Always Another Adventure

By his own admission Kevin Webber is not a great runner, yet he has tackled some of the world's most challenging multi-day races.  His moment of inspiration came from a very dark place, after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.  He was told he had two years to live - six years ago.  In this podcast Kevin mixes stories of adventure with inspiration to step off the hamster wheel and...

Where do you go when you want a new bike?  Your local bike shop?  The internet?  Josh Reid went to the factory of bike maker Giant, in China.  Then he rode the bike home to Newcastle and made an excellent film about his adventure. Josh's Instagram         YouTube Channel Josh's 'Cycling Home from China' film If you enjoy this podcast, please support the hosting costs by buying...

Patrick Winterton made the first successful kayak crossing of the widest part of North Sea in a double kayak, together with Olly Hicks, retracing the route of the wartime 'Shetland Bus' from Scotland to Norway. I recorded this podcast shortly after his return and it ran on another podcast series Sea Kayak Podcasts.  It is such an extraordinary adventure I decided it had earned a place am...

Nick Butter ran a marathon in every country as recognised by the UN, all 196 of them, and completed the adventure within two years.   His book Running the World has just been released yet he's off on another adventure.  Now he's tackling 100 marathons in 100 days, running the length of Italy, a country badly hit by Covid and, like the rest of Europe, heading into its second lockdown.  We...

Mark Beaumont is one of the world's greatest endurance athletes.  He rode around the world in 78 days, averaging 240miles each day.  In this podcast we explore the professionalism behind Mark's extraordinary career.  He treats each project like a business start-up.  He learnt public speaking, how to writing books and how to use other media.  Links below to things we mention in our conver...

It’s a bike race so hard, even the organisers weren’t sure anyone could complete it.  Competitors had to carry everything they needed, from food to fuel, to be entirely self-sufficient, right from the start.  No outside help was allowed. Josh Ibbett rode the 2000km off-road bikepacking event, from Land's End to John O'Groats in 7 days and 17 hours.  This is how he did it. Video about Jos...

Donnie Campbell ran all 282 of Scotland's 'Munro' mountains in a new record time of less than 32 days, from 1st August to 2nd September 2020 cycling and kayaking between.  Here, for the first time, he tells the full story of his amazing August adventure. Donnie's Facebook     Instagram   Twitter   Strava JustGiving page for British Red Cross  Get Active Running If you enjoy thi...

The world of self supported, ultra distance cycle racing can seem a strange sub culture.  Emily Chappell has captured the essence of being one of these sleep deprived, exhausted riders in her book Where there’s a Will .  She came to this odd type of racing after being a cycle courier in London, an experience captured in her first book What Goes Around .  In this podcast Emily's reads from bot...

The Highway Code is changing and we all have the chance to influence those changes.  If you ever ride a bike (or for that matter drive or walk down a street) it is worth having your say. Duncan Dollimore, the Head of Advocacy and Campaigns at Cycling UK, explains what’s proposed, where the controversy lies, and how you can influence the new highway code before October 2020.  Too often we feel thos...

This is for anyone who thinks swimming is boring.  Ice swimmer Jade Perry talks us through her more unusual swims; glacial lakes, jungle reservoirs, the world ice swimming championships in Russia, and how she became the first person to swim between East and West Falkland Islands with no wetsuit. Instagram       Jade's sponsor, Mackie's ice cream If you enjoy this podcast, please support...

In 1993 Trevor Potts was part of an expedition to recreate Shackleton's audacious voyage from Elephant Island, off the Antarctic peninsula, to South Georgia.  Trevor now alternates his time between life of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula in Scotland and lecturing on Antarctic cruise ships about Shackleton and other explorers.  I spoke to Trevor in 2012 for Sea Kayak Podcasts, an earlier podcast se...

Once you have run an ultra-marathon on each of the seven continents you join an elite running group with only five members.  One of them in Dr Andrew Murray from Edinburgh.  We talk about that achievement in this podcast, along with running in Mongolia, working for the NHS during C19 and the future for all of us living in a Covid world.  Plus the not so small matter of running 2660 miles from John...

Chris Pountney set out to circumnavigate the planet by bicycle and boat, avoiding all motorised vehicles and aircraft.  When he was forced into a car on a border crossing, he started the circumnavigation again, eventually going around twice. Along the way he was joined by Dea Jacobson and they both join me for this podcast.  Chris has written two excellent books about this adventure, and I really...

Dr Max Holloway worked with the British Antarctic Survey on climate change research and in this podcast we talk about the adventure of traveling to and working in a place so few of us will visit.  Max is an accomplished wild swimmer and, last winter, was invited to train the world renowned swimmer Lewis Pugh in the cold waters off the Outer Hebrides in preparation for Lewis' own swim in Antar...

We’ve heard from some amazing athletes in the course of this podcast, but today we hear from two 'normal' cyclists, Martina Doherty and Nigel Birdsall who call themselves The LifeCyclers.  They were not aiming to break speed records yet they completed an amazing ride.  Their route took them through Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, India, Myanmar, South East Asia, Australia and into New Zeala...

Cameron McNeish describes himself as 'Mountain bum, cycle tourer and campervan man', in his Twitter profile.  He is the best known hill walker in Scotland, possibly Britain, who has written for and edited many magazines including TGO-The Great Outdoors .  He has made numerous television programmes, mainly about outdoor activities.  His autobiography There’s Always the Hills ( Amazon link...

Sean McFarlane was a lawyer but quit to became a full time athlete and that’s one of the adventures we explore in this podcast.  Sean talks about the business of working with sponsors, magazines, other companies, plus devising a trans-scotland challenge that sounds utterly epic. Sean's Website     Instagram If you enjoy this podcast, please support the hosting costs by buying me a virtual cof...

Calum is more than a swimmer, he’s an outdoor enthusiast, and a good one too.  He completed the grueling Celtman extreme triathlon and last year set out to swim and walk across Scotland unsupported, towing all his kit. He has presenter three series of excellent programmes about wild swimming in Scotland for BBC Alba, and we talk about all of this in the podcast. Twitter     Instagram   Dhan Uisge ...

The name Jonas Deichmann might not be too familiar to English speaking adventurers, but in three years he set three huge long-distance transcontinental unsupported cycling records. 2017  14,000km Eurasia 64days (Portugal to Vladivostok) 2018  23,112km Pan-American solo 97 days (cutting a month off previous record) 2019  18,000km North Cape, Norway, to Cape Town, South Africa 72 days (again, a mont...

Justine Curgenven is a highly accomplished expedition sea kayaker.  She helped to keep safe Sarah Outen, the round-the-world adventurer, when the pair became the first people to kayak the Aleutian Islands, the chain which stretches from Alaska into the Pacific Ocean. This interview is a companion piece to Podcast 21 with Sarah Outen.  However, it goes further and explores Justine's more recen...

Sarah Outen circumnavigated the northern hemisphere using only human power.  Well, almost.  She traveled by bike, rowing boat and kayak and this is the first of two podcasts about that journey.  The second podcast is an interview with Justine Curgenven, who was Sarah’s companion on a massive sea kayaking stretch of the journey along the chain of Aleutian Islands off Alaska.  The film of the journe...

He is probably the world’s best known sea kayaker, partly because of his award winning instructional films, but mainly because Gordon Brown is such a good coach. Gordon is a friend but I haven’t seen him for ages because he has moved his family from the west coast of Scotland to the west coast of Canada.  In this podcast we’ll talk about his early days of canoeing, teaching in Nepal, and a fantast...

In the world of ultra distance hiking Chris Townsend is outstanding.  20+ books to his credit, the gear editor of Great Outdoors magazine, and the first person to complete a round of the Munros and tops (not as said in introduction) in a continuous journey entirely on foot. In this podcast, Chris shares advice for hikers tackling the 2021 TGO Challenge, a backpacking event across Scotland that has...

Kevin Woods is only third person to have completed a winter round of Scotland's Munros, mountains over 300pft high.  That's 282 mountains in 97 days in the long, soaking wet, depths of a Scottish winter. Living in his van, with only a few friends for support, Kevin had to support himself.  As if walking 1400 miles wasn't enough, he had to shop, cook, dry kit, plan routes and check w...

He’s a mountain bike racer who graduated from day races, to 24 hour events, to stage races.  Then Josh Ibbett moved into ultra endurance bike packing and won one of the biggest, the Transcontinental. Here we speak about that race, Josh’s early racing career, his bikes and the Tour Divide Race on which he came 6th last year and had been hoping for a win in 2020. Josh's YouTube    Instagram    ...