Adventuring – the basics

It all starts with an idea, that little nub of a seed gets in your head and stays there.  Over time it grows, with the mental energy keeping you awake at night, until one day you realise it’s got you! There’s no real way back now, the excitement, the possibility and the very idea of it brings a wry smile to your face – and everything you do in life starts to revolve around the adventure ahead!

And this is the best bit, it doesn’t matter how big the adventure is, how trifling on the grand scheme of things, or even how safe it seems – its YOUR adventure and it’s starting to power your life!

I’m going to try to help out would-be adventurers a little with a few snippets of experience that might make your own adventures more likely to happen.

You see the trickiest part of an adventure is getting to the start point with the adventure still enact, too often we are forced to cancel or postpone (which sadly can mean cancel but with more letters in it) because something didn’t work out right, the weather changed,  or we simply realised that we didn’t want to do it after all.

So step 1 in adventuring is to….Make sure you actually want to do it!

There is no point getting all excited about climbing Everest if you don’t like the cold. Similarly, if the thought of sitting on a saddle for 20 hours a day only fills you with dread then perhaps riding across America in 10 days isn’t your forte in life (no matte how cool it sounds!)

There doesn’t need to be a reason to do your adventure, sometimes adventure is all the reason you need – but you will have to want to do it.

Step 2 is, I think, Can you do it?

Not as straightforward a question as you may think…. legally can it be done (it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission <not always safe though…>), has it been done before, can you afford the time away from family,friends, WORK! How much will it cost?

Are you fit enough?

Now the great thing about nearly all of these questions is that you can work on them!

When I rode LeJoGle (Lands-end to John O’groats and back) in 10 days, I didn’t even own a bike when the idea was in my head, I had zero concept of the distances involved, the logistics or the fitness levels required but I had Step 1 and I could work on all the parts of Step 2!

Fitness should never be something to stop an adventure, simply set a date for the adventure when the fitness levels will allow – the sooner the date the more the challenge – the bigger the challenge the greater the thrill but also the greater the risk of failure – there’s a fine line to walk at that point!

Is it a solo challenge or a team one, can you find a team? – can they get the time away?

The bigger the challenge, the more moving parts are involved and the more complex it gets the higher the risk of it not getting to the starting point!

Step 3 – Not Everything has to EPIC!!!!!!

In this day and age of global crossings, 10 day Ironmans (‘cos 1 isn’t enough obviously!) and Ultra-this and Ultra-that we can lose sight of what an adventure is – to me it’s something out of my obvious comfort zone, a little bit different and something to add a little sparkle to my day1

So I will give you an example —-> Peak District Camping!