Alastair Humphreys Adventurer | Author | Motivational Speaker

Conquerors of the useless

Three-and-a-half minutes of delicious, vicarious wanderlust and an important call-to-arms.

Paddle to Seattle Video

This video encapsulates exactly what I am searching for in the adventurous life. Absolutely wonderful.

Paddle to Seattle Trailer from Ben Gottfried on Vimeo.

19 great photos of Religions Round the World

This is the first in a new series of occasional posts that is really just an excuse for me to share some interesting pictures on different themes.
First up, a nice, gentle simple topic to ease me in slowly: Religion Round the World

Muslim Man Praying in Trafalgar Square

A tardy novice monk runs through the rain to [...]

Peace One Day

Every so often you see a film or read a book that fires you towards action. The film Peace One Day blew me away. Truly motivational.
The film charts the remarkable 10-year journey of filmmaker Jeremy Gilley to establish an annual Peace Day on 21 September. The camera follows Gilley as he galvanises the countries [...]

I wish I could do what you do… Well, why can’t you?

At the end of a recent talk a young man approached me.
“I wish I could do what you do…“, he said, wistfully.
He was 23, earning good money in the City, single, had no mortgage and was physically fit. So I asked him what was stopping him from doing what he really wanted to do.
His answer [...]

Treehouse Living

I’ve just returned to London after a fantastic stay in Nick Weston’s tree house in Sussex. Nick has turned his back on city life to build, and live in, a tree house “somewhere in Sussex”. He is living off the land whilst he writes a book about his experiences. In return for a couple of [...]

A big world

At times, when the search for sponsorship for Antarctica gets me down a bit, I turn my mind to daydreaming of easier, cheaper journeys. Last week I explained why I now need to find myself a new project for the next few months.
Here’s a map that shows (in red), the places I’ve been to. [...]

We choose the Moon

(skip to 1′30″ for the good part!)
“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as [...]

Society, I hope you’re not lonely without me.

Struggling to overcome inertia a week or two back I listened to the soundtrack to Into the Wild, one of my favourite films.
It helped me to remember the power that the world’s natural places can have on us, and also to maintain my priorities. I had sunk into the typical London trap of equating quantity [...]

Hunger and Night and the Stars

“Were you ever out on the Great Alone,
When the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in
With a silence you ‘most could hear
With only the sound of a timber wolf
And you camped there, in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world,
Clean mad for the muck called gold,
While high overhead, green, yellow [...]