Category Archives: Our World

02
Aug
2010

The Joy of Less

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Posted in Motivation, Our World
I’ve edited down this superb piece on simple living by Pico Eyer. Read the full New York Times article here. “The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner [...]

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28
Jul
2010

Thought for the Day: be canny, be cautious, yet be gracious and trusting

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Posted in Our World
Whenever possible I listen to the Thought for the Day on Radio 4. This one struck me for its useful balancing of trust and caution, one of the most vital aspects of solo travel in distant lands. ‘You must be,’ said Jesus, ‘as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves’. A poetic way of [...]

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19
Jul
2010

Everest mountaineer and dustbin man

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Posted in Expeditions, Our World
I’m going to share a couple of relevant talks from last year’s Do Lectures over the next few weeks while I am away on expedition in Iceland. First up, Paul Deegan:
03
Jul
2010

Cycle Touring – The People You Meet

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Posted in Cycling, Our World
“Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.” Victor Hugo Other than close encounters with angry dogs,  truck drivers, dire loneliness and dysentery my last seven months cycling up The Mekong river in South East Asia (writes Tom on the Bicycle Travel Network) could hardly be described as [...]

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16
Jun
2010

On Living Simply and Naturally

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Posted in Our World
Six weeks living in a tent on the Arctic Ocean. Six weeks when every possession I owned served a clear and important function. Six weeks in the same clothes. Six weeks in an empty, nihilistic landscape. These are the times I realise how much junk I have back in my “real” life. So I enjoyed this piece [...]

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07
Jun
2010

Swimming in the Arctic

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Posted in Our World, Video
I love wild swimming, especially in remote and beautiful places. So the chance to swim under the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean was too good to turn down. Here’s a short video I made about the experience.
31
May
2010

Audio slideshow with our Inuit guide in the Arctic

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Posted in Expeditions, Our World, Photography
Russell Atagootak was our Inuit guide on the Arctic expedition I have just returned from. I was really interested to spend time with him to try to work out how a small ethnic group fits into modern Canada. The trite yet apt conundrum faced by people of the far north is that they are torn between [...]

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18
May
2010

On the variety of our world

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Posted in Motivation, Our World
“World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various.” - Louise MacNeise ‘Snow’ I am an Englishman. I grew up in an English village. I went to a school full of English kids. My parents, my teachers, my outlook: [...]

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12
May
2010

Kindness on the Road

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Posted in Cycling, Our World
For the doubters and naysayers, for those who fear to get on their bikes and chase the sunset, for those who stay home rather than flying to far-flung lands: here is a reassurance that you will meet kindness on the road. Here are 5 random acts of kindness experienced on the road
28
Apr
2010

We were born too late to be explorers. To be real explorers. To be one of the hard men.

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Posted in Expeditions, Our World
We were born too late to be explorers. To be real explorers. To be one of the hard men (for they were always men back then) fired by such curiosity, such desperate yearning to cross the next horizon, that they were willing to set off for years on end with slim chance of returning, with [...]

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