Day one technically living life on the road. I’d bought tickets for The National Outdoor Expo at The NEC, so needed to stop somewhere pretty local, a local park and ride train station! It did the job quite nicely and it was still beautiful to see the red sun rise and hear the birds chirping around me.
I really enjoy attending the Outdoor Expo, not only does it have some interesting stalls with things to buy, but what I enjoy the most are the speakers, so here are some overviews on some of them. I am not very good at remembering detail correctly, so please do not take my accounts as gospel, please fact check before quoting!!
Mitch Hutchcraft
Started off with Mitch Hutchcraft who talked about his life, how he dealt with his ADHD and turned it into his superpower to drive him on to achieve his dreams of making his dad proud. His main challenge over the last two years was climbing mount Everest from the lowest starting point. He started from UK, swan the channel, cycled 1000’s of km to Nepal, then climbed Everest. An incredibly tough challenge and very inspirational. He has a book coming out, which works through the different stages of going through a challenge like that, emotionally, and how we deal with these types of events, the mental skills it takes. He mentioned about everyone having the ability to unlock their potential, to start off with a dream/goal and start with small steps to achieve it. On days when he was cycling, if he thought of the end goal it was too overwhelming, so in order to cope he would stop every 20 mins, get off his bike, stretch, touch his toes and then get back on again. It meant he had short term goals to focus on. He would only really think about the next 20 mins, aiming to stop and stretch. Soon his challenge was flying by and he was mentally able to deal with it better.
British Mountaineering Council
Went to a talk from BMC about their Access and Conservation Trust. They talked about the different projects they are involved in to make the countryside accessible. They have teamed up with the National Trust to look after walking routes and re-lay paths. They talked about the importance of doing this, not only for human access, but for land and animal sustainability. For example ensuring conditions are the best for animals and plants to thrive, like dispersing cairns to allow more suitable homes for them, as opposed to keeping the cairns piled up, which doesn’t offer much habitat at all, and ensuring peat bogs are structured to contain the carbon rather than release it. The upkeep of paths ensures humans don’t widen paths, thus avoiding the muddy/boggy paths currently being created. The BMC run Get Stuck In volunteer weekends to help with these tasks. Unfortunately they are all booked up at the moment, so I’ll have to keep an eye out to see if I can get involved next yearly possibly.
Danny Brent
I managed to catch the end of the film ‘Vegurinn Til Vanlidunnar The Descent into Discomfort’ about the Great Norse Run. This is organised by Danny Bent one of the presenters at Outdoor Expo. You sign up to join a team of people who run across Iceland, from north to south. It’s a gruelling challenge through a desolate environment where you don’t see anyone for miles. I didn’t realise what a sparsely populated country it was. Although a tough challenge, everyone who did it had an amazing time, talking about how they were able to leave the stress of everyday life behind; how we are a species that used to live outside for most of our lives, but now we are cooped up inside, not our natural habitat; how we spend our time on our phones/technology, which can impact on our social interactions. They found this to be the most rewarding part of the trip, as well as the physical achievement, it was getting through it with a team of people and experiencing it together, supporting each other, sharing the tough times, and the successes.
Spencer Matthews
The Saturday was wrapped up by a talk from Spencer Matthews of Made in Chelsea fame. I was sceptical about what he was to offer, but he spoke so well, so honestly and down to earth. Admitting that he had hit rock bottom during his MIC years and before, drinking too much. He felt he wasn’t fulfilling his true potential in life, and felt he wanted to do good for others. He has done multiple challenges now, 13 in 30 being one of them, but he was talking about his latest challenge Project Seve7n, where he completed 7 Ironman’s in 7 continents in the record breaking time of 21 days, 9 hours ans 18 minutes, beating the previous record of 3 years and 11 months. He talked about losing his brother when he was 10, whilst his brother was on the descent after summitting Everest. He mentioned how he talks to his brother at times to get courage/advise/ask for help. He asked for strength during one of his tough moments on Project 7 and that night saw the most incredible shooting star, a burning streak across the sky that both him and one of his support team thought was something crashing through the sky. A while later after telling his mum this story she sent him a picture of a drawing his brother had done when he was 10, of a shooting star dominating the sky above a similar dessert landscape to where Spencer had been. This linked to the Thin Space theory that he had learnt about. That moment in time where you feel a connection between our world and the world beyond, heaven, or whatever you believe in. It can be a sunset, a breeze in a moment of silence, a feeling of other worldly connection. Spencer also went on to talk about his next project he’s been involved in, a programme on psychopaths. This is not focusing on psychopaths as a dangerous people, but looking at the spectrum, that we are all on, and understanding it. The majority of people are between 0-2, murderers are normally between 10-18. Beyond 26 is technically a psychopath, with 70% of brain surgeons being in this category. Its detaching the idea of psychotic with being dangerous, but more about having the ability to detach from human empathy, hence brains surgeons not having a problem working on another humans brain.
Sustrans – Walk, Wheel, Cycle
While at the show I spoke to a young lady on the Walk, Wheel, Cycle Trust stand. This used to be Sustrans and they have expanded it to include multiple ways of travelling. They seem to have done a great job of expanding the trails and making a large percentage of them traffic free. She was a lovely lady who I told about my new venture, and she was really excited for me. She asked me if I was doing it alone and told me about how she travelled on her own in her gap year in India. She arranged to meet up with family and friends along the route so that she could enjoy her own time travelling, but had some company to look forward to and keep her spirits up along the way. She joked that she wouldn’t even travel with her boyfriend, leaving him behind. I asked if they stayed together and she laughed No! I ended up buying their book of Traffic Free Cycle Rides, giving 150 rides ranging from 5-30 miles, just the ticket for my vanlife venture.
Another BMC Talk
I caught the back end of the talk from BMC on mountain leader training. They talked about the assessment process, having to provide 40 hours logged, but really you are better prepared to do
more like 60, with the 40 being higher quality hours logged. They also talked about how the assessors want to help you do well. They know how pressured it is to be assessed and want you
to do the best you can. They look forward to meeting people on the courses and assessments, knowing and hoping they may never see them again, because they have been successful in
passing and going on to lead out on the hill. There are different types of Leader training you can do, lowland, Hill and Moorland, and Mountain, as well as other training in climbing etc. I’d be
really interested in going on one of their training courses, especially the navigation aspect, as this is a huge part of walking the hills. I think I know how to read maps, but there always seems
to be some doubt when I’m actually in the hills. Many a time I’ve started to follow a track I thought was on the map and it wasn’t, there were 3 options in real life, but only one on the map!
I guess these things happen, as you can’t have every new accidental track trodden out by walkers on the map.
Mark Beaumont
I listened to half of Mark Beaumont’s talk about his epic journeys around the world. He mentioned about being home schooled when living in the valleys of the West Highlands, how his only friends were his two sisters and he spent all his time learning, working on the farm, or exploring. At 15 he cycled LEJOG, at 22 he cycled his first circumnavigation of the world. He talked about how letting someone have a dream and a feeling of accomplishment is important for them to see how they can achieve a goal and push for the next goal. Using his daughter as an example he said how she suggested she wanted to go on a big biking adventure, but not to tell mummy, it was to be a surprise. Mark looked at a challenge he thought would be suitable, so he chose the canals from Glasgow to Edinburgh, as they lived in Edinburgh. If at any point she didn’t want to go on they could catch the train home. They set off, his daughter leading
the whole way, every time they got to station he’d ask her if she wanted to stop and go on the train, every time she said no. They carried on and he loved to see the determination in her to keep going, so they completed the c.100KM trip, I think he said she was 8 years old, which was amazing. Obviously he had told her mum what they were doing, but his daughter didn’t know her mum knew, and her drive to show her what she could do helped push her on to keep going. Once we know we can achieve a goal it widens the parameters for our next goal, gaining more confidence with each venture. Mark also mentioned the mantra Safe, Finish, Fun, which people often use for endurance events. Priority is to remain safe, then to finish, with fun being the bonus at the end. If you’re not
having fun its not a reason to not finish. To push through the hard moments and finish some of the fun is looking back at how you overcame those moments.
Richard Harpham
There was a chap called Richard Harpham, who was meant to be leading an Expedition Planning and Skills Workshop, but he ended up pretty much talking about his trips, showing photos and telling anecdotes. It was still interesting and has made me want to look into the canoe trails he leads. He also talked about the 5 D’s when planning your expedition – Distance, Duration, Direction, Description, Destination.
Cat Capon
Cat Capon is an environmentalist and she told stories of going to Brazil to study in the rainforest after uni. She fell out of her hammock, tore her mosquito net, and ended up with her face
covered in bites on the first night, vowing she wanted to go home. She persevered though and kept tackling one day at a time and ended up loving it. She mentioned how she came to realise
this is where she belonged and would spend hours staring at the majesty of the wildlife around her. She found it much harder to adjust to coming back to London. She grew up loving David
Attenborough and realised she wanted to do what he did full time, so looked into getting into broadcasting, but had really bad comments back – ‘we’ve had to fire women as they are too distracting’, ‘men don’t like to watch women do what they can’t do’, ‘you don’t look like a typical adventurer’, so ended up in a corporate job creating TV programmes, but found she only spent
10 days out of the 2 years actually outside. She needed to change so took a step back to look at how she wanted to progress and went into eco tourism.
Hugh Dennis
Hugh Dennis, not an obvious choice when thinking about adventure personalities, had some lovely stories to tell. While doing a tv programme with Ben Fogle about Worlds Most Dangerous
Roads, they discussed that it didn’t need to be called that and what should it be called, with Ben suggesting Roads To Be Cautious On. When they were flying back from filming Hugh said his next event was to attend his mother in laws 70th. Asking Ben what he was doing next, Ben replied swimming with crocodiles!! Hugh felt his masculinity decrease hugely at this point. Hugh talked about how he has cycled almost everyday of his life since he was a youngster, cycling from Swindon to London with friends when he was 14, stopping in YH’s along the way. But he
progressed onto cycling the Etape, part of the Tour De France route, twice. He trained really hard in the lead up, as they say you have to do it in 12 hours, otherwise they stop you and chuck you
in the back of a van! Hugh did it in 11 hours and he talked about how at the start everyone overtook him, while he took it steady. As it was nearing the end he started to overtake people and nearing the end of the route he was catching this guy up who he’d been following for a long time and had his eye on. As he overtook him, he noticed he only had one leg! Again another knock to his masculinity. An interesting fact here – Hugh used to work in marketing before he went into comedy, working on the branding for Lynx!