Alastair Humphreys (Recap): Take on Your Local Seven Summits

Exploring Local Adventures and Environmental Responsibility

In this episode, the Alastair Humphreys encourages listeners to embark on a local exploration challenge dubbed the 'Local Seven Summits' - climbing the seven highest points near their homes. The discussion moves on to highlight organizations like Right to Roam, Trash Free Trails, and Take the Jump, each promoting environmental responsibility and greater access to nature. The guest stresses the importance of responsible roaming to ensure the preservation of natural spaces. Lastly, ways to follow the guest's adventures and access their resources are provided.

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Transcript

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 pay it forward suggestion. So what is your call to adventure for? 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 Summits is a great mountaineering challenge.

The challenge is to climb the highest mountain on every continent. Everest, Aconcagua, Denali,  etc. It's a brilliant challenge. 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 summits and stick it online with the hashtag local seven summits 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.  Fantastic. Fantastic. I might just start that this weekend.

I've got a free day on Saturday, so I might get started on that. Good one to do with the family as well, I think either you could do one a month, one a week as well. Yeah. So yeah, nice one to gradually tick off as a family. Yeah, my little girl is keen to do it, but we're waiting for the winter to pass.

Let's see, 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. Yeah, 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 roam campaign. It's just.  It just amazes me how little of our wild places we have access to.

If that annoys you as it does me, have a look at Right to Roam. 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 there's 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. 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. 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.  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 roam, 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 it Dartmoor is probably the only place where it's a bit relaxed? 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.  Yeah, we'll get that we'll get all of that listed. Yeah a big advocate for the right to roam. We should have the right to roam. My final thing on that is I, my, what I'd really like for people to say the right to roam responsibly, because I think that vital words, right to roam responsibly. 

removes a lot of the objections against it. The objections against it from the hardworking, decent farmers and landowners is, it's so annoying when we're trying to look after our land and people come onto it and wreck it. Adding the word responsibly to that, that yes, sure. We should have a right to roam. 

We can't go wrecking the place. So yeah, right to roam responsibly is what I'm after. Yeah, I mean, that is a very important point. We see a lot of that in the Trossachs and Loch Lomond and stuff, just trash in places. It's just, it's horrendous. I actually seen a, 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. But that's not the, that's not the example we want to set. So yeah, right to roam 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? What if you just search my name in wherever you search for stuff on the internet, social media, YouTube, podcasts, books, then newsletters, then you'll find it wherever, even on LinkedIn. 

Fantastic and I recommend shouting from the shed your newsletter. It's very informative. It's great. All good. Thank you. Excellent. And with that we'll bring it to a close.  Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.