British adventurer, microadventures author, exploration podcast circuit
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Follow Alastair Humphreys— it's freeIn this rich, wide-ranging conversation, Alastair Humphreys chats with Craig Mod about the overlapping worlds of adventure, creativity, and publishing. The two explore their different but kindred approaches to long walks — Craig’s meticulous, high-tech planning versus Alastair’s spontaneous, minimalist style — and how these journeys feed into their creative work. Craig shares the thinking behind his wildly successful newsletters, membership programme, and beautiful, obsessively designed books. They also dive into broader themes like cultural responsibility, self-discipline, nature connection, and why sometimes walking is just the best way to think deeply. 🧭 Topics and Themes Craig's long-distance walks across Japan (Tokaido, Nakasendo, Kumano Kodo) Comparison of walking vs. cycling as immersive travel tools Digital minimalism and “no teleporting” rules during walks High-tech vs low-tech navigation: Apple Watch Ultra vs. paper maps The joy and discipline of documentation: notes, photography, audio, video Daily synthesis as a creative practice while walking Books as tangible artefacts of ephemeral experience Craig’s reasons for walking: presence, routine, deadlines, synthesis Planning vs. spontaneity in adventures The special role of beautiful book design Making creativity sustainable: Craig’s membership model (Special Projects) Emotional and logistical tension between audience growth and creative purity Walk & Talk retreats with Kevin Kelly: structure, goals, dinner conversations Litter and cultural responsibility in Japan vs. the West The role of access in building care for the natural world The value of constraints, caps, and intimacy in building an audience 📚 Books Mentioned Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod (Random House edition) Kissa by Kissa by Craig Mod Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald Kevin Kelly’s essay “1000 True Fans” Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo (mentioned by Alastair) 💡 Concepts & Quotes “Walking is a platform for other things to happen.” “Teleports” as anything that removes you from presence (phones, news, etc.) “I’ve never thought: I have to do this because my subscribers are expecting it. It’s all selfish.” “The best piece of technology ever invented is the book.” “Snickers bar logic”: why we’re fine carrying snacks, but not their wrappers “Make the ephemeral tangible”: the purpose behind bookmaking “You can’t walk with someone and do the thinking.” 🧾 Links & Recommendations Craig Mod’s website and newsletters Special Projects Membership Random House edition: Things Become Other Things Craig’s essay on British sandwiches 🍞 Do Lectures Outrage + Optimism podcast Kevin Kelly’s “1000 True Fans” ★ Support this podcast ★
Please click here to 'Follow' the show - it really helps get the show to a wider audience (which I really thank you for!). Alastair Humphreys cycled around the world for five years on a teacher's gap year he never quite ended. He rowed the Atlantic with three strangers he'd met online. He walked 500 miles across Spain playing the violin badly enough that someone occasionally threw him a coin. He's written more than a dozen books, been named a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, and is widely credited with launching the global microadventures movement. And yet, when you talk to him, the thing that lights him up most is a random industrial yard on the edge of his local town — a kilometre-square of scrubby brownfield he was sent to by a random number generator, and which turned out to be one of the most fascinating places he visited all year. Chapers 00:00 Grand expeditions and getting into adventuring 01:08 Teaching, Edinburgh, and daydreaming about adventure 03:12 First adventures — Africa at 18 and discovering the wider world 04:42 Travelling pre-digital — paper maps, internet cafés, and no phone 06:34 Cycling around the world at 24: five years, 46,000 miles 07:21 Key memories — Patagonia, loneliness, and the kindness of strangers 09:41 Planning versus spontaneity — and how 9/11 changed the whole route 11:31 Wanting to quit: the mental challenge nobody warns you about 12:42 Friends, fellow cyclists, and Forrest Gump recruitment in Argentina 14:30 Rowing the Atlantic — an email from a stranger in Slovenia 16:14 Simultaneously boring and terrifying: life on the ocean 17:04 Wildlife at sea — and a very sad absence of sharks 18:15 Walking India's Kaveri River — 500 miles across southern India 19:39 Heat, crowds, and the relentless humanness of India 21:14 Walking across Spain playing the violin — and why terror was the goal 24:24 Grade 1 nursery rhymes and a windfall 20 euros in a sunny plaza 25:26 The rule: spend every coin immediately so you're broke again tomorrow 27:56 Microadventures — the breakthrough book and the five-to-nine concept 29:16 Why microadventures felt like giving up — and why it wasn't 31:26 Dismantling the obstacles — the five-to-nine thought experiment 33:39 The simple message: turn off your computer at five, sleep on a hill 35:03 Being a writer — the joy, the imposter syndrome, and the phone problem 37:33 Family, fatherhood, and why microadventures are his personal solution 38:05 The book Local — one Ordnance Survey map, one year, 52 grid squares 40:33 One to twenty-five thousand scale — and why 52 out of 400 felt like nothing 42:20 The random number generator — and why it was the best decision 44:40 What surprised him most: brownfield joy and environmental grief 45:51 The hidden environmental message — and why he's stopped flying for fun 51:18 What's next: Local was just published and for once there's no plan 53:56 Call to Adventure: your Local Seven Summits 55:51 Pay It Forward: Right to Roam, Trash Free Trails, and Take the Jump 58:22 Right to roam responsibly — and why that word matters 59:38 Where to find Alastair Humphreys That tension — between grand expedition and humble local wander, between flying somewhere epic and rediscovering what's on your doorstep — runs through everything Alastair does, and through this conversation. What You'll Learn: • Why Alastair says the Spain violin project — not the world cycle or the ocean row — is his favourite adventure of all time, and why terror was the whole point • What the five-to-nine concept actually means, and how it dismantles the most common reasons people never start adventuring • How committing to just one Ordnance Survey map for an entire year revealed something genuinely depressing about the British landsc
Sadly this is the Final Episode of the Podcast (until I find a new sponsor)! Jack Thurston is a cyclist, a food lover, a photographer, a guide-book writer and an early podcast pioneer. He is the host of The Bike Show podcast and author of the Lost Lanes cycling guidebooks. We talked about adventures close to home and what the world of 'Adventure' looks like in the 21st Century. THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Trees for Cities , the only UK charity working at a national and international scale to improve lives by planting trees in cities. (If your company or organisation is interested in sponsoring Living Adventurously , please get in touch !) PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE LIVING ADVENTUROUSLY PODCAST (It’s completely free, zero hassle to do ( click here ), but very helpful for me. If you’re feeling extra kind, please leave a review on the app – that really helps.) Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Stitcher , TuneIn (“Alexa, please play the Living Adventurously podcast”) or on your favourite podcast platform such as Overcast, Google Podcasts , Pocket Casts, Breaker , Soundcloud, Castbox, Castro. www.alastairhumphreys.com/podcasts SHOW NOTES If you enjoy listening to this episode over a cup of coffee and think it might be worth the price, you can buy me a "coffee" here: www. ko-fi.com/al_humphreys Keep up to date with future episodes (and my other adventures, projects and books) with my free monthly newsletter: alastairhumphreys.com/newsletters Say hello on Twitter and Instagram: @al_humphreys @jackthurston - https://twitter.com/jackthurston Lost Lanes - lostlanes.co.uk The Bike Show podcast has been running since 2005 Alastair Humphreys on the Bike Show - http://thebikeshow.net/alastair_humphreys_part1/ Podcasts don't usually make money. But you have to do something that you love - that is the price of entry. Bike Show tries to pick up sounds and experiences - the sonic colour - from outside the studio There are different kinds of audio perfection Asking open questions is important. Ask them how they feel. Get beyond the facts into the emotion. Conversation ought to be structured but also feel natural If you let silence happen, people will fill it with something interesting You need to give the audience what they are interested in Louis Theroux podcast - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p089
At the end of my ride around Yorkshire I decided to interview myself. Having spent a month grilling people with a card deck of difficult questions , it only seemed fair to have a go at answering them myself! This is the final episode in this series of Living Adventurously. I hope that you have enjoyed it. PLEASE DO LEAVE A REVIEW OF THIS PODCAST ON YOUR PODCAST APP. If you have enjoyed listening to this series over a cup of coffee and think it might be worth the price, you can buy me a coffee here: www. ko-fi.com/al_humphreys Keep up to date with future adventures, projects and books with my free monthly newsletter: alastairhumphreys.com/more/subscribe Say hello on Twitter and Instagram: @al_humphreys THIS PODCAST SERIES HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY KOMOOT THANK you so much to komoot for all their support in this podcasYour very own outdoor experiences are waiting for you. Go explore more with komoot . Use the voucher code ADVENTUROUS to claim your free region maps bundle. The personalised planning and navigation tools ensure you plan the adventure that’s perfect for you . Komoot is Europe’s number 1 outdoor app, with route planning and navigation functionality, and strong community-driven inspirational features in the form of recommended Highlights and inspirational route Collections. It is used by nearly 10 million adventurers worldwide. Komoot is becoming the app of choice for cyclists and hikers the world over, with rapid community growth in the UK, the US and other parts of Europe. You can see my ride’s route on komoot here . ★ Support this podcast ★
If you have enjoyed this book, you could help me a great deal by: Leaving a review on Amazon. This is so helpful. Sharing a photo of the book cover on social media. Use the hashtag #TheDoorstepMile. Giving your copy to someone who might benefit from it. Thank you. If you’d like to follow me online you can: Sign up for the Living Adventurously and Shouting from the Shed newsletters on my website. Follow me on social media: @al_humphreys Subscribe on YouTube: search for Alastair Humphreys Visit alastairhumphreys.com/thedoorstepmile for resources About the author Alastair Humphreys is an English adventurer and author who finds it weird to write about himself in the third person. He has cycled around the world, walked across southern India, rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, run six marathons through the Sahara desert, completed a crossing of Iceland, busked through Spain and participated in an expedition in the Arctic, close to the magnetic North Pole. Alastair has trekked 1000 miles across the Empty Quarter desert and 120 miles round the M25 – one of his pioneering microadventures. He was named as one of National Geographic’s Adventurers of the year for 2012. Alastair is a patron of the Youth Adventure Trust, Hope and Homes for Children, Outdoor Swimming Society, Yorkshire Dales Society and the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. ★ Support this podcast ★
The imposter syndrome The majority of bold ideas are extinguished by nothing more than the top two inches of our heads – our brains. The whole world is waiting if only we can overcome the space between our ears and get out there. Often the biggest challenge of all is persuading ourselves to enter the race in the first place. We write ourselves off before we have even tried because we think we do not belong. Welcome to the Imposter Syndrome! This is an excellent time to debunk the myth that writing is only for Writers, adventure is only for Adventurers and that to be an actual ‘Adventurer’ you have to be some sort of superhero. (Or, at least have a trust fund.) None of that is me. I quit learning to write after English GCSE. I spent most of my student days watching daytime telly, doing bicycle obstacle courses around our flat, eating deep-fried pizzas and generally mucking about. At some point, I decided that before I settled down, I should try to do something difficult. Just for the hell of it. To see what it would be like and discover how I got on. I enjoyed reading books about adventure. Crazy men and women and their out-of-the-ordinary, life-affirming journeys. The trouble was, those people were amazing. It didn’t seem possible that someone like me could do anything like that. If you want to drag a sledge through a frozen wilderness, I thought, you need to be a superb physical specimen. I was [am] not. I have no natural talent. That was my first problem. The second problem was money. Those epic adventures all seemed to cost fat piles of cash. I was a student. I ate value brand baked beans. The third issue was that to cross oceans or scale mountains, you need to be able to tie all sorts of clever knots and know which way round to put on your crampons. I had none of the necessary skills and did not feel as though I belonged to that world. I was an imposter. But I was still curious, so I decided to find out a little more. I visited the Royal Geographical Society in London, the spiritual home of British expeditions. Gazing up at the statue of Shackleton on the front of the austere red brick building, I almost chickened out. Yet once I braved myself to cross the doorstep, I fell instantly in love with its hallowed halls. That continues to this day; I get excited every time I visit. 200 years of history, 2 million maps and artefacts, cheap beer and adventure nerds: this was everything I dreamed of. But my CV read, ‘ Alastair Humphreys, wannabe Adventurer, no talent, no skill, not much cash. ’ This was not a good beginning. Three hefty hurdles in my way. But look a little closer, and you can see the situation differently, like those weird 3D magic eye pictures. Shove your nose up to the page, scrunch up your eyes and look in a new way. With a bit of mental trickery, a new image reveals itself. A unicorn! A vase of flowers! And a dawning realisation that neither talent nor skill nor money were insurmountable problems. It was true enough that my lack of physical prowess was probably going to keep me from the Olympics. I would also be wise to steer clear of a free solo climb in Yosemite for my first challenge. Even money was something I could find a way around through my choice of adventure and a diet of banana sandwiches. What ran much deeper than these obstructions was the worry that I would be shouted down as an imposter. I only wanted to blend in. I faced two choices. I could let out a sigh and go back to reading books about adventure, but treating them as vicarious enjoyment rather than career advice textbooks. (That might well have been the sensible thing to do, by the way.) Or the other option was to think, ‘I don’t have much talent, skill, or cash, but what can I do? What adventure does not need much of these things? What is still possible?’ And that is when I decided to go for
The scourge of time and money For most people reading this, the most significant practical hurdles standing in the way will be either time or money. (I confess to finding them a bit unoriginal. They probably affect everyone except the Queen.) How you overcome these inconveniences is key to making interesting stuff happen. If you are short of both then living adventurously is, for now, going to revolve around simple ideas and your attitude rather than expensive and expansive plans. How to get more money. The 4-step plan from financial guru Alastair Humphreys (written on my yacht in the Caribbean*) Spend less or earn more. Sell stuff or stop buying stuff. Find a cheaper version of your dream. Put aside £20 a week then begin a grand adventure when you have saved enough (an exercise in starting small, starting today and the cumulative effect of habits). (It is also worth putting things in perspective by having a look at where you stand on the Global Rich List. www.globalrichlist.net ) * - Actually my shed… How to get more time. The 4-step plan from time-management guru Alastair Humphreys (written on the loo) Say 'Hell yeah, or no' when deciding what activities to commit to. Ask the 80-year-old version of yourself whether you should be spending your time on this thing. What can you cut out of your life to get more time? Quit each of your distractions for a week and notice how much free time that creates. Turn off your phone. Over to You: How can you spend less or earn more? How can you get more time in your life? ★ Support this podcast ★
The epidemic of busyness This is an era of insanity. We have become lunatics, suffering under an epidemic of busyness. When did anyone last say, ‘gosh, I don’t really have anything to do today.’ If you’re reading this on your phone, I know you’ve checked social media or email in the past five minutes. If you’re listening to my dulcet tones, I bet you’ve cranked me up to double speed. And if you’re reading a paper book, you’re probably on the loo. So much for my beloved literary masterpiece… We are all too frantic to be able to savour life or focus on the important things. And we live in a society that applauds the wildest ball jugglers. ‘Yowzers, I’m so busy,’ we boast, pretending not to be gleeful if we win the busiest person contest. At its heart, being busy makes us feel important and necessary. Most of us (except for those who are saving lives or cleaning streets) are not really either of those things. But it is nicer to think that we are. When I ran a poll on Twitter asking why people don’t leave the office at 5pm, 45% answered ‘because nobody else does’. But everyone wants to go home then, even the boss. It’s bonkers. (28% said they’d be reprimanded. But this is all a topic for a different book. I’ll get back to minding my own business…) An hour spent at work is equivalent to trading an hour of your life for some cash. It is worth pausing occasionally to consider that exchange (ideally at work when you might get paid for the pause). Do you enjoy your work? Or is it a pragmatic necessity that you must accept and make the best of? How much would you pay for an hour of life? How much do you earn per hour? Is this a fair/good/unavoidable swap? Could you earn more for that hour of your life? Could you work fewer hours? We face demands on our time outside of work as well: the things we have to do, those we ought to, and hopefully some things that we want to do. Throw in additional family commitments or partners with different priorities, and this can all tighten into nooses of resentment. I am surprised how many emails I receive along those lines. How can we claw back some time to live a little more adventurously every day? A good starting point is to work out where the time goes. We all begin each day with the same 24 hours to spend. Once we pay attention to the breakdown of our days, we can look for opportunities to cut out the junk and live a bit more adventurously. For example, which of these do you deem acceptable ways of being busy? Saving the world? Changing the world? Getting rich? Chasing dreams? Raising a family? Keeping your boss happy? Not letting people down? Having fun? Here are some other questions I have asked myself at various times. If you wish you can think of it as The Acme Busyness Scale, by busyness guru Alastair Humphreys. Am I too busy to move to Africa for a year? Am I too busy to cross Iceland for a month? Am I too busy to go biking in Scotland for a week? Am I too busy to camp out this weekend? Am I too busy to climb a small hill with somebody I love and watch the sunset? Am I too busy to go for a run at lunchtime? Am I too busy to swim in a river before breakfast? Am I too busy to climb a tree for ten minutes? Am I too busy to read my kids a bedtime story? Am I too busy for life? Which number are you on an equivalent list in your own life? Which level is acceptable, necessary, desirable or dutiful? Which level suggests priorities gone wrong and a heartbreaking waste? Inevitably, the packed nature of our lives means that pursuing your individual passion demands compromise or cutbacks somewhere else. Many of us – me very much included – feel guilty and selfish about this. We worry that it i
Alastair Humphreys walked across India, from the Coromandel Coast to the Malabar Coast, following the course of a holy river. Walking alone and spending the nights sleeping under the stars, in the homes of welcoming strangers or in small towns and villages, he experienced the dusty enchantment of ordinary, real India on the smallest of budgets. There Are Other Rivers tells the story of the walk through an account of a single day as well as reflecting on the allure of difficult journeys and the eternal appeal of the open road.
Would you like a more adventurous life? Are you being held back by a lack of time or money ? By fear , indecision, or a feeling of being selfish or an imposter ? Living adventurously is not about cycling around the world or rowing across an ocean. Living adventurously is about the attitude you choose each day. It instils an enthusiasm to resurrect the boldness and curiosity that many of us lose as adults. Whether at work or home, taking the first step to begin a new venture is daunting. If you dream of a big adventure, begin with a microadventure. This is the Doorstep Mile, the hardest part of every journey. The Doorstep Mile will reveal why you want to change direction, what’s stopping you, and how to build an adventurous spirit into your busy daily life. Dream big, but start small. Don’t yearn for the adventure of a lifetime. Begin a lifetime of living adventurously. What would your future self advise you to do? What would you do if you could not fail? Is your to-do list urgent or important? You will never simultaneously have enough time, money and mojo. There are opportunities for adventure in your daily 5-to-9. The hardest challenge is getting out the front door and beginning: the Doorstep Mile. Alastair Humphreys, a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, cycled around the world for four years but also schedules a monthly tree climb. He has crossed the Empty Quarter desert, rowed the Atlantic, walked a lap of the M25 and busked through Spain, despite being unable to play the violin. The Doorstep Mile is Alastair Humphreys' 13th book. ‘The gospel of short, perspective-shifting bursts of travel closer to home.’ New York Times ‘A life-long adventurer.’ Financial Times ‘Upend your boring routine… it doesn't take much.’ Outside Magazine Visit www.alastairhumphreys.com to listen to Alastair's podcast , sign up to his newsletter or read his other books . @al_humphreys ★ Support this podcast ★