Tom Williams: Surviving the Canadian Wilderness & Creating Desert Island Survival Adventures

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Join Chris Watson on the Adventure Diaries podcast as he welcomes Tom Williams, adventurer, entrepreneur, and winner of Alone UK. From surviving 35 days in the Canadian wilderness to founding Desert Island Survival, Tom shares how he turned life’s challenges into transformative adventures. Learn about his journey from city life to thriving in nature, his insights on evolutionary health, bushcraft, and the profound benefits of living simply.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• How Tom overcame adversity to become an adventurer and survival expert.
• The concept of evolutionary mismatch and its impact on modern health.
• What it takes to survive and thrive in extreme wilderness conditions.
• Behind-the-scenes insights from Alone UK and the realities of bushcraft.
• The transformative power of living closer to nature.
• Tips for micro-adventures, resilience, and embracing challenges.

Key Highlights:

• Survival & Growth: Tom shares how stepping outside his comfort zone, from polar expeditions to survival in Canada, fueled his personal growth.
• Bushcraft Skills: Hear about primitive techniques like friction fire, fishing, and crafting tools that enhance resilience and adaptability.
• Desert Island Survival: Discover how Tom’s passion for nature led to founding a company that offers immersive wilderness experiences.
• Mental & Physical Benefits: Learn how living aligned with hunter-gatherer principles can improve health, reduce anxiety, and boost happiness.
• Adventure Inspiration: Tom provides practical ideas for micro-adventures, such as kayaking and cycling, to reconnect with nature.

Tom’s Recommendations:

• Read Ikigai to align passion and purpose.
• Explore An Island to Oneself for inspiring wilderness stories.
• Try kayaking or survival courses for a taste of adventure.
• Check out GiveDirectly.org for impactful charitable giving.

Call to Adventure:
Tom encourages listeners to embrace challenges, try micro-adventures, and reconnect with nature for personal growth and mental clarity.

Pay It Forward:
Support GiveDirectly, a charity delivering funds directly to families in need, fostering impactful change.

Connect with Tom Williams:

• Website: Desert Island Survival
• Instagram: @TomWilliamsAlone

Join the Adventure:
Visit AdventureDiaries.com/podcast for show notes and inspiration to plan your next adventure. Keep exploring, keep thriving, and keep paying it forward!

Chapters

• 0:00 Peak Happiness in the Wilderness
• 0:44 Introduction to The Adventure Diaries Podcast
• 1:07 Meet Tom Williams: From Struggles to Triumphs
• 3:07 Tom's Formative Years and Early Challenges
• 4:34 The North Pole Expedition: A Life-Changing Adventure
• 8:50 Training and Preparation for the Polar Challenge
• 11:22 Raising Funds and Facing Fears
• 13:37 A Year of Milestones and New Beginnings
• 14:34 Founding Desert Island Survival
• 16:11 The Birth of Desert Island Survival Expeditions
• 21:50 The Impact of Desert Island Survival on Participants
• 26:48 Tom's Bushcraft Skills and Mentors
• 27:53 Winning Alone UK: A Surreal Experience
• 28:31 Reflecting on the Alone Experience
• 29:45 Comparing UK and North American Versions of Alone
• 32:33 Bushcraft Skills and Item Selection
• 34:49 Surviving in the Wilderness
• 40:08 Reintegration into Modern Life
• 42:32 Upcoming Adventures and Projects
• 54:10 Call to Adventure and Pay It Forward

Transcript

 Like, peak happiness. I was living this pure woodland existence aligned to how we are evolved as hunter gatherers. And I felt amazing. I felt euphoric most of the time, because I had my food needs met. I felt just high. I honestly felt high and healthy and I've had some substantial changes in my body as well, like I used to have IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, that went away and it hasn't come back since.

I used to get anxiety, that seems to have been cured as well, which is just insane. So I think I had enough food for another 20 days without catching another fish and not getting injured. It was minus six the day it finished. And it got down to minus 22 two weeks later. So I would have been dealing with a very different winter.

I was desperate to see that place turn white with snow. 

Welcome to the Adventure Diaries podcast, where we share tales of adventure, connection, and exploration. From the smallest of creators to the larger than life adventurers, we hope their stories inspire you to go create your own extraordinary adventures.

And now your host, Chris Watson.  

Welcome to another episode of The Adventure Diaries. Today, we're joined by Tom Williams, an epic adventurer, entrepreneur, and public speaker. But it wasn't always like that for Tom. Growing up in Portsmouth, Tom faced academic struggles. He had to deal with bullying and various personal adversities. 

Yet he transformed these challenges into fuel for incredible adventures. Such as mapping coral reefs in Honduras, where he first found his real passion for exploration. To then winning the race to the North Pole.  Tom's journey has been about pushing limits and degrees of self discovery and really embracing the wilds.

He's gone on to found Desert Island Survival, a company offering transformative real world survival expeditions across the globe. More recently, Tom captured the public's imagination by surviving 35 days alone in the Canadian wilderness to be crowned the winner of Alone the UK edition. His expeditions, talks and writing, Tom continues to share his insights on the power of nature.

Optimism and living with purpose. I loved this episode. What a story. What a guy. I really hope you enjoy this as much as I did. So settle in and enjoy this fantastic conversation with Tom Williams. Tom Williams, welcome to the Adventure Diaries. How are you? 

I'm very well, thank you, Chris. Thank you ever so much for having me.

No, thank you for your time. Excited for this. You are the third cast member from Alone that I've had on the show, so it's a particular passion and indulgence of mine, so I thank you for giving us your time today. Albeit Alone UK, not from the US version. Which is a little bit different, but we'll come on to that.

So the frame for today, I want to talk about Alone, but I also want to kind of step in to your backstory, your formative years, how you came through to casting for Alone, but also the fantastic work you're doing with Desert. island survival. So really just to roll back, I'd like to just start a little bit.

Your formative years, what was it like? Your upbringing, Portsmouth, where did your adventurous sides, what was the catalyst for that? And how did your earlier years influence some of that? 

It's, I mean, I don't almost know how it happened. If you saw me as a kid, you wouldn't have picked out me and said, That bloke's gonna water the North Pole and take people to desert islands and go on alone.

And honestly, I was the fattest kid in my school. I was academically bottom of my school. All my teachers, my parents were desperately worried that I wasn't going to amount to anything. I got pulled to one side, like, if you don't really buck your ideas up, you're going to be flipping burgers in a fast food restaurant.

Yeah, it wasn't looking good. And I grew up in Portsmouth in a city. I wasn't immersed in nature.  and fishing all the time. I did used to go camping with my parents, did a little bit of sailing and stuff, but not really much. And I followed the traditional route that's expected of you get a proper job. And I did, I studied like my passion, geography and environmental management.

And then I got a job, followed the money selling software. for a software company, Maidenhead, and just found myself hitting depression. After, I used to enjoy life, and then suddenly, there I was in a cubicle, just thinking, God, is this it? Is this what being a grown up's all about? Is this what life amounts to?

Luckily, I was so uncomfortable with that, that I kicked out, and, I mean, we fast forwarded very quickly to 27 year old Tom, but, he was having a few pints.  is with his mate Paul and Paul was like, I've seen this thing about walking to the North Pole, would you be up for it? And I was like, yeah, that's what I need.

I don't want to be pigeonholed as a software salesman. I need something different, some adventure. And so, yeah, so I signed up for the polar challenge, which was an amateur race. He had to raise a bunch of monies. We did 25 different fundraisers. Honestly, getting to the start line was the hardest part by far.

Committing. You want to just go out and party at the weekends, but you're organizing fundraisers, you're doing training, and then eventually you get to the start line and then yeah, we walked to the North Pole and that was, that was a big catalyst for change, but we did a lot quite quickly there in a few minutes.

Was that your first big expedition then? That just sitting in the pub having a few beers and maybe over committing yourself initially? 

Completely. You know it is an amateur race. I knew I'd never done anything close to an expedition or anything like that before. I didn't know if I had the mental fortitude to it.

It was just absolutely jumping off a cliff and finding out if I've got what it takes for this kind of stuff. I don't even know if I had a big appetite for adventure before then, but I think I had a point to prove. I had a real chip on my shoulder. I was always marked as stupid and a failure and I was like, this will show them.

If I walk to the North Pole, what better way to prove them wrong? They say, you know, the cheesy lines that when you leave your comfort zone you grow as a person and it is immensely true and I didn't just leave my comfort zone. I just ran further and further to the edge and further and further and further until just whole new limits walking to the North Pole and then when you come back in.

Day to day life challenges and adversity are much easier to deal with and you suddenly have some confidence. You're like, wait a minute I could be that person who sets up this company I could do this and I had such limiting beliefs And you believe the labels that you're told and then you do something like that and you're like, wait a minute It is all possible.

You just need to have a bit of belief and it gave me some belief. 

Did you think some of your earlier childhood, because I think you've spoken a little bit about being called stupid, being bullied to an extent, even by your teacher, I think. Do you think that was always in the back of your mind then that you had a point that you wanted to show and prove to yourself that you could do something like that?

Yeah, I definitely had a point to prove. And I also think you've got to have an element of resilience, obviously, to do these things and later on things. And I think I was quite lucky to just about have the right amount of diversity growing up. Without trauma and I use the analogy of they built this Eden project in Texas The geometric domes with the trees inside and after like five years the trees all fell over and like why have the trees fallen over?

And the trees fell over because they didn't have any wind and we're the same We need a bit of wind a bit of gentle adversity. You don't want a hurricane to uproot you. That's trauma You need a lot of therapy to undo that work to repot yourself, but I'm only child My mum loving as anything but an alcoholic Bullied, took my fair share of drugs and escapism, and I think I just had the right amount of adversity that it worked out for me but it could have so easily gone the other way, don't know how it worked out.

I think we've all been partial to overcommitting  when we've had a few. What was it like the day after when you realised you'd actually signed up for the Polar Challenge?  

It devils down on your hangover. I remember like a reminder on my Nokia 3210 or whatever going off. And it said walk to North Pole and I was like blurry eyed looking at this thing.

What do what what?  That's why I agreed And you know that mate pool he joined the army dropped out I then found another person who dropped out who then found another person who then Her boyfriend ended up joining and the three of us went but you know getting a team raising the money and committing yourself for two years to make something like this happen.

It's the hardest thing. 

Yeah. 

And I think, you know, a lot of the adventurers you speak to as well, like it's raising that capital and it's the hard stuff. 

It's a feat of endurance as well, because it was at 360 plus miles or something that you tracked and you actually won the race, if I remember. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. And it was perpetual daylight because we're there in spring. So we were just warped for 28 hours. Sometimes 32. One day we did, well, day, two days, we did 55 hours without sleeping and we were hallucinating. All of us had a fourth person in our presence. We saw a polar bear that wasn't there.

We were edging closer, hitting our skis together at this polar bear that, I've got a really convincing piece of ice photo, I swear. We did see polar bears, but they were much further away. It was definitely, I think it was the hardest thing I've ever done. 

Yeah. How did you do your training for that, Tom? And where?

Did you go to Canada, or anywhere like Norway, or even Scotland? How did you prep for that, being quite new to that? 

Yeah, for the cold weather gear, for the environment, we went to Norway, exactly. A part of our ticket was also included in this training, where we went up to Norway for a week. Where we had to simulate falling through the ice, for example, you know, when they cut that square out and you ski towards the ice, fall through.

And then it's like you've been punched in the chest and you've got to wait for your body, your diaphragm to stop spasming and then you've got to say your name, sing a song and pull yourself out of the water. It took me three months to get feeling back in the tips of my fingers just after that. It was amazing, the frost nip.

that you got just from that controlled experience. And then we would do things like we walked Hadrian's Wall over a weekend, would set up our tent, set our alarms to go off two hours later, get up in the rain at three o'clock in the morning, be like, right, let's take down the tent, let's keep walking again, and condition ourselves to do horrible things.

I think it's so much easier when you've got a team having that accountability and you don't want to let the others down. We had a personal trainer who really installed that in us. He was like, if anyone quits, they're doing press ups for you. Your teammates will do press ups as a penalty for you whilst you sit there.

And you just feel so guilty that anyone has to do extra work instead of you. 

He 

really was very good at the mental training as well. He taught us about how the mind always gives up before the body. So many times you'll be running along and you'll be like, Ugh, it hurts. I don't want to do it anymore. And I always catch myself doing it, running.

Like, you just mentally stopped. You didn't physically hit your limit, Tom. You just mentally gave up. And he used the analogy of, if you're hanging awaits you, you don't just I let go of the tree, you know, you wait on until every sinew and muscle is screaming on your arms and your fingers slip and eventually you fall.

And he was like, that's how you approach every single exercise. Always try to get to your physical limits, not your mental limits. And that really resonated with me. 

I think I've heard you talk about David Goggins as well. David Goggins has got something like that as well, hasn't he? Like the body always has another, is it 70 percent to give?

Yeah, the rule of 40 percent. Yeah, 

and he also was recently talking about parts of the brain that grow when you do things that you don't want to do. If you start to enjoy things it doesn't happen but you can build up this willpower from doing things that you really don't want to do. That willpower, you know, will see you into later life living longer and such.

You need to continually challenge yourself and it doesn't need to be extremes but even little things and micro adventures or whatever that be. So yeah, just to build that resilience mentally and physically, it's a continual perpetual thing. Turning back a little bit, you touched on some of the sponsorships.

I wanted to kind of go a bit deeper on because that's come up quite a few times with some of the adventurers and explorers. It's a huge undertaking to try and get sponsorship. Someone that is fairly new to that, didn't have an adventurous background. How difficult was that reaching out to companies and how did you, you must have had a load of knockbacks on that and a lot of no responses and stuff.

Was that quite difficult to overcome? 

Yeah, it really was. We didn't get our final big sponsor until about two weeks before the event. After two years, we had just accepted that we're all going to be out of pocket and paying 50 percent ourselves. Everything we raised would go 50 percent towards the expedition costs and 50 percent towards Mencap, the charity.

What we did the most fundraising was charity events, sporting events. So we organized five aside football tournaments. We managed to get semi professional footballer to come and join and everyone would pay 25 quid to enter a knockout tournament for a prize. And we did a couple of those that would make a few grand, but the.

Big one that we raised half the money was a white collar boxing tournament. Everyone wants to see their mates hit in the face. And we're all sick puppies. And so we hired the Clapham Grand and got a ring put in there and 24 fighters, including ourselves. And we all had to do three rounds in the ring. And that was honestly the most scary thing I've ever done.

I hate fighting and I hate public speaking. And this is like this hybrid. fear of the combination. Being in front of 400 people and fighting, God, horrible.  But, we raised a load of money. 

The things you do, it's crazy that everyone that's got this adventurous mindset or desire to do these types of things, it's putting themselves in hardship and just really trying and testing circumstances.

There's a real drive for this type 2 behaviour, isn't there? I wish I could understand what drives that. 

Definitely. I don't know. You know, I just have a rule with myself. If it's something I really don't want to do, it's probably what I need to do. I've just agreed to do a public speaking thing in front of 900 people.

I'm shitting myself. But I know it would be good for me. I know eventually, yeah, it'd be beneficial. But, ugh. And the other stupid thing I've just agreed to do is skeleton the Cresta run in Switzerland in January. You know, the luge where you go head first down, uh, 80 miles an hour down the track on ice. 

I've just agreed to do that and that just terrifies me. I don't know what I'm up to.  

Have you done anything like that before? No, 

nothing. It is again an amateur thing.  

So this happened 2010, I think, wasn't it? So I think that was quite an eventful year for you, wasn't it? You met your wife, you sailed Canada to, was it Chile or something?

And then obviously you had the sad passing of your mother, so there must have been a lot going on in that year. Was that pretty much the catalyst for then getting into the survival business? 

Yeah, and we moved to Chile. I'll never have more of a vintage year. Walk to the North Pole, sail 8, 000 miles across the Pacific, and Meet your wife, move to Chile.

And my mum passing was, that was undoubtedly a catalyst for setting up Desert Island Survival. It gives you a jolt of your own mortality. And after the North Pole, I left the software job. I moved to Chile. I started working in finance.  The only job I could do without speaking Spanish. But again, I was miserable.

I was like, look, you've got the suit back on. You're back in the cubicle. What are you up to Tom? And then, you know, my mum passed and it was just like, come on, life's not a dress rehearsal. You've got one go mate. What are you going to do? And yeah, I'd always had this idea of wanting to be, I'm passionate about marine ecology and I used to map coral reefs in Honduras and I always wanted to go and see parts of the world that have been untouched and fettered by humans and so I'd always dreamt of desert islands and spending time snorkeling on these remote parts.

It wasn't initially bushcraft driven, I just wanted to be in nature and experience that isolation and then I was like, well, I need the skills if I'm going to do that. So I found an experience run by the late Ian Craddock,  who used to run a company, Bushmasters, in  And we went to, you know Ian? 

Well, I don't know Ian, but I've interviewed Anders Andersson, the great guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he's come up. Yeah, Anders is brilliant. Yeah, and I'm hoping to 

He runs stuff in Guyana. Yeah, 

I'm hoping to get down to Guyana to, well, we'll come on to your stuff later as well. But yeah, sorry to interrupt. But yeah, he was telling me a little bit about Bushmasters  and Ian sadly no longer with us.

Yeah, no, Ian did some great stuff. He was quite a pioneer in this space. He used to train the British SAS in jungle survival and he used to run the East Desert Island. survival experiences in Belize and I went on it. It was good, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. It wasn't that isolated. There were lights on the horizon.

It wasn't the most beautiful Island. Ian is brilliant at, you know, is very entertaining and good at teaching kind of British army survival. But I was also looking for much more purist bushcraft of, you know, really utilizing the flora in the surroundings and making bow drills and weaving stuff, and he wasn't so focused on that, but I was like, if we did it this way.

It could be a really magical experience. So I went and did another experience with a guy called Tom McElroy, who is like one of the OGs. He's part of Tom Brown's track of school. One of the most talented bushcraft guys in the world. Anyway, he became my mentor and we started running island survival trips in Panama.

I mean, it started basically by, I put it out on Facebook. I was like, I found an island and I was like, would anyone be interested in this? It's cost price, like, we're just gonna go to this island, shit's gonna go wrong, but it's gonna be an adventure, who's up for it? And we had this beautiful expedition with four people I knew, and then four friends of friends, which worked really well.

And they're like, yeah man, this is what we're looking for from travel, this is real, this is raw. And so that's where it was born from, and now, seven years later, we run about 20 expeditions a year in Panama, Philippines. Tonga, Indonesia, which we're launching this September. 

That's, that's incredible. I think you skipped over a few things there too.

I mean, you certified as a dive master as well. So, I mean, is that where the passion for the desert island came from then? Or had you always had desert islands in your sights? Yeah, 

yeah, we skipped over that way back. So when I was 20, as a year of university, I'd just gone to uni and I found out about a project mapping coral in Honduras.

And I was like, that's what I'd like to do. That was my passion. And so I went there and that was the first time that I left. My hamster wheel of life where I was no longer so this is going way back when I was still desperately insecure fat kid Guy and I became an expert on the project So I was longest there and you had to learn every species of fish in the Caribbean every invertebrate every algae and I've never dived before But you know you dive twice a day six times a week for seven months and it becomes like we would sleep on the bottom Of the seabed sometimes and make up the data.

We were so comfortable  That was again, that was a huge catalyst for change for me was doing that thing. And so I think if my son is ever in a rut, I think going off and doing something so far.  Removed from your traditional trappings and labels is really good. Be it collecting turtle eggs in Costa Rica or whatever it might be.

So, yeah, did that. And then quickly, whilst we're jumping around, we mentioned the sailing 8, 000 miles on the yacht bit. That happened in 2009, I was in Panama and I was on a scuba dive and I saw this incredible superyacht. And I was like, oh wow, look at that. Took a photo of my dive camera. And I was in rainy London.

Five months later, I'm looking at my photos, and I thought I'd just Google the name of the boat. And I found their website, and it's this family that owns, needs to sell Bibles, and they live on Nantucket. And they own this amazing super yacht. So I just dropped them an email, saying, Hi, my name's Tom. I'm walking to the North Pole.

I'd love to get into the super yachting industry. Do I need contacts? Do I need qualifications, experience, all of the above? Could you tell me about the industry? And the guy happened to live near Portsmouth in the New Forest and he was like, Yeah, let's go for coffee. I'll tell you about the industry. And he ended up flying me up to Vancouver and we sailed for three months to the Conaficus Islands and Easter Island and back to Chile.

And it just shows it never hurts to ask. You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take and all that. So just ping random emails to people. It really doesn't hurt.  

Yeah, that's absolutely fantastic, the fact that he's flown you over to do that. So how long did you spend on the yacht then? 

I was on the yacht for three months, yeah.

Nick flew me up there and we couldn't push against the Humboldt current, so we had to go all the way out to the Galapagos and Easter Island, so it's a bit of a It sounds like paradise. I found out how desperately seasick I get, and all the ocean passages, which were two, three weeks at a time, were very long, miserable.

No amount of stoic time. Kind of approach that gets rid of seasickness. I won't be rowing across any oceans anytime. I got so sick. 

Yeah, once that catches, it's a horrible thing. You can't shake it. What were you doing on the yacht? Were you a deckhand or anything? Were you guiding? What were you doing?

Cooking? What were you doing? 

Exactly, a deckhand. The owners never were on board the whole time. They liked the temperate climate, so they'd enjoyed Alaska and they're about to enjoy Patagonia. And so I was just helping the crew to deliver it back, to take it back to the Southern Hemisphere. And yeah, most of the time we're just cleaning the decks and we're cutting the cork down because it was slightly elevated by one millimeter.

You know, these, they're very pedantic super yachts. I don't know how easily you would get onto one like that these days. I was very fortunate to. It's a very competitive industry. And I think also the other crew were a little bit. Pissed off that this green horn, I think it is, just  Splagged his way onto the boat and maybe wouldn't pull his weight the same amount that someone who had 10 years experience would, but But there we go.

I found out I don't want to work on superheroes.  

Yeah, there's something beautiful in that though, because if you think about, you know, casting that way back Not that everyone's childhood defines who they become as an adult, really But if you think of some of the insecurities, a little bit of imposter syndrome But you're still taking all those shots, building that resilience, as you said  over time.

And these are all steps on a path that have kind of probably led you to where you are today. So it's, I think there's a very powerful message in that. And there's a few other guests that come to mind from being on this show, like Terry Virts. He went to outer space and he tells a very similar story and it's about don't tell yourself no.

So sometimes people just analysis, paralysis, people have always got dreams and things in their head, but they just never take a chance to act on it. So if anyone's listening, please If you've got something in your head, go for it. What's the worst? Somebody might never reply to your email, but if they do, you might be on a yacht on your way to Chile. 

Exactly. And yeah, it's nice to hear that there's those parallels with other people. And I think one of the veins that the personality traits that links it all is optimism. To being optimistic, if you believe that if you knock on these doors that they might open, you continue to take the chances. But if you already talk yourself down in advance, what's the point in even trying?

Because, you know, it probably won't happen. Then. So yeah, just learning optimism. It's easier said than done. 

Yeah. So switching lanes again, back over to Desert Island Survival, tell us what that is for anyone that may be listening that doesn't have a clue. And then we'll talk about that first trip that you went on with your friends and your friends of your friends.

Yeah. So we're a venture travel company. We create castaway experiences and it's designed for anyone who has just an interest in, Disconnecting and spending time in nature or maybe learning bushcraft. We cover all of that, but it's designed for people that have never done anything like this before. So the first five days in the Island is survival light where we're sleeping in hammocks.

We're cooking all the food on a campfire and we're learning all these cool bushcraft skills. So everything that you kind of see in a loan, so shelter, water, fire, food, but really focusing it from a primitive. perspective of trying to utilize nature as best as possible. So making friction fires, identifying barks that we can use for natural cordage, weaving palms, different primitive cooking techniques like wrapping the fish in leaves and cooking stuff underground.

And if you've got the resources, clay bakes and all this kind of cool stuff. So for five days, it's just fun. We'll pass around a bottle of rum in the evening. We're learning, we go fishing. We're cooking together. We're a tribe. We're a community. We make music. It gets silly. And then after five days, when people are just having a little bit too much fun, we kick them out of the nest and they go to a new part of the island with just a handful of fishhooks and lines, a machete, a sap phone, medikit, hand knife, ration of water, and they have to get their shelter water via food.

They do that either as a tribe with their new buddies or they do it solo if that's what they're looking for. So we have like one or two solo places per trip depending on the island and how big it is. And then after three days, by the way time's elastic in these situations, the first five days flies by and feels like three days and the final three days feels like five days and so we kind of found this formula works really well.

And then speedboat arrives over the horizon laden with cold beers and fresh fruits and you're rescued and go back to what feels like a 10 star hotel. As someone put it really nicely it's a reset. You have this It's a whole new appreciation for running water and clean, crisp, white sheets and climate control or whatever it may be, it's uh, yeah.

Yeah, there's some brilliant content on your socials about that. What type of clientele, what type of people are coming along in it? Are there people that have bushcraft skills or people that completely have never camped? What type of people usually come along to these? Yeah, we've had the 

full spectrum of people, the full spectrum of skills, so we've had A few people who are professional outdoorsmen who have quite successful YouTube channels and who are also people that run their own bushcraft camps, but they're more focused maybe on temperate bushcraft and they want to learn about tropical bushcraft.

And right down to people that have never left their country before, that have never not stayed in anything but a really nice hotel. For them, of course, it's more impactful, more beneficial, I think. It's their bigger jump out of their comfort zone.  Just those first five days are so intense for some people who have never done anything like this before.

Like, one woman whose son brought her along. But this woman, Sarah, um, she brought her friend Helen in New Zealand, and Helen had never left New Zealand. She had never done anything like this before. We went to French Polynesia when we were running expeditions there. And we don't transformational travel, but she's like our poster child for transformation.

She was very overweight, she would admit, and she lost basically half her body weight. She now runs marathons and does bell running. She does all sorts of adventures, she left her job, she left her partner, she did the whole,  everything. We don't normally have quite such extreme examples, but she talks about her life before and after the island.

Many people talk about sleepwalking through life and then when you get into that environment and you realize that just sitting there in nature with so little, such simple living, you feel happier than you feel in the complex world that we live in today. Like, wait a minute, I need so much less. We always think we need more to be happy, but we need so much less to be happy.

And we have some really good epiphanies on the island and it can be really cathartic for people to disconnect. I think, 

yeah, that slowing down and the cathartic nature of just taking each day as a time and having your role to play in that tribe, camping, cooking. It's fantastic. What, what's your success rate for people that see out the isolation?

Do you get people tapping out or most people stay in the duration? 

Yeah, most people make it, I'd say less than 5 Yeah, probably about 30 will end up tapping out. We used to run our expeditions in wet season, which was, there was sand flies, torrential thunderstorms. It was a much harder experience. And we had a, yeah, probably 1 in 10 tapping out.

But now we go when it's the most clement time of year and there's no insects, there's no rainstorms. It's just, it's a lovely time. There's enough to deal with, with hunger and tiredness and learning these skills without also being dive bombed by mosquitoes and insects and rainstorms. And so, yeah, we've tried to tip the balance a little bit.

But we also, we check in with people. We make sure that they're doing mentally well. You can see when people are beginning to mentally struggle. And for the final three days, we're on the island. And if someone's close to leaving, they can always come over to us and we can give them a pep talk, maybe something sugary and get them back on.

But that doesn't happen so much. 

That is wonderful. In terms of your own bushcraft skills and learning, because I think, was it Tom McElroy did you say, and Ian Craddock? How did you find your skills developed over those courses, and what would you say your stronger bushcraft skills are? Was it fire, shelter, hunting?

Yeah, so I was completely wet behind the ears. When I first went on those courses, they were my first courses, and I set up Desert Island Survival initially as basically the guy running the company who's setting up a travel company. Here's Tom McElroy, the expert, and I'll slowly learn from him. And that's shadowing him and spending six months on an island initially, overall, was how I've learnt.

And, yeah, I think of him as the rule of 10, 000 hours, he's got 50, 60, 000 hours. And some of my other instructors, like Lucas Miller from season one of Alone, he's really talented. I still have, I mean, maybe it's my imposter syndrome, but, yeah, I look at these guys as being way better at bushcraft than me.

I'm very niche, you know, obviously I've got my specific tropical bushcraft down. I had to test myself in Canada of course. But yeah, friction, fires one of my favorite parts. And fishing, I'm a really good fisherman. Yeah. And again, that served me well in Canada. 

Yeah. Excellent. So perfect segue into Alone, alone uk, the first and only season the winner.

How does that feel when you hear that? Thinking back, um, a couple of years now that since you filmed it, isn't it, but you're winner last year? 

Yeah, yeah, it is a couple of years. It's very surreal. I'm obviously am proud of it and it was wonderful thing to do. Honestly, it was one of the happiest experiences of my life living out there in nature.

I think maybe, I was very torn, I don't, I'm gonna give away spoilers, but it ended after only 35 days, and for those who watched the American show, The shortest anyone ever won was 65 days, and I steeled myself mentally to be out there for that long. I was stacking fish. They didn't show it, but when it ended, I had 18 smoked fillets of fish stashed away, and I was getting ready for winter.

And then my time out there really suddenly ended, and I was obviously amazingly happy to win alone. That was incredible. But I was also quite sad to not go deeper and learn more about myself, and I guess the ego wants to put down a big, bold number of 50, 60, 70 days. But also Yeah, it's the edge of your comfort zone that you want to cross and you want to find out really how far you can push your limits of resilience.

And so I was sad not to do that. But the kind of beneficial side is that I guess I left peak happiness. I was Living this pure woodland existence, you know, aligned to how we are evolved as hunter gatherers. And I felt amazing. I felt euphoric most of the time because I had my food needs met. I felt just high.

I honestly felt high and healthy and I've had some substantial changes in my body as well. Like I used to have IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, that went away and it hasn't come back since. I used to get anxiety, that seems to have been cured as well, which is just insane. But anyway, so I think the benefit was that I kind of left right in the honeymoon period.

So I was still feeling high and good. And so I, you know, I'm really grateful, of course, that I got that and I still. I think of it so fondly with all that. 

Were you a fan, well I'm assuming you were a fan of the North American version. Did you watch those seasons before you applied? 

Yeah, no, massive, massive fan.

Always dreamt of doing it. I've watched all 11 seasons.  I don't give any spoilers for, yeah, no 

spoilers for season 11 because I haven't, I've only watched the first episode because I can't get the rest of the episodes yet, which I'm annoyed about because every time I'm on Facebook I keep seeing spoiler alerts and I'm trying to avoid seeing what's happening, but yeah.

So I found the UK version. I mean, I don't know what you think about it, Tom, compared to the North American version, but I don't think the production and the editing, they seem to cut so much from it a lot of the time, and it seemed that everything was just really shrink wrapped, really condensed compared to what you see in the US and Canadian version.

Yeah, I'm not meant to be too outspoken about it, but I am. Others are mentally disappointed. You know, I'm a real fan of the American show, and I think the idea from the UK one was that they were like, let's focus on more of the drama. and the emotional backstories, and they played it safe, really, thinking that that's the middle of the bell curve, maybe of the British public.

They're not going to be so interested into bushcraft and survival. You know, you only need a few percentage of the American audience to be into that. And so they went fairly reductive and didn't focus much on survival and bushcraft. But I think there is a huge market in the UK for that. And I think people are also very interested in relaxing TV.

More like, I don't know. Gone Fishing, or The Tetris, or Countryfile, or, I don't know. We don't all just want high drama. Sometimes it's nice to feel like you're in bucolic nature and watch something a bit more relaxing. And there is plenty of drama still in it, you know, without having to just focus on emotions.

But I think 

that there's a lot of it is quite cathartic, even in, you know, you talked about that in your own course, but even watching the North American version, some episodes where it's predominantly someone just plotting about camp, just setting up. You know, the shelter or whatever, and there's a lot to be taken from that.

I just felt like I wanted more from the show. And I think you touched on the food aspect there. I've heard you in one of the previous interviews talking about a pike, I think it was you'd caught, and the duck, and what you were eating and cooking, but they weren't really showing that. So I think it was a missed opportunity, really.

Yeah, yeah, me too. I mean, you only have to look, the US has done, what, 11 seasons, so clearly they're doing something right.  Don't try and reinvent the wheel. And again, the Australian, the Danish, the German. They're all in their second and third and such seasons. I don't know why the British one went so left field, but they did and it's disappointing because it made it less impactful, but there we go.

I was expecting to be a celebrity or something, but there we go.  

Well, I know that as well, it didn't get enough fanfare about it. I mean, I didn't even know. The season had started until it was episode four or something. I happened to catch a news clipping of it and I watch, you know, like I say, most of the US versions of it so it wasn't really marketed particularly well which is a bit frustrating.

And I see that they've cancelled it so there's not going to be a season two, apparently. 

Yeah, it's a real shame. 

Anyway, we digress. So back to the experience, talking about your 10 items and stuff that you picked, how was that process and how did your bushcraft skills influence your selection of your items?

Yeah, so I'm a tropical bushcraft guy. I didn't even practice bushcraft when I lived in the UK. I moved to Chile. So temperate bushcraft, all very new to me, and I found out seven weeks before flying out to Canada that I was on the show. So Clay, I think he had five months. Most people do, but it all happened quite quickly.

So my biggest focus was just getting as fat as possible and trying to learn as much of the native flora, just through imagery. But you can never really substitute seeing it firsthand. And then my ten items, I knew obviously that Most of the winners in the U. S. have been proficient bow hunters, and you don't win without a bow.

I'm not a bow hunter. I quickly went to the Portuguese archery school and started shooting bows and seeing, like, how it works. And I was okay, and I was like, okay, I could do this, but I would be kidding myself to ever believe that I could possibly get close enough to a deer and to then even be able to get a kill shot.

Maybe I'd nail a squirrel or a grouse, but there was just no way that I'd ever be able to get big game. You need, obviously you need thousands of hours of experience to, you need to be like Clay, immensely talented at this stuff. So I took a gill net. I did take a slingshot out there to the training phase and I'll consider taking the slingshot because you can have as many bullets as you want, whereas a bow you only get nine arrows and so you can just keep on Peppering the trees where the grouse are, and it doesn't matter if you're losing stones.

In hindsight, I wish I'd taken that or a bow over the gill net, because there were so many grouse. They were having dance parties on my roof. They were mocking me, man. My son could have shot them. And so, yeah, the gill net I thought would be this wonderful passive. I caught zero fish in there, but I did catch a duck accidentally in my net.

And that was the best meal of my life, ever. So, I'll be sad to miss out on that duck. And 

they didn't show it, which is a shame. They didn't show it. Honestly, I think I 

wept into the pan as I ate this roast duck. I put the coals on top of the Dutch oven. I cooked it from all directions. Slow cooked it for like two and a half, three hours.

And the smell was so intoxicating. I'd only eaten pike for 25 days.  It was just so tasty. It's hard to describe. No meal can ever taste as good as this duck. It'll forever be better than any triple Michelin star meal. Because hunger is the best source. It was so good. 

Fantastic. Rolling back a little bit, the concept of that drop shock, where you're dropped into the environment and you're like, what do I do now?

So how did you fare with that? 

I think this is another benefit of optimism. You know, I've never really, I've done a few days on my own on desert islands, but I've never, Spent prolonged periods on my own in the wilderness. So there was every chance I could be hit with it. But, as the helicopter left, and I was on my own, I just felt this caring, nurture, and kindness emanating from the land.

And I was like, this place isn't foreboding and scary, unless they probably portrayed it with bears and stuff. I thought this place is generous and kind, and it's going to sustain me and look after me. And I realized That's just my optimistic lens bouncing back at me. It's not showing anything. Perception is reality, and I just perceive this place to be kind and welcoming.

And so, yeah, I guess I wasn't anxious. I guess I was feeling positive and optimistic, and that reflected in my perception of it. 

Even so, when you were putting your head down for the first time at night? Yeah. 

The very first night, when you haven't got a shelter, you just put a quick ridge line and a tarp there, and you're completely open.

You know, you've only been there three, four hours, and you've no idea how bear y it is. We had had a bear come through camp in the training phase twice, and we'd been woken up in the night with bears getting scared away. So yeah, I was definitely, even when you're in a new hotel room, right, your brain is half awake in new environments.

It was definitely not my best sleep.  

In terms of the sensory side of things as well, in the soundscape, did that take a little bit of time to get used to? How quiet was it at night, or what was that like? Because it's a very different environment, like you say, from, like, Desert Island and some of the tropical environments.

How did you cope with that? 

Yeah, I guess on the island you've got the chirping of cicadas, you can hear the palm leaves. Rubbing together, you've got the waves. It's a beautiful soundscape. It sounds like one of those meditation white noise kind of things. Whereas there, I could just hear the river gently, but it was very quiet.

But it's amazing how when you spend time in nature like that, how the aperture of your senses opens up. We can't live with our senses so wide open in city life. It would drive us crazy, but out there your body needs to. You need to be attuned and aware. For any movement because it could be food or prey and all of these ancestral mechanisms which we carry and they're identical to the hunter gatherers that our ancestors were who left Africa 70, 000 years ago.

We've got them just as effectively, but we just don't call upon them. And so yeah, you smell more, you hear more, you taste more, you feel more. And it was really obvious when the experience ended and we went back, the helicopter was mental and then back to the hotel. And I remember. Trying to go to sleep that first night.

I was buzzing because I had one as well. But it was honestly like I was on amphetamines. I was so overstimulated.  I was like, I can't cope with this. I had to open the window, I unplugged the fridge. Every little noise was waking me up. It took me till 3 in the morning to go to sleep. Out there I think I had the best sleep of my life in my little shelter.

I'd sleep for 11 hours unbroken every night. 

It certainly came across that you were thriving in the environment, which is always a bit of, as a viewer outside watching, and you can see some of the contestants across all the series where you can start to see that slow decline, that maybe the isolation and the mentality starting to get to them in their survival mode, they're not thriving, but I think you were certainly thriving throughout that, so it was great to watch.

They didn't use much of my footage because I was often just smiling or speaking with a happy inflection. On the last episode they used footage from a few weeks before. I think someone even noticed the moon phase had changed. And yeah, it was when I was expressing some anxiety around fish and then they used that right at the end but the reality was a little different.

Yeah. How long do you think you could have survived out there? 

So I think I had enough food for another 20 days. So I think 20 days without catching another fish and not getting injured. And then after that, I would have hoped I would catch more fish, for sure. I caught a fish a day on average. Though my catch was starting to dwindle, and they set this thing in late autumn because they know that winter will throttle the calories available to you.

The berries are beginning to dribble on every bush. The fish become less and less active as they go into a state of torpor. And so, it was minus six the day it finished. The low was like minus six one night, I heard. And it got down to minus 22 two weeks later. So I would have been dealing with a very different winter.

I was desperate to see that place turn white with snow. I was really sad to leave before it transformed. But I think conservatively three weeks and if I'd have caught a few more fish, maybe four or five at a push. But mentally I felt really strong and I did a lot of work mentally to feel strong. I was very mindful.

You only have one companion out there, and that's your inner voice, and I was really kind to myself. I mean, it's really important to be your own best friend, and to be, I still call myself a nincompoop from time to time, but otherwise, I was fairly encouraging and decent to myself, and that's important. I felt good, I never felt, I miss my family, but never to a point where it ever hurt too much that I can't, this is untenable.

And you know, you miss your friends, you miss good food, you miss stimulation, but I also was just focusing all the positives and the joy of that simple living, and there is so much to take from that.  Even though you have this big responsibility to sustain your life out there, it's so little, it seems, compared to all the complex responsibilities of modern life.

It seems like so much less to hold in your brain.  It felt meditative for so much and it was really, yeah, mentally cathartic. 

Yes. How was your reintroduction, Tom, when you came back? Because you talk about, like, the sensory, you know, the hotel, the fridges and stuff like that. But how long did that take to settle back in?

Was there any overwhelm or whatever coming back into the modern world? 

Yeah, it definitely took a little bit of time. I find that I couldn't talk to people for more than 5 10 minutes before it became quite exhausting and overwhelming. We had a week in a hotel with, it was Naomi and Elise, the two girls who came second and third.

So the three of us We just hung out, played board games, watched films, and were re fed. And we would just wait for the dinner bells. We would get brought our meals at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and a few snacks. And we were like dogs, just like, It's so exciting that you can't explain how good food is. And that was a lovely time, you know.

We just hung out and exchanged stories and stuff. That was really beautiful. And then, yeah, coming back, it was wonderful to be with my family. It's also very kind of anticlimactic as well, that this whole momentous thing is over. There's definitely some adjustment, but it did change me. As saying, I used to have irritable bowel syndrome, I used to of anxiety.

I suddenly felt a lot more respect for my body, like previously would be binge drinking or something and I don't really do that anymore. I'm writing a book about this whole idea of like how I felt the best I've ever felt in my life living this simplistic way aligned to hunter gatherers and it's called You Are an Animal.

It won't be ready for a couple of years or so. But I think there's a lot to be taken from living closer to our hand to gatherer ways and life really doesn't have to be that complex. Yeah, it 

does give you real food for thought. On that subject, I'm not sure if I have it to hand, but I'm actually reading a book at the moment.

It's about a chap called Ken Smith. I think he's still alive, but he spent 40 years in the wilderness in Scotland. He lives in a custom built cabin. and some of the tales and the stories throughout that just about the simplicity and that cathartic way about going through life and he's self sustaining really it's just a wonderful story 

yeah up my street if you like that kind of thing as well tom neely an island to oneself it's really hard to get a copy of it but it's the same kind of thing this guy that just decides to leave society and live I want to say the Marshall Islands, but I don't think it is.

But right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, completely on his own, just lives out on an island for years and years and years. But many of the descriptions he uses are beautiful. 

Yeah, it sounds really transformative, and kind of switching lanes over back to desert island survival. Again, You know, I think you said you didn't set out for it to be this transformative adventure experience, but it seems to be doing that by proxy, which is wonderful.

And I wanted to ask, because I've seen that you're starting to do additional experiences as well, one of which caught my eye into the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Want to talk about some of that as well? So that's Yeah, you've been on our website recently, Chris. I have indeed, yeah. It's still quite hidden on 

there.

Yep. I love going to islands, but we have a lot of people that love the way we produce adventures, but they're also looking for different environments as well, and they maybe don't want to do the same kind of work. Even though we've had people come to all three different islands, they want something a little different, and so do I.

So I built this experience in the Okavango, which is, for those who don't know it, basically there's a river in Angola which fails to make it to the ocean. It gets pushed the other way by a mountain chain. And so the delta is inland, and this area about the size of England floods in an area where water is very precious and rare.

And so all of the animals of the savannas Basically congregate in this flood area and you've got thousands of bird species as well as giraffes and elephants and all the biggies. And so we're organizing a kayak safari. For nine days you basically kayak into the Okavango deeper and deeper. Each night we set up camp and we learn bushcraft skills from the local bushmen there.

We've still got our similar bushcraft twist where you're learning these skills. And then after, so it's about six hours each day kayaking and wildlife spotting. We go at a casual pace, it's nothing too extreme, but enough to feel it. And then nice evenings of camping, learning stuff, having fun. And then after that we get to an island, because we've got to do some island stuff.

We get to an island in the middle of the Okavango and you have to put into practice your skills and survive for two nights on this island. You will have a guard with you and we do choose islands which aren't frequented. by hippos and crocodiles. There are different risks for us to be aware of in this part of the world, but we're collaborating with guys who have done this for 25 years in that region, and I'm pretty confident that we shouldn't have any crocs and hippos when we get to that bit.

We will see them along the way but, yeah, that's, that's that adventure in a nutshell. I'm really, really excited I'm 

going to come on that, I promise you as I said to Anders, I'm going to go and do the Guyana trip and I'm going to come and do this as well at some point so I will, you know, be in touch on that because in the middle of season two so an episode with Ollie Pemberton he talks all about the Okavango delta so for anyone listening watching go and listen and watch that episode as well so he done documentary the polars of the Okavango where they traversed the entire delta and these little dugout type canoes as well it looks absolutely fantastic and they actually get charged by a hippo when they were filming that.

So, what more have you got planned then? Is there anything else you want to share about desert island survival? Or are you branching out into more wilderness experiences? 

So, yeah, I mean, we've got the Okavango trip. We're putting together a trip in Sweden for those who watch alone and the armchair survivalist who wants to have a go.

And so this one only take, you only have to take four days off work because it's a bank holiday and it runs from the Saturday to the following Sunday. Again, it's learning bushcraft in southern Sweden for four days. Similar concept to what we do in the desert island, you know, four days of survival light, learning from myself and probably from Naomi Allsworth, the girl that came third, and other alone participants.

And then three days surviving on your own on the lakeside, but obviously, yeah, with the safety net that we put in place. So basically, dipping your toe into the alone experience in Sweden, we're doing that in May 2025.  This, I don't know when this airs, but in September, we're doing our first trip to a new island in Indonesia, which we haven't been to, and it's a reduced trip because shit's gonna go wrong, and some people quite like that.

Our island expeditions are designed to kind of walk that tightrope of safety and adventure. We'd like things to go a little awry, you know, we don't want it to be too contrived. We want it to feel real, and it does, but this one's gonna feel that little bit more real because we're gonna be dealing with challenges together.

But, yeah, it's mostly people that have been on our past trips, but there are a few people that have never done it before, coming on that one. 

What's the craziest thing that's happened? Have you had any incidents with machetes or tropical diseases or what's going on? Yeah, the worst, 

I mean, we've had a guy get, we've had a scorpion bite, we've had a centipede sting, which is more painful than the scorpion.

We've had a guy stand on a stingray. We've had a few nasty machete cuts, but that's over seven years. It's mostly people making mistakes with knives. You know, we reinforce the knife safety, but  There's only so much we can say. But generally, you know, it's a safe environment and things don't go too wrong touch wood.

The worst thing happened was to me on my third ever expedition, when we were running this trip in wet season. The very, very first night and we always have two instructors now, but we didn't then when I was bootstrapping the business and I'd like this eight Danish entrepreneurs and the rainstorm came in and I was cutting some woods, but to reinforce the shelter and my machete is freshly sharpened and I was batoning down some wood and the handle slipped in my hand in the rain and cut straight through the tendon in my finger, my flex or tendon.

And I knew I'd done something nasty and serious straight away. It was horrible. I had to be kind of stoic and like save face, but I didn't know if we're going to be able to continue with the expedition. So yeah, it's a very lonely night in my hammock, popping codeine, wondering if I need to call in Tom McElroy and get him flirting down and I'm muddled on.

I went and got stitched up at the clinic and I remember doing a bow drill demonstration and. the stitches popping open as I was making a friction fire and blood dripping off my elbow nearly putting the fire out but I continued so I mean that was my worst expedition by far but yeah normally things don't go too wrong 

yeah even still it must be incredibly rewarding all of this do you feel that you found your purpose now with all of this 

yeah definitely it definitely gives me purpose and it's definitely good for my head as well like you know I live in Lisbon I'm able to live in a city because I feel I go and get that yin and yang you know I go and get my recharge time in nature and slowing down Running these trips and it's really beneficial for me as well.

So it's, I think the Japanese term is ikigai, isn't it? Something, something you love, something that helps others, something you're good at, and something that makes money. And if you can hit that Venn diagram in the center, that's ikigai, right? 

I've actually got that book sitting right there. Ikigai, yeah. Oh, nice!

Yeah, so this is just to prove that I'm not talking.  So that's that. Is that how cool? Yeah, so I actually read that. Which is part of the reason for me doing the Adventure Diaries, and trying to be a bit more accountable for living this way as well. So, Ikegai, what you love, what the world needs, what you can get paid for, and what you're good at.

Excellent. The Japanese way to a long and happy life, apparently. I know. Fantastic. We kind of skirted over your book, Tom. I know we're coming up on time, but just tell us, how is that going, and when can we expect that to be published? 

So, last week I just locked myself away in a cabin up in northern Portugal for four days to really dive deep into it and to just I've had the idea and I've written out notes, but for me, I'm dyslexic.

I wish I had a good attention span. I do when I'm on the island, but to find the time to write a book is really hard. But yeah, it probably won't be ready for a couple of years. It's gonna be a long, old process. I'm working with an agent. I still haven't got a publisher. We'll see, hopefully, once I get this draft over. 

But basically, yeah, the concept is I felt the happiest I've ever felt in my life in the wilderness, and it was an epiphany to me. And is this because I was living aligned to how we lived as hunter gatherers for 99 percent of our evolved existence. And so, there's a concept called evolutionary mismatch. 

So basically, 70 percent of the ways that we die now as humans is because we're living unnatural lifestyles. And these are all called evolutionary mismatches. No hunter gatherer died of heart disease, or diabetes, or had a stroke, or most of these conditions, you know. Most of them, they got cut on their knee and they got an infection, and they died because they didn't have antibiotics.

Or they broke a leg, or they died of old age. But it's our lifestyle and our natural way of living that is physically messing us up, but it's also significantly mentally messing us up.  One in three of us will have a mental health condition in our lifetime as well. And so it's really diving into that. One of the most stark examples that I start with is the fact that most intelligent animals in zoos are on anti anxiety and anti depressant medicine.

I had no idea that chimpanzees and gorillas and polar bears and bears and such are, most of them are on anti psychotic medication to deal with their mismatched environments. And I think we're the same. We're born into the captivity of modern society. But we are the zookeepers. And that's the difference.

We can play a part in what mental stimulation we get, what diet we eat, how much we move our body, how much sleep we get, how much we socialise. And so it's looking into those key areas, uh, why we need them and what we can do within reason, you know, without rejecting the modern world. to live a happier and healthier life, more aligned to our evolved state.

Wow, that sounds like a great concept. Something that I'm very interested in as well, I just went through the ZOE, I don't know if you're aware of that, like I've had my bloods tested and you know, testing everything, all the foods that I eat, what type of bacteria I have in my gut and stuff like that. So, which was fascinating actually, and having to change up certain things, because I had IBS years ago as well, that went away, but I have, you know, Intolerances to certain things, and I just never knew what it is.

But with going through this, there's loads of things that I can start to, I can understand my diet, my gut a little bit better. It's been a game changer, really. It's amazing, isn't it? Because, 

you know, we look at our food and it says this contains 140 calories. It simply doesn't. We all process food differently because there's this four trillion army of bacteria and viruses and funguses and parasites and such that will create different chemicals and caloric output from what we eat.

And so we're all completely different. And this whole concept, you know, the exercise is how you lose weight and calories in, calories out. It's completely debunked, but most people don't realise that it's all, if you want to lose weight, it's entirely diet driven. Exercise does almost nothing to reduce weight loss, which is such a misconception in today's world.

Even things like exposure to the environment as well, so you're talking about being out, like, the flora and fauna, being like, physically touching some of this stuff as well, and what that can do for your gut. I'm not trying to do it justice because I'm not a scientist and I haven't had those types of experiences but I think there's a lot to be said about that, not just mental.

Yeah, 

definitely. And that's where allergies come from, from having a lack of those, you know, allergies didn't exist really until the 70s when Dettol was invented. And then also about your exposure to the environment, I've just been learning through this about things called phytoncides, which is a chemical that trees release, which they do to ward off funguses and such.

It basically is part of their immune system. But I had no idea that it promotes well being in us. We breathe in these things called phytocytes. It produces killer cells, which can kill cancers, and makes us feel happy. And it's not woo woo.  This idea of unzipping the signs from the woo woo. I can't believe that aromatherapy is legit.

So these 

things contain in pine oils and stuff. I only last night learned that aromatherapy is genuinely good for your health. Scientifically, empirically good for your health. But, I mean, obviously, forest bathing and actually spending that time in nature, having a woo woo together. Benefits of less stimuli from such even stronger, but it's a whole rabbit hole and it's a really exciting thing to research 

I mean every time I I mean, I do a lot of water based activities So kayaking predominantly but whenever I'm out, I purposely take time to touch the environment and put my hands in the water and make sure that I'm, not just from a sensory thing, but I generally think there's something in it, like even putting your hands through the sand, touching the trees or picking the leaves or whatever, and then hands in the water even after I'm paddling.

I think it's not just part of the experience, but I think there's something in that. I love that. Without getting too woo woo myself. Excellent. There's some truth in the 

woo though, that's the amazing thing. We're only just learning it, but I'd love to back it up scientifically. 

Yeah, well, I'll keep an eye out for that.

So, you know, do let us know when that is out. That would be a fantastic read. Excellent. 

I look forward to 

it. This has been brilliant, Tom. I've thoroughly enjoyed this coming up on time. So I kind of want to step into the two closing traditions that I've got on the show. One of which is a call to adventure and the other is a pay it forward suggestion.

So the call to adventure is just an opportunity for you to speak to the listeners, the viewers, just. Anything that you could suggest, an activity, a place, whatever it may be, just to get people away from the screen and out disconnected and doing something adventurous, what would you say? 

I mean obviously I'm immensely biased and I'd say Desert Islands, but that would be crass really, wouldn't it?

I know you've had like Alastair Humphreys and micro adventures as a concept on your show, and I'm a big believer in those. My favourite one that he recommended was getting some tractor tyres and inflating them. And going down the Seven Estuary with a wetsuit and a dry bag and camping along that. I've not done it, but that's like, for me, top of the micro adventures list.

And that feels very tenable. I also love kayak adventures. I think getting inflatable kayaks or just collapsing kayaks, driving to a point, and then, I mean, we did it in Chile a few times. We'd take the car all the way to the coast, get a taxi back to where we dropped off, and spend three days meandering down the river until we hit the sea.

And it was just some of my most favorite adventures. I absolutely love those. I just went bike touring for the very first time two weeks ago. In Spain, I cycled from Bilbao to Valencia, and that's the first time I've ever done that with a group of mates. And we just wild camped along the way, like we'd set up at sunset and get up at sunrise and get out of there.

And it's just an intimate way to travel. I think, of course, as Chris, you've had some amazing cyclists, adventurers. I'm only just getting into it, but already I'm like fantasizing of going all the way to China from here. It's just, yeah, meeting people. There's no barrier between you and people and nature.

You see a lot of nature because you're quite quiet. You can smell the oregano and thyme and rosemary. You can smell the surroundings. It's just a really intimate, beautiful way to travel. And you get all the endorphins from the exercise as well. And you can eat so much,  just by taking down all that Spanish or do it across Italy and you can eat so much food.

So that was really good. Really, really good. Definitely going to do more of that. 

Oh, brilliant. Excellent. There's a few things to unpack there. Excellent. Thank you. Finally, pay it forward suggestion. So worthy cause charity project, anything that may be important to you or to your heart or anything that you want to raise awareness of.

So what would your pay it forward suggestion be? 

So I read a book called doing good better about the efficiency of charity and one of the charities that really resonated with me was Giving directly so basically giving to the poorest people on the planet directly these people they don't lack motivation They genuinely lack money and half a billion people in sub saharan Africa that are living off two dollars a day And there's a charity called give directly org Where you can give directly to these people without all of the inefficiencies of paying CEOs or whatever it may be within the charity.

So it's just money straight to them to help them with food, with cooking oil, you know, maybe they need a mobile phone to then get a job. But not just presumptively saying. We'll build you a water pipe, or here's another bag of grain, or whatever it may be, to give them the autonomy and trust and control to actually be able to make changes and positive changes.

It's a wonderful charity, and there's numerous studies that show how much more efficient it is, particularly as the money is often given to the matriarchs. The blokes may be more likely to spend it on gambling or booze, the women, absolutely not. They look out for the family, and it all goes to a good cause efficiently.

So yeah, givedirectly. org. 

Brilliant, excellent, thank you. We'll get that listed and elevated. Thank you. This has been wonderful. It's got my head spinning with ideas and I'm going to go and check out that Sweden trip as well actually. I quite like the idea of that. I can potentially get away from a bank holiday weekend.

So, wonderful. Where can viewers and listeners find everything about Tom Williams and Desert Island Survival? 

Yeah, so Desert Island Survival is desertislandsurvival. com. And I'm on Instagram under  TomWilliamsAlone. 

Brilliant. Excellent. We'll get all that listed. So, this has been fantastic. Thanks, Tom. 

It's been so good, Chris.

Lovely to chat with you. 

Yeah, likewise. 

Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. For the show notes and further information, please visit adventurediaries.  com slash podcast. And finally We hope to have inspired you to take action and plan your next adventure, big or small, because sometimes we all need a little adventure to cleanse that bitter taste of life from the soul.

Until next time, have fun and keep paying it forward.