Delighted as always to have Dave Cornthwaite‘s thoughts on my blog. His long-term project of 25 journeys, each of a thousand miles, is brilliant. And he’s off again:

I’mm nervous, it’s been a while. Kit is scattered across the table and floor, drybags wedged under my pillow, a small army of cameras lined up ready for battle by the door. It’s expedition time.

This time five years ago my legs were comfortably tired after my first ever endurance journey, a 900 mile push from John O’Groats to Lands End on a long skateboard. Legs may have been tired but feet were in pieces. Infected blisters and lost toenails had plagued that journey but they’d heal soon enough, they’d have to, Australia awaited. My poor board.

I didn’t know it back then but life was changing. Somehow it felt like it might, like I had the power to make a shift, but the future was so vast and unknown I just didn’t know what to expect. Now I realise we can make our own future with just an idea and a bit of hard work, and my horizons are much wider than those of the 26 year-old who rode a skateboard out of Perth in August 2006 with Brisbane in my sights. Wonderfully, my ambitions have swelled a bit, too.

I’mm 11 days away from the fourth journey of a project I call Expedition1000, a project that will shape the next ten years of my life. I hope to undertake twenty-five journeys, each at least 1000 miles in length, and every one of them using a different form of non-motorised transport. I’mve never been an outstanding athlete, nor am I an expert in any particular field, but if travel teaches you anything it’s that the new things give you more than the old (unless you’re talking about people). By spreading my experiences and stretching various parts of my body in deserts and jungles (sometimes urban) and on oceans and ice-caps I think I’mve found a way to sate a silent urge that had been eating away at me for years.

On the 20th June I will paddle out of a lake in deepest Minnesota, somewhere I’mve never been before, and into the headwaters of the Mississippi River. 80 days and 2400 miles of river await me, and I’mll be seeing a great deal of it because I’mll be standing on a Paddleboard, the view’s great from up there. There are a few reasons I’mm doing this, and creative freedom is one, but as an Ambassador for the Blue Climate & Oceans Project I’mll be trying to make sense of a river that has recently been thrown into turmoil. the Mississippi supplies drinking water to over 18 million people in 50 cities and is home to 25% of all fish species in North America. Its levels are also higher now than they have been for almost 80 years, livelihoods have been destroyed, the shape of the river has changed. I learn more from my journeys than I ever did at school, I hope I can share some of the lessons I pick up.

I’mm nervous because I’mm excited. By forcing myself away from a comfort zone that once sedated me I’mve created a tingling down my spine that confirms I’mm about to paddle headlong into the unknown. The next few months are going to be eye-opening, dangerous at times, exhausting and life-affirming, and I can’t wait. I’md love you to follow me down the Mississippi, I’mll be telling my story through video, photos and the written word. Here I come, Gulf of Mexico!

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