was when you're walking, you really are just at the mercy of everybody else who's walking as well. So.
Yeah, it's nice to chit chat, but it's really hard to get a peace and quiet.
Chris Watson (21:14.21)
Yeah.
Fantastic. And then you did a walk across Spain, which has a bit of an angle to it. So playing or trying to play a violin, what was that all about? I mean, apologies, you've probably spoke about this a million times, but I find that fascinating. Why a violin and why when you can't play it?
Alastair (21:37.703)
So a lot of my adventuring as I mentioned at the start has been inspired by enjoying reading books and one of my favourite travel books has always been Laurie Lee's classic book of walking through Spain in the 1930s. It's called As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and I first read that when I was a student. I got it from a charity shop and I read it and I loved it. I loved it because it was just...
It wasn't some sort of crazy tough guy doing something ridiculously epic. It was a normal person like you and me just walking through Spain, which is the kind of place we go on our holidays. It felt achievable and realistic, but he wrote about it in a very beautiful way. So for about 15 years, I'd probably read that book once a year and always thinking, oh, I'd love to do that. That's such a great story. I'd love to do that, but I can't play the violin or any other instrument. And actually the
the prospect of having to play music in public or dance at weddings or sing karaoke. I hate anything like that. It really scares me. But by now I've been doing quite a few of these big adventures we talked about and I started to realise that, or to question, I started to question, are these things still adventures for me? I've spent a lot of time now doing physically tough stuff in difficult places.
Chris Watson (22:27.406)
Thanks for watching!
Alastair (22:52.58)
Are they still adventures? Because I'm quite good at doing those now. I kind of know that if I start, I'll probably succeed. Is that actually therefore an adventure or is it my own version of a comfort zone of being in a rut of taking the easy option? So I started to ask myself what adventure meant to me and how I could get back to that, the original early feelings, you know, the uncertainty, the excitement, the fear, the fear of failure, the likelihood of failure, all of these things which...
felt to me like adventure. And I realized that a way to get all of those feelings back was to learn the violin. And so on this trip, the adventure wasn't walking 500 miles through Spain and sleeping on the hills and cooking on fires. I've been doing that literally for years in my life. The adventure here was to stand up in little village squares in Spain. I had no money, no credit card, no wallet, only the violin. If I wanted to eat dinner tonight, I needed to play the violin, however embarrassing it was.
however terrible I was, and I had to just persevere and keep going till someone eventually gave me a coin. It was a terrifying but thrilling experience. I really genuinely think it was one of the best adventures of my life.
Chris Watson (24:04.263)
Yeah. Do you speak Spanish?
Alastair (24:07.248)
Yeah, my Spanish is fine. So that was a nice thing to spend. It was a month walking 500 miles to just spend all day, every day in another language was really nice.
Chris Watson (24:09.803)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (24:19.562)
Yeah. What were you trying to play on the violin? Was there anything specific?
Alastair (24:24.892)
So when I came up with the idea, I thought, I thought, oh yeah, I'll walk through Spain, this will be brilliant. I'll play some, a few Beatles songs, a bit of flamenco, Spanish music, maybe a bit of Bob Dylan to make me seem intellectual. But the reality that went massively out the window when I first started having lessons and my teacher just started to give me the type, like the little nursery rhymes that five year olds learn. And
Chris Watson (24:39.788)
Ahem.
Chris Watson (24:46.902)
Yeah.
Alastair (24:48.804)
So by the time I went after six, seven months of lessons, all I could play, I was doing the grade one music syllabus, like kids do at primary school. So I just had five or six little tunes from grade one, each of which is like 20 second ditties. And I just play these five round and round and round and round and round. They sounded horrific. I mean, if you think I'm just being sort of.
self-deprecating and modest about my abilities. Look on YouTube at my film My Midsummer Morning and you'll see that genuinely I'm terrible and the fact that anyone was giving me money is just testament to the incredible kindness of strangers you get around the world.
Chris Watson (25:18.039)
I'm sorry.
Chris Watson (25:26.231)
That's fantastic. And I listened to your podcast with Kenton Kuhl recently, which was fantastic. And I think in that you said something along the lines of, when you got a coin or you got some euros, you purposely spent it. So you blew it all out, had some time without, you know, putting it aside to try and, so that you essentially had to thry, had to busk for your supper every day.
Alastair (25:54.82)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I wanted to... Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, I wanted maximum terror. So, for example, I didn't... Before I went to Spain, I was practicing the violin, but I never went to practice busking in my local town to get used to it. So I'd never ever busked ever until day one in Spain when I had no money. And if I wanted some money, I had to play. And I realised I hadn't really figured...
Chris Watson (25:54.982)
I mean, that's mad. So that's purposely putting yourself in hardship. Yep.
Chris Watson (26:15.25)
Ahem.
Alastair (26:22.504)
thought this through but I realised on that first day that once I'd earned a couple of coins maybe what I could do is just spend 10 hours there playing away, earn until I get enough money and then buy enough rice for the whole month and I don't need to play the stupid violin again. But that was kind of, that would be cheating. So I came up with a rule then which is whenever I get money I have to spend all of it immediately so that once I've eaten that food then tomorrow I'm back to being hungry and desperate and scared again. One day for example.
I just hit jackpot. I was playing my violin in this little town and a tourist bus turned up this massive 50-seater tourist bus And I got 20 euros in about an hour of playing No man needs 20 euros. I felt like the richest king of the world. It was just magical So I immediately took that 20 euros to shop and spanked it on beer and ice cream and it was just wonderful Geez, no man has ever enjoyed an ice cream and a lager more than that. But that then the next morning
Right, if I want breakfast, I've got to play again. And it began the whole process again.
Chris Watson (27:26.962)
It's equal parts mad, but equal parts, it sounds like so much fun. It really does. But I don't think I would have the bra, just the thought of standing up and trying to do that in public right now just gives me the shivers.
Alastair (27:41.124)
It's really interesting, isn't it? Cause we've talked now about cycling across scary countries and rowing across oceans. But I think for loads of us, the thought of having to just play in some nice friendly little Spanish sunny Plaza is more terrifying, isn't it? It's quite interesting.
Chris Watson (27:56.846)
Especially when no one knows you either. So, you know, it's not like someone's gonna start posting all over Instagram. So it's hilarious. Excellent. So switching lanes a little bit. I wanted to touch on, so, you know, you've been known as the pioneers, as they say, as micro adventures. So and I mean, this book is in part the reason for the show that I'm doing at the minute. So I just wanted to firstly thank you.
Alastair (27:58.684)
Hey.
Alastair (28:03.414)
Yeah.
Alastair (28:22.525)
Hmm.
Chris Watson (28:23.822)
For that, I bought this about five or so years ago, a couple of years before COVID, I think. And I think it's coming up for its 10 year anniversary now, isn't it? I think this was published 10 years ago. Yeah, I mean, I think just visually, for anyone that doesn't have this book, I would recommend going out and buying this, as well as one of the other 15, 16 books that you've got out as well. But I'd say just visually, everything in this is fantastic. It's given me lots of inspiration to do some stuff.
Alastair (28:31.44)
Yeah, this sub is crazy.
Chris Watson (28:51.478)
and they're around Scotland and the Trossachs and particularly with my little girl. So I'm trying to get her more into being active and outdoors and stuff. And yeah, and it's been the catalyst for me taking up kayaking and starting a show. So it's an excellent piece of work. How has it been received generally that, was that your kind of breakthrough book or not?
Alastair (29:04.773)
Oh, lovely.
Alastair (29:16.416)
Yes, definitely. It's really interesting because when I started adventuring, I think really I wanted to be some sort of tough guy like Rannell Fiennes or Kenton Cool. I was like chasing these big adventure people who do massive stuff and make a career off it and everyone goes, wow, you're amazing. You're a legend. And I go, yeah, I know. I'm so cool. So that was the direction I was very much dreaming of going. And when I did start Micro
Chris Watson (29:26.636)
Yeah.
Alastair (29:43.408)
It felt to me like an important and worthwhile thing to do, but I slightly worried. I thought, ah, no one's going to be interested in me anymore. If I'm just sleeping on random Hills outside cities rather than doing this epic stuff. So I was nervous about the impact it would have on my career and stuff. But the reality is that actually it's far more interesting and relevant to far more people to find little things that you can go and do with your daughter than yet another.
middle-class posh English bloke showing off about how tough he is as the internet is full of people like us So that's so it's actually done really fantastically Well, and I and I was pleased then when you saying that it looks nice that it's ten years old And it still does look quite cool. So yeah, I'm really pleased with that book. It's it. It's really nice
Chris Watson (30:23.64)
Yeah.
Yeah, it is fantastic because for someone like my position, which is part of the premise of this show, it's like adventure means different things to different people and there's no guidebook or rule book for it. Just go out and kind of do, you know, just don't sit at a screen. Just don't sit with your face on an iPad or a laptop, you know, 95, you know, or if you have to do that, then go and do something at the weekend or at night or whatever. And I think that's what really struck me when I got that. There's
You know the way that it's structured, you know, it could be a day, it could be an afternoon, it could be a, it could be a nine to, it could be a five to nine as opposed to a nine to five and going and grabbing a bivvy bag and like you say sleeping on a hill outside a city. It's got a fantastic array of adventures within it.
Is there anything, is there any standout adventures within that micro adventures concept that you look back on fondly when you were creating the book?
Alastair (31:26.212)
So when I started I was trying to think of all the stuff I loved about big adventures and how could I boil that down into things that were more simple and affordable for normal people with real life. So I started by walking a lap of the M25, walking a lap of London. But I actually realised quite soon that
That was actually quite a hardcore thing to do. And that was a week trudging through the snow just outside London. That's beyond the remit of most people. So I did include that in the book because I think it's a cool story, but it's kind of at the hardcore epic end of microadventuring. And trying to communicate to people, the storytelling side of it was difficult. And what I noticed was that people liked the idea of adventure, but that...
often quite preoccupied by the obstacles, the barriers. They say things like, oh I'd love to do an adventure but I haven't got enough time, oh I'd love to do an adventure but I haven't got enough money, or oh I'd love to adventure but it's easier for you. There's always a but. So I started to have some breakthroughs when I was thinking right how can I tackle these buts? Can I find some adventures that specifically don't need much money? Can I find some that don't need much time, don't need much specialist equipment trying to go around these obstacles?
In terms of messaging, trying to get a message across is all about finding something very simple, clear, and then just repeating it over and over and over and over again for 10 years in my case. And the breakthrough I think I had was when I came up with the idea in the book of rather than getting constrained by your 9 to 5, the obstacles, look at the opportunities, the 5 to 9. When you finish work at 5pm, theoretically and hypothetically of course, you've got 16 hours of freedom until 9am.
Of course there's commitments, but I think the principle as a thought experiment is really interesting because generally I think a sort of normal thing we might say is, hi, my name's Bob, I'm a builder. I'd love to do adventures, but I can't possibly do that because I'm a builder from nine to five, Monday to Friday. Another way that Bob could think about it is, what's he got from 5 p.m. till 9 a.m. every single day? That's more freedom than work time. So theoretically at least, there's a lot that you can squeeze in.
Alastair (33:39.14)
around the edges and that was when I started to get a bit of a breakthrough with micro adventures of trying to show the opportunities rather than the constraints and to get the message really simple of turn off your computer at five o'clock, head out of town, go sleep on top of a hill, come back down, get back on your computer for nine o'clock the next morning.
Chris Watson (33:58.014)
Yeah, fantastic. And even there's a couple of adventures in there that even stream more towards the extreme. So even those are looking for something a bit more arduous, a bit more challenging. There's an example in it that will give where I think you cycled up to the highlands, paddled across the sky and then done the Cooling Ridge. And that was over like two days. I mean, that's pretty that's pretty something. And the Cooling Ridge is well in the skies. You know, that's.
That's an epic undertaking in its own right, let alone cycling and then kayaking across the skies. So I think there's something for everyone in it.
Alastair (34:36.884)
Good, yeah, well that's the aim, is to try and go from the tiny up to the larger. And I think one of the main points of the whole book was the idea of it doesn't matter how small the adventure is and don't feel you have to compare yourself to Bear Grylls. If it feels like an adventure to you, then it is an adventure and that's fine. Do this tiny, tiny little thing and then next weekend, maybe you can do something a little bit bigger. Don't worry, just do something and get started.
Chris Watson (35:03.226)
Yeah, so along all these adventures, as an author, are you perpetually taking notes when you go and do your adventures in writing? Have you got lots of material that you're trying to bring together into these concepts? Because I think you clash yourself as a writer pretty much now, don't you? You're not an adventure writer.
Alastair (35:25.136)
Yes, yeah, so I actually, I've always thought I would love to be a writer. I'd love to like that to just be the way I earn my living and that'd be great. But I've always felt a bit sort of impostery about that. And also the reality is that even though I've written lots of books, they don't really sell that many copies. So I've basically always supplemented or made up most of my income by doing speaking work and stuff. But in recent years, I've been trying to dare myself more to just commit to being the writer. So.
which I love, I really love that I get to write books about going on adventures and stuff like that. The tiny, tiny little flip side to it is that whenever I go and do anything fun, any sort of kayaking thing, in my head, it always slightly feels like work. Even though I'm having a great time, I'm always trying to think, oh, how can I write about this? How can I describe this? Don't forget to take a nice photo of me looking heroic in the sunset, all that sort of stuff. So there's always a little element of work involved, but luckily I really enjoy the work aspect of it.
as well. But yeah, I'm always either taking notes or thinking about how I can write about this later.
Chris Watson (36:28.47)
Yeah, it's kind of something I struggle a little bit with as well. It's, you know, kind of starting this show and this concept and stuff with the likes of Instagram that, you know, there's that compelling need to take the photo as opposed to just enjoying the moment a lot of the time. It's something you can quite wrestle with, which actually led to me capsizing in a kayak not so long ago, so I wasn't paying attention.
Alastair (36:46.488)
Yeah, one thing... Trying to get the perfect Instagram shot. One thing I do to try and help with that whole conundrum is usually I take the photos and stuff when I'm away, but I don't do the whole uploading to Instagram. I do that later on and I find that helps me get less removed from being in the moment.
Chris Watson (36:55.41)
Yeah, yeah, but...
Chris Watson (37:15.242)
Yeah. So question, cause you're a father as well, aren't you? So how do you balance your family life with the needs to go on an adventure and the need to get out there and do that? And are you bringing your family along with you?
Alastair (37:33.288)
Well, I think the simple answer to that is microadventures. So microadventures were my own personal solution to not having the time and also the recklessness to go and cross oceans and stuff anymore. So yeah, it's try a way to still get some wildness and freedom and escape and exercise in my life, but within the realities of busy life. So yeah, microadventures have been my solution for that.
Chris Watson (38:05.29)
And with that, that's probably a perfect kind of segue into, so is this, so local, let's talk about local. I've not finished this yet, I'm at two thirds of the way through it. And this is essentially, exploring your local area. So taking the concept of the map, the ordinance survey map and exploring locally. Where did that idea come from? Considering we've had microadventures and then, was that?
Is that like a pandemic type concept where you didn't feel that we could travel that far? Or is it something completely unrelated to that? Where did it come from?
Alastair (38:43.004)
Well, I think, yes, certainly during the pandemic, I think a lot of people were for the first time, discovering what you could find on your doorstep. And for me, really, it was it's like a more smaller version of micro adventures, if that's a possible thing. Part of the thinking for it was realizing that although micro adventures has been successful and it's encouraged lots of people to go and have adventures with their families and stuff, it's always.
my failing I feel is that it's always been slightly preaching to the converted. It's always slightly assuming that the person has already got a sleeping bag and is already slightly interested in going to sleep on a hill and there's literally millions of people who've it's never even crossed their mind to go and do that. So my hope with this book was to try and get even closer to home to see you can find some nature and wildness close to where you live even if you're absolutely nowhere near.
a mountain or an ocean. So can all of us wherever we are find a little bit of wildness? And whereas microadventures might require you to go and sleep on a hill overnight, this is getting even smaller. What can you do in your lunch break? You know, with your lunch break from the office, can you go explore that tiny little random bit of woodland that you can see from your office window that you've never been to? So my hope was to make it broader by making it more compact.
I bought the Ordnance Survey map, the local map for where I live, and I committed to spending a whole year just exploring that one small map.
Chris Watson (40:17.494)
And how much of the map have you explored or is still to be explored? Because I can imagine if it's like mine, I mean, I'm not sure, are they universal? Like the ordnance survey maps, do they get the equal number of squares on them? Not sure if they.
Alastair (40:33.348)
Not in not quite there a bit of a bish mish mash of shapes to fit in with things but roughly speaking You can you can get two series There's the orange ones which are what I use their one to twenty five thousand scale and then purple ones which are one to fifty Thousand cover a bigger area but in less detail so I think the small the one to twenty five thousand the more detail one Which roughly is 20 kilometers
by 20 kilometers. So pretty small area really when you look at it and you could drive across that in 10 minutes if there's a road going through it. And my goal was to go to one grid square the maps divided up into kilometer grid squares and I'd go to one grid square a week and explore it in great detail. So that meant over a year I'd see 52 grid squares and hopefully get a good feel for my map.
20 by 20, there's 400 grid squares on the map. So to answer your question, by the end of the year, I'd seen 52 out of 400. So my worry at the start of the year was that one map was far too small and I'd be really bored and I'd see everything and it would be so claustrophobic. By the end of the year, I thought crikey, I need another seven years on this map before I've even been to every grid square once, let alone going to that same grid square in spring, summer, autumn, winter.
rain, sunshine, full moon. There's so much on a map once you start to be interested in it. To not just think that adventure happens on the other side of the globe, but to look on your local little map and think, oh, I'm gonna go find somewhere new this weekend. There's a lot out there once you change your mindset.
Chris Watson (42:09.683)
Fantastic. Did you do it in any sort of order or was it whatever took your fancy when you looked at the square or did you set any sort of rules or challenges when you did it?
Alastair (42:20.736)
So I'm a bit of a map geek as I suspect you are and a lot of your listeners will be. And you know, you get out a map and immediately all those squiggles start to become journeys and ideas. Like, oh, look, I can get from there to there. And then look there, that hill faces east. It'd be great for the sunrise. And that's how we interpret maps, isn't it, for adventure, which is great. But with that, though, comes a bit of bias. So if you open up your map, you're more like, oh, look at that mountain in the woods. I'm going to go there. And the bit that's just some sort of random suburb with a little
business park you'll probably ignore. And I didn't want to have those sort of confirmation biases playing in my mind. So I used a random number generator to choose which grid square I went to each week. We sent me then to a random grid square on the map. And I would say that is one of the best things I did about the whole project. Because otherwise all I'd have done was go to the woods around the place. And I, cause I like going to the woods, I spend a lot of time running in the woods and it would have been more of that. But.
By being sent to these random places, I found myself in some sort of broken down industrial yard. What am I doing here? But then once you start to pay attention, I'd find those places fascinating, like the history, the sort of silence and the abandonment of them. I found them really wild and interesting. So having random grid squares is a really important part, I think.
Chris Watson (43:41.138)
Yeah, it's fantastic. It keeps you more accountable and so rather than just picking the highlights of it and I think you touched on you know part of the book it does is quite raw and unfiltered in areas and you can see that some of the worst of like you know like you say the abandonment and you know like things kind of you know defaulting to wear and tear and it is quite interesting that you've found joy in some of these areas by spending a bit of time in it and then particularly through like the darker months and stuff but still
Alastair (43:46.242)
Yes.
Chris Watson (44:09.102)
still elevating and still having a bit of an adventure in it. So it was really something.
Alastair (44:13.984)
Yeah, yeah, definitely was surprised by the end of the year how much I enjoyed getting sent off to these sort of run-down bits of towns and stuff rather than just the pretty countryside. I wouldn't have predicted that
Chris Watson (44:28.274)
Yeah. What surprised you most about the book, whether even considering the process, the writing, the adventures, what if you think about it, what surprised you most about that?
Alastair (44:40.392)
Well, partly what I just said then about the enjoyment of the broken down edge lands, you know the bits by motorways and Scuzzy stuff like that. I came to that surprised me But I think at the start of the project I was probably thinking I was gonna write micro adventures book two No, here's a jolly book by cheerful al the adventurer with lots of pretty pictures of how you can go running in the woods Close to where you live. I think that's what I'd imagined I was gonna write but actually by really paying close attention
probably for the first time in my life, to the landscape that I actually live on, I found it really quite depressing, just the loss of nature in our country, the lack of wildlife, and how the way we use our land just devours so much space, and how we don't really seem to pay much attention or care about that. So having these issues raised for me was a big surprise. And...
I worried actually that the book was quite depressing because a lot of it is just me moaning that the world is doomed. But I hope that I could offer some optimistic possible solutions for some of these things as well. But I certainly hadn't anticipated at the start that it would be this sort of book.
Chris Watson (45:51.494)
Yeah, is there a hidden environmental message in that or even an intentional one then, you know, whether it's trying to reduce your carbon footprint, you know, doing things a bit more local on, you know, showcasing some of the kind of what's happening on your doorstep? Was that intentional?
Alastair (46:09.072)
Yeah, definitely very much so. I mean, I've, I've very much benefited from air miles over the years, flying off to all sorts of brilliant parts of the world. And I love doing that. But I just feel these days that the world of adventure, we need to hold ourselves a bit more accountable. If we're the people who love these wild places, but we're also the people who are disproportionately wrecking them by our lifestyles, then that just doesn't really sit easy with me. So.
Is there a way where people like us can get our adventurous fixes and our love of wildlife in the open spaces but without causing damage and even better perhaps by doing these things but also um Resulting in some good coming from them as well. Can it be a net benefit? So yeah, there's definitely uh that sort of Thinking in behind it a lot of that was just a personal thing. Now me personally. I no longer feel personally
comfortable with just flying off to go and have a little adventure somewhere. Other people think differently and of course that's their choice but I'm aware that because my job is a sort of public thing, influences the horrible world, that's essentially what I am, is I'm trying to influence people to go sleep on hills, go have adventures and if I'm also influencing people to jump on airplanes then I'm amplifying the problem. So I didn't really feel comfortable doing that sort of stuff anymore so yeah that was definitely a part of it.
Chris Watson (47:31.086)
me.
Chris Watson (47:34.698)
Yeah. And I think local microadventures, there's a lot to see in your front door. A lot of the times we're too compelled by the big adventures where you feel you have to go and fly 6,000 miles away to climb the Himalayas or whatever it is. So I think it's important. It's really important work, despite some of the, you know.
Because your book is based on your local area and the squares within it. And for anyone that picks up and does it, it can be an entirely different book if they were to write their own book because it's a very different environment. And the example that I gave before we started is, I've got a map which I picked up, but this isn't on my doorstep. It's like 40 miles away from my doorstep, but I can still get there responsibly and environmentally if I chose to do so, you'd cycle there.
potentially and still have a whole, you know, pretty much wild area to explore. So don't feel that you need to necessarily explore abandoned buildings. If you want to, you can, but there's also wild spaces to do as well. So it's yeah, I think just people just need to realise it. It's what you make of it. And it's going to be very different for your own local environment.
Alastair (48:37.204)
Hehehe
Chris Watson (48:49.93)
And of course the hashtag a single map, I think is on Instagram. If you search that, you'll get lots of inspiration from what people are doing in their local areas as well.
Alastair (49:00.54)
Yeah, my hope from always in the hashtag, so the hashtag microadventure was really important 10 years ago in me helping to show that it wasn't just me going off to do this stuff, but it was this old person and this woman and this family. And so once more people start to see people like them doing these things and the outdoors feels a bit more accessible to a broader range of people. So that's why I try and encourage people to share their own stuff with a unifying hashtag.
Chris Watson (49:29.947)
Yeah, fantastic. What is your favorite piece of work to date? Is it local?
Alastair (49:36.608)
Oh gosh, favorite, that's an interesting word, favorite. I think probably favorite, I'd have to go for the Spain project because I just loved that. I mean, generally on my big expeditions, they've always been quite miserable and I've deliberately always thought, I must be having a miserable time for this to be an adventure. If I'm not having a miserable time, this isn't an adventure. But the Spain trip was difficult, really difficult. It was really scary, but it was just fun and I loved it. And so...
Chris Watson (49:45.527)
Yeah.
Alastair (50:05.422)
And then the film that I made of it was just a joy to make. So I think the word favorite fits quite nicely with that project, I think.
Chris Watson (50:12.067)
Fantastic. What is it about adventures that seek hardship? What? It's... It's mad.
Alastair (50:17.84)
It's ridiculous, isn't it? I think it's this sign that...
our lives are so privileged and comfortable and soft. I mean, the life that I live now in this room here, this is far fancier than Henry VIII would have had, like the richest man in the world wouldn't have had a little heater like me 200 years ago. So my life is so unbelievably luxurious that I then feel the need to go and deliberately have a hard time. Whilst also being very aware that I'm just playing it, having a hard time and there are...
Chris Watson (50:29.765)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (50:43.392)
Yeah.
Alastair (50:47.824)
two billion people in the world who genuinely are sleeping on mud floors and eating rubbish food and I'm paying for the privilege of doing this but yeah I think it's just trying to remind myself to come home and be grateful that I've got a little heater in my shed and to appreciate that.
Chris Watson (50:52.5)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (50:56.63)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (51:02.674)
Yeah, yeah, fantastic. I think, have you got any other projects in the works or anything that you've got, any grand adventure or even grand micro adventure, if that's a thing that you want to do at some point in time that you would like to share or not?
Alastair (51:18.108)
You know, so for 20 odd years, my head has always been totally full of next ideas and next adventures, and I'm feeling a bit weird at the moment. Now, having just finished local, it just came out three weeks ago, is that.
for the first time ever I've got absolutely no idea what to do next. I really don't know. So maybe I'm having a midlife crisis. But I think what I need to do is just wait and see how local is received. And because I'd like to push more on that idea if it if there seems to be an audience for it. But if no one's interested in it, then I'll have to come up with a new idea. But yeah, right now I've got absolutely no idea what to do next.
Chris Watson (51:56.302)
I mean, that could be a series in its own right. You know, it could be local plus five, you know, five kilometers, then you do another map there and you just extend the footprint or something. So, honestly, there could be a series in that. Yeah, local by bike, local by water. So, yeah, I'll expect the royalties in 2026. Fantastic.
Alastair (52:04.368)
Let me write that down.
Alastair (52:18.015)
Keep going? I'll send you 5%
Chris Watson (52:27.374)
Any ideas about, cause you're doing a series of local on the podcast as well aren't you, but Living Adventurously was your podcast. Any ideas about relaunching that or doing that again?
Alastair (52:39.668)
I loved, I absolutely loved doing that podcast. So I spent a month cycling around Yorkshire. I'm from Yorkshire, but I guess it's similar to local. I realized that I knew other parts of the world far better than I knew Yorkshire where I lived. And I'm really, I'm proud of Yorkshire. Like Scottish people are always endlessly finding an excuse to bang on about it much to everyone else's boredom. So I love it, but I didn't really feel I knew it. So I cycle around Yorkshire for a month, just interviewing different people who are living adventurously.
Chris Watson (52:47.147)
Yeah.
Alastair (53:08.196)
I love doing that and I'm constantly thinking that I really want to find some way to kickstart it again. The challenge, as you might know, is just how the heck am I going to get any cash out of doing a podcast because given that this is my job, I need to make some cash out of it otherwise it has to classify as being a hobby.
Chris Watson (53:20.77)
Well...
Chris Watson (53:27.094)
Yeah, exactly. That is the conundrum. It's a lot of time and energy. It's great conversations and it's great connections, but that's, there lies the conundrum that I'm trying to solve myself in the moment. Great, great. This has been fantastic. Al, we're coming, almost coming up on time, so I wanted to move on into the two closing traditions on the show. So one of which is a call to adventure, and the second is a paid forward suggestion. So what is your
Alastair (53:30.498)
Yes. Yeah.
Chris Watson (53:56.624)
adventure for the listeners.
Alastair (54:00.296)
Well, obviously I would love people to buy their local map and to go explore their local map. But the idea that I would like to suggest is a bit more specific than that. The Seven Summit is a great mountaineering challenge. The challenge is to climb the highest mountain on every continent. Everest, Aconcag, Denali, etc. It's a brilliant expedition, but it costs.
tens, hundreds of thousands of pounds and involves flying all over the world. So my suggestion, my challenge is for people to try their local Seven Summits. You can look online and find the seven trig points closest to where you live on the Trig Bagging website and go tag your local Seven Summit and stick it online with the hashtag local7summit so that we can all see where you've been exploring. And if you say to me...
Oh, I can't do that because where I live in Norfolk, the hills are tiny. My answer to that is even better. What a fascinating place to go and tackle the seven summits of Norfolk. I think literally wherever you live, if you live in Edinburgh, of course, there's the seven hills of Edinburgh. So find your own local seven summits and go tackle them.
Chris Watson (55:10.702)
Fantastic, fantastic. I might just start that this weekend. I've got a free day on Saturday, so I might get started on that.
Alastair (55:16.144)
nice. Good one to do with the family as well I think either you mean you could do one a month one a week as well yeah so yeah nice one to gradually tick off as a family.
Chris Watson (55:20.838)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (55:26.958)
Yeah, my little girl is kind of keen to do it, but we're kind of waiting for the winter to pass because let's say we've got a little place down in Loch Lomond and she's keen to climb Ben Lomond, but it's covered in snow at the minute and she's just too small. So we'll bag that in springtime. Excellent. So finally, the pay it forward suggestion.
Alastair (55:31.769)
Oh yes.
Alastair (55:39.548)
Yeah.
Alastair (55:43.432)
Fantastic.
Alastair (55:51.656)
Yeah, so a couple of suggestions of things that I think it'd be good for listeners to go find out a bit more about. One doesn't really apply to the Scottish listeners, but any English or Welsh ones is the Right to Rome campaign. It's just, it just amazes me how little of our wild places we have access to. So if that annoys you as it does me, have a look at Right to Rome. There's an organization called Trash Free Trails.
which I find really hard to say, trash-free trails, who are doing brilliant work just trying to get people like us who care about our outdoors to take some responsibility and clean it up. And they have a really good phrase. I think the phrase of leave no trace is a really common one for micro-adventures. Go on a hill, leave no trace. Trash-free trails go one step further and they encourage us every time we go out to leave a positive trace. Leave the countryside better than you found it.
So I think that's really fantastic. And then the final one is a slight step away from adventure, but I found it quite an interesting thing to consider is a group called Take the Jump, takethejump.org, who suggest six lifestyle changes that we can make, which will be good for the planet, but crucially, they argue, allow you still to live with joy and purpose so that it's not just doing good stuff and having a rubbish time, but...
actually to add a bit more meaning and joy to your life as well. So take the jump.
Chris Watson (57:23.982)
Fantastic, yeah. I haven't heard of that at all, I've heard of the others, but that's fantastic. Excellent. We'll get that listed. I'm going to do a bit of digging. I think just finally my view on that right to Rome, I meant to bring that up when we were discussing local. I just, I can't believe that, you know, the border between Scotland and England and we can just roam quite freely and in England you can't with the exception, I think, is that Dartmoor is probably the only place where it's a bit relaxed. But that's...
Alastair (57:50.588)
Well, except now that the millionaire guy who's bought half of Dartmoor has now gone to the high court to ban people camping on his 6,000 acres of Dartmoor estate, which accompanies his 4,000 acres of Scottish estate. But let's not start that conversation now because I'll get very angry and I'm feeling like it's time for my lunch.
Chris Watson (57:55.138)
Ahem.
Chris Watson (58:02.325)
Nice.
Chris Watson (58:06.301)
Yeah.
Chris Watson (58:14.379)
Yeah, we'll get all of that listed. Yeah, I'm a big advocate for the right to roam. We should have the right to roam. So...
Alastair (58:22.012)
Well, sorry, my final thing on that is I might what I'd really like is for people to say the right to roam responsibly, because I think that vital word right to roam responsibly. Room moves a lot of the objections against it, the objections against it from hardworking, decent farmers and landowners is it's so annoying when we try to look after our land and people come on to it and wreck it so adding the word responsibly to that. That yes, sure, we should have a right to roam but.
Chris Watson (58:44.871)
Yeah.
Alastair (58:49.544)
We can't go wrecking the place. So yeah, right to roam responsibly is what I'm after.
Chris Watson (58:54.358)
Yeah, I mean that is a very important point We see a lot of that in the Trosshawks and Loch Lomond and stuff just trash in places Just horrendous and actually seen there's a guy on YouTube who does I think he's Mexican and he does canoe trips and stuff and he came to Scotland and went to one of the islands in Loch Lomond and he just filmed it full of Trash and all sorts and left after 10 minutes and I was gutted watching it. Just got that's not the That's not the example we want to set so
Yeah, write to Rome responsibly and pick up your trash people. I'm going to get on my high horse as well, so better simmer down. Excellent. So where can people go to find all about Alistair Humphreys?
Alastair (59:38.42)
What if you just search my name in wherever you search for stuff on the internet social media YouTube podcasts books then Newsletters and you'll find it whether even on LinkedIn
Chris Watson (59:51.45)
Fantastic. And I recommend shouting from the shed your newsletter. It's very informative. It's great. Excellent. And with that, we'll bring it to a close. Thank you.
Alastair (59:57.672)
Good, thank you.
Alastair (01:00:02.896)
Cool, thank you very much for having me.
Chris Watson (01:00:06.724)
I will click.