6. A woodland walk with adventurer Al Humphreys

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Join us for a woodland wander with adventurer, author and tree lover, Al Humphreys. The 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year has cycled round the world, rowed the Atlantic and walked across India, but now focuses on pursuits closer to home. Pioneering the concept of microadventures, Al explains how exploring small pockets of nature in our neighbourhoods helps us to better connect with and care for the environment. He speaks of enabling young people to embrace wild places, and encourages us to take time to be curious and astonished as we discover new places on our doorstep.

Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive.

Adam: Today I am off to meet an author and adventurer, and there's a title you don't get to say, or indeed hear very much. He's the author of a whole ton of books, including Microadventures, which I want to talk to him specifically about, but also books called the Doorstep Mile, Local, There Are Other Rivers, Grand Adventures, Moods of Future Joys, Midsummer Mornings, Thunder and Sunshine, and I could go on and on. And I'm meeting him at a Woodland Trust site called Ashenbank Wood. It's a Site of Special Scientific Interest in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is teeming with extraordinary wildlife. So we'll be talking a bit about the woods and a bit about the sort of adventures he's been on and the sort of adventures we might all be able to go on. Anyway, I'll let him introduce himself.

Al: My name's Alastair Humphreys. I'm an adventurer and a writer and tree lover.

Adam: Which sounds very exciting. So when you say you're an adventurer, what does that sort of mean?

Al: Well, I was slightly hesitant to say that because I confess I feel more like an ex-adventurer, but I have spent pretty much all my career going off doing big adventures and then coming home and writing and speaking and making films about them. So they've gone ever smaller. I began by spending four years cycling around the world, I've rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, walked across the Empty Quarter desert, played my violin incredibly badly through Spain, and then gradually smaller onto what I call microadventures. So, encouraging people to find short, simple, affordable adventures close to home and squeezing around their busy daily lives.

Adam: So that's interesting. You talk about the mini adventures. On a previous podcast we talked to the natural navigator, I don't know.

Al: Ohh yes, Tristan. Well, he could tell you a lot more intelligent things than I can. He's great.

Adam: No, but I think he took very much the similar view of yours. He went, I've done all these big adventures. But actually when you’re doing these big adventures, it's all about tech, you know, and I needed satellite link ups and all sorts of stuff. And actually I wasn't, I was really looking at screens all the time. And he was going, the smaller adventures are actually much more revolutionary, because if you go low tech, that's a proper adventure. Just trying to find your way through a wood is a real adventure in a curious sort of way, even more challenging than doing something which sounds really flash.

Al: Yes. And what Tristan's done fantastically is taking those skills from bigger journeys down to his literal daily life, hasn't he? If you, I get an e-mail from him, I think it's weekly or so and it just essentially says, where am I now and which way am I facing? And from his little clues in the local park, he can tell whether it's north, south, east, and west.

Adam: Yes. No, you're right. I tried. I was very bad at that. And what I've learned, I've already forgotten. So tell me a little bit about why your connection to nature, then, how important that is to you, if at all.

Al: So I had a nice, happy childhood growing up in the countryside, so as a kid I spent a lot of time running around the fields and woods and streams and things, so I suppose that hammers something deep into your subconscious, although you don't really notice it necessarily as a kid.

Adam: Where whereabouts was that?

Al: In the Yorkshire Dales.

Adam: Ohh, God's own country. Amazing place.

Al: Yes. Lovely part of the world. Yeah, so I really enjoyed that, and then my big expeditions, I've spent a lot of time in some of the world's really wild places and that's a fantastic backdrop to your adventures. But actually my – oh, and I also did a zoology degree. Although I found it incredibly boring, and now looking back I find it amazing that you can find something like that boring. But it's taken me stopping the big adventures, slowing down, paying attention to my local area to build a deeper connection with nature. And ...