The Art of Adventure

Have your say: https://forms.gle/Xc6USH2ThWqzxRex7 Series 2 is coming. But first - we want to hear from you. Which adventures should we cover next? Which explorers, expeditions, or untold stories are you dying to hear? Fill in our short listener survey for your chance to win a £100 Arthur Beale voucher. It takes about a minute. Have your say: https://forms.gle/Xc6USH2ThWqzxRex7 Entry closes 10PM G...

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the first solo nonstop race around the world. Only one crossed the finish line. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston returned aboard Suhaili to claim the Sunday Times Golden Globe - while behind him, one competitor faked his positions, another sailed to Tahiti instead of the finish line, and a third pushed his boat so hard it fell apart 1,200 miles from home. Nearly fifty years...

In 1930, a 24-year-old Cambridge undergraduate named Gino Watkins led fourteen men to the east coast of Greenland on one of the most ambitious Arctic expeditions of the twentieth century. Their mission: to prove that aeroplanes could fly the Atlantic by mapping an unmapped coastline, discovering unknown mountain ranges, and manning a weather station in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet — throu...

Pen Hadow appears by arrangement with DBA Speakers www.dbaspeakers.com In 2003, Pen Hadow became the first person to trek solo and without resupply from Canada to the North Geographic Pole - 770 kilometres across shifting sea ice, open water, and temperatures of minus 40. It is a feat that has never been repeated, and almost certainly never will be. But this is not the story of a single expedition...

In 1845, Sir John Franklin sailed from England with 129 men and two of the Royal Navy's finest ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, to chart the last unmapped stretch of the Northwest Passage. They were expected back within three years. They were never seen again. What followed became one of the greatest mysteries in the history of exploration. Scattered bones on a frozen island. Inuit testimony of s...

In 1869, John Wesley Powell set off down the Colorado River with nine men, four wooden boats, and no idea what lay ahead. The Grand Canyon, 300 miles of unmapped canyon, unknown rapids, and sheer rock walls, was the last blank space on the map of the continental United States. Author John F Ross joins Hugh to tell the full story: how a one-armed Civil War veteran turned geologist became the first...

Helen Sharman appears by arrangement with DBA Speakers www.dbaspeakers.com In 1989, Helen Sharman was driving home from work when a radio ad changed her life. Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary. Britain had no space agency, no human spaceflight programme, and no tradition of sending civilians into orbit. Helen was a 26-year-old food technologist from Sheffield with a chemistry degree and no...

In 1838, Henriette d'Angeville became the first woman to climb Mont Blanc unaided - in a 12-kilogram wool dress, a matching bonnet, and hobnail boots, with 18 bottles of wine and a carrier pigeon tucked into her pack. Her name was largely forgotten until adventurer and filmmaker Lise Wortley decided to find out exactly what that climb felt like by doing it herself, in the same outfit, from the sam...

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set out to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. His ship never reached the continent. Within months, the Endurance was crushed by sea ice, leaving 28 men stranded in one of the most hostile environments on earth, with no hope of rescue. Historian of polar exploration Henrietta Hammant joins Hugh to unpick the legend of Shackleton: his rivalry with Scott, the 5,000...

Kathleen Saville was barely out of college when she rowed her first ocean - earning a world record along the way. What began as a wildly ambitious plan between two newlyweds became a test of resilience, navigation and marriage itself. In this episode, Kathleen recounts building Excalibur by hand, rowing 3,600 miles across the Atlantic, and later attempting a 10,000-mile Pacific crossing, during wh...

On 8th June 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set out from their high camp on Everest. They were spotted once, two small figures moving through a break in the clouds, and then they were gone. Over a hundred years later, we still don't know if they made it to the top. Award-winning filmmaker and author Mick Conefrey, whose book Fallen examines Mallory's final expedition, joins Hugh to separate...

The Art of Adventure celebrates the people who push into the unknown, past and present, and asks: what is the true art of adventure… and where might it take you? Brought to you by Arthur Beale. Find out more www.arthurbeale.co.uk