The Famous Alastair Humphreys Blog

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Posing with a Paralympic Gold Medal I did nothing to earn! @stevebatembe talked to me about how going blind is one of the best things in his life, because it has jolted him into action, appreciation and making the most out of life. I find it bonkers how often I hear this viewpoint, that we need a disaster in our life before we wake up and remember how short and precious life is! Steve is a cyclist, an adventurer, “dad” to a truly messed-up, bonkers rescue dog, and a really, really great guy. Good luck for Tokyo, Mr Batembe! #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #alpkit

Saltaire was built in 1851 by Sir Titus Salt, a leading industrialist in the Yorkshire woollen industry. Salt moved his business (five separate mills) from Bradford to this site near Shipley to arrange his workers and to site his large textile mill by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the railway. Salt built neat stone houses for his workers (much better than the slums of Bradford), wash-houses with tap water, bath-houses, a hospital and an institute for recreation and education, with a library, a reading room, a concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and a gymnasium. The village had a school for the children of the workers, almshouses, allotments, a park and a boathouse. Recreational initiatives were also encouraged such as the establishment of a drum and fife band for school age boys and a brass band, precursor of today’s Hammonds Saltaire Band, for men of the village. With the combination of quality housing, employment, recreation, educational facilities and social services the model town represented a landmark example of enlightened 19th century urban planning. So the mill and the village is fascinating to see. The highlight for me (and once again this was partly because it was an unknown surprise to me) was the exhibition of David Hockney iPad paintings on the top floor of the mill. I loved them. #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring

Wild camping whilst cycling round Yorkshire is fun. But even more fun is kipping on my friends’ lawn when they are out of town and have no idea I’ve broken into their garden for the night. This amused me greatly. Plus, they had grown delicious peas which I got stuck into. 😂 Thank you Rose and Rich! (Though you need to get that lawn mowed…) #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring

It is a fascinating thing for an author to walk you around the landscapes that feature in their book. Thank you, @robbiecowen, for sharing your Common Ground with me (bonus point for the kingfisher), and for feeding me so well from your allotment. #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring

It was so interesting to spend a little time at the Leeds Islamic Centre. Evening prayers, the chanting imam, the clothes and looks of men whose families came from lands spread out across my dreams but who are also born and bred here in Yorkshire like me. Stillness, calm, and the surprisingly audible clicking of knees when 100 faithful stoop to pray. #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring

Mastiles Lane: 2000 years ago the Romans marched here, 700 years ago the Monastic monks from Fountains Abbey sent their flocks this way to graze, two centuries ago it was the droving route for bringing sheep from Scotland to London. And today there’s just me and my bike. (And a curlew and a couple of peregrine falcons.) #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings

Epic is an overused word on social media. Descending into Gaping Gill was epic. #yorkshire #blog

My Motivations for Busking through Spain

“It’s alright for you to have adventures,” I often hear, “but it’s not possible for me. I’m a mum; I’ve got responsibilities and a job.” So I was interested to ask the lovely @Yorkshirerows gang about how a bunch of “not very physical” middle aged women / mums / business owners rowed the Atlantic. The answer, as always, is that it was simple but not easy, and it came down to the choice of deciding to making it happen and the realisation that we are all capable of far more than we often imagine. 👍👍👍 #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring

Imagine the day when you cannot ride a bike any more. When you cannot even leave the house without help. Cycling Without Age takes old people out for rides on this fabulous ebike. Last week Theresa took a 100-year old lady for a spin! Theresa needs some help though: someone with a van in Calderdale who can occasionally move the trike for her. And someone to help with admin, emails etc. (“probably someone’s mum”, suggested Theresa.) If you’d like to help in any way, please visit @cyclingwithoutagecalderdale or https://ift.tt/2Zuf24M @sustrans – please would you very in touch with Theresa with any advice? #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring #cycling #ageuk #calderdale

Shouting From My Shed 34

Ones of the pleasures of travel is seeing wonderful places – places that fill you with wonder – with your own eyes. But it’s an even greater thrill when you have not been primed and prepped by guidebooks and expectations. I had never even heard of Beverley Minster until I stumbled upon it by chance. #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring

It is a fine thing to sleep in the hills on hot summer’s nights. Stars, moonlight a breath of breeze to deter the midges, swifts at dusk then possibly nightjars later. A mattress of soft, dry grass and springy heather. And a view to make you smile when the sun wakes you up. #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring

Today, on the 50th anniversary of the moon landings, I saw the replica of Endeavour – the ship Captain Cook sailed out of Whitby in search of a possible southern continent, the Terra Australis. I believe those two voyages of discovery matched each other for audacity and adventure. Also today I met a 60-year-old who is filling his retirement with multi-day seakayaking trips and has just returned from helping run a 2-week expedition for young people in Iceland. Earlier I had met a couple whose steady, conventional route towards retirement was interrupted by forced redundancy after two decades working as school teachers. Forced into boldness and change they now run a farm (Beyond Boundaries) whose purpose is to help people with physical and mental disabilities be active, get outdoors, and keep challenging themselves. At the farm I met a young woman who grinned happily at the memory of when, with lots of help and cajoling, she eventually managed to cross the small stream in the small wood behind the farm. The event had clearly gone down in legend amongst that group of friends. I’m only 3 days in to this ride and already I am loving all the different interpretations of living adventurously that I have across. As for me, I’m sleeping on a beach tonight, weary from a day riding up moors and down the crazy, steep streets of quaint fishing villages. I carried my bike up flights of stairs on the Cleveland Way, poured with sweat, and was very grateful to cool down with a sunset dip in the North Sea. Now it is time to pile a little more driftwood onto the fire and snuggle into my sleeping bag. #yorkshire #blog #thenorthface #neverstopexploring

When someone asks me where I’m from I always say, “I live near London but I’m from Yorkshire.” Yorkshire is my home. I’m very proud of that. But I haven’t lived in Yorkshire for more than half my life. Is that still home? If not, what does ‘home’ mean? I love Yorkshire but how well do I know it? When I lived here I took it for granted. (Don’t we all do that with the places we think we know best?) Going away has taught me to be curious. And now I want to get a better feel for, and appreciation of, the place I call home (but don’t live in). So far everything I have seen here has been for the first time: new places, new sights, new people – exploring, perhaps, without leaving home? #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring #home

I have cycled to China and to Cape Town, to the Atacama and Alaska. Can I get some of that travel experience, I wondered, without leaving home? Will I get that sense of being transported to a new world merely by going places I have never been within my own country? I don’t know where I will sleep tonight, don’t know who I may meet tomorrow. I have no roots, history or connection here. So all those ingredients are here. But is it true? Of course I have roots: I have lived here for most of my life. So is this ride a mere shadow of the joys of exploring many time zones away? And if that is the case, is the compromise worth it to reduce our addiction to flying far and often? (One of the ironies of travelling the world is that those of us who love it and therefore travel a lot cause the most damage.) Can a simple, relatively local journey spark my curiosity? Can I persuade myself to amble and follow my nose rather than handing ahead on a mission? Can this ride compare in any way to the epics of my youth? Questions, questions, questions for my first day on the road…,! (Plus hiding from storms under trees and bridges and garages, weariness, sore lips and voracious hunger. Some things never change!) #yorkshire #blog #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring

I am bidding a fond farewell to my shed and hitting the road for a while. Having cycled around the world and travelled to over 90 countries, can I find adventure cycling around home? (What does ‘home’ actually mean to me anyway after so long loving the adventurous nomad’s life?) And what is important about living adventurously – to me and to the people I meet along the road? I will be sharing my experiences on Instagram so please tag any friends who might enjoy following along with the journey. Although I am going to be posting content, I will not be engaging with social media whilst I’m away. No reading comments or messages, no scrolling, no email. In fact, no internet browsing at all, no music or podcasts. Not even any books to read. I want the full immersion and separation that is key to all the richest travel experiences, like in the olden days when you waved good-bye and set off to seek dragons and hoped that you would not fall off the edge of the earth. I can’t wait. To challenge myself on the trip I have decided to record my first-ever podcast. I am interested in being a beginner again, travelling in a different way, observing through a new prism, learning stuff. When I cycled around the world I wanted to learn how to write. So I wrote a lot. (I took a mere 3000 photos in 4 years, and zero video). I used my walk across southern India to teach myself to take better photographs. And my trip into the Empty Quarter was a conscious effort to get to grips with story-telling through film-making. But the podcast is for further down the line. For now I hope that you enjoy seeing what I see along the way. I’m really looking forward to this ride. There be dragons out there. Dragons, plus the occasional cafe breakfast. #blog #bikepacking #cycletouring #adventure #travel #alpkit #goniceplacesdogoodthings #neverstopexploring #thenorthface

If you ever wonder what happens when a young adventurer returns from something epic, grows up, gets married, has kids and settles down, but still yearns for the open road, then perhaps you will find ‘My Midsummer Morning’ intriguing reading.⠀⁠ ⠀⁠ Adventure meets Midlife Crisis!⠀⁠ ⠀⁠ (Those of you who have grown up (and old) alongside me in the many years since I wrote my first book about cycling round the world might find this book strikes a few chords with you…)⠀⁠ 🎻⠀⁠ Link to buy the book in bio.⠀⁠ 🎻⠀⁠ #MyMidsummerMorning #blog

Writing now, I must try to lay down the ambient background of slowness, heat and modest but constant pain. ⁣ Too loud and you will tire of the moaning. Too soft and you miss a critical dimension. ⁣ Plug away, plod away, drift away. Time does the rest, turning a walk into something richer, as cream changes to golden butter under duress. ⁣ Though individual days blend together, the result becomes an experience more vibrant than the mere cumulative act of trudging towards the next sit-down and sandwich. Travel long and slow and you learn to pay attention. ⁣ Time moves strangely on the road: at once fast and slow. ⁣ There is real time, told by tolling church towers and the sun’s relentless sweep. But there is also walking time, marked by the body and mind – tortured soles and souls – that pays scant heed to the chronological order of the universe. ⁣ Weeks fly, days pass, hours and minutes drag: just me, my violin and my shadow slowly crossing the landscape with Laurie. ⁣ ‘The days,’ he wrote, ‘merged into a continuous movement of sun and shadow, hunger and thirst, fatigue and sleep, all fused and welded into one coloured mass by the violent heat of that Spanish summer.’ ⁣ This is just one day of my life. But every day to come will depend fractionally on what I do today. I must live it as vividly as I can bear to do.⁣ ⁣ (An extract from my new book, ‘My Midsummer Morning’. Available for sale now – link in my bio. Thank you / Gracias!)⁣ ⁣ #MyMidsummerMorning⁣

Shouting from My Shed – 32

Shouting from my Shed 30

A Night on a Hill with Friends

Looking for Yorkshire Experts

My Digital Journey

The 2019 Summer Solstice Microadventure Challenge

My Midsummer Morning

Living Adventurously

How I Write a Book

Shouting from my Shed – 28

Shouting from my shed

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