Alastair Humphreys on microadventures, long-term travel and busking his way through Europe

[01:35] Paul: Today I'm having a conversation with Alastair Humphreys, who is a British adventurer and author. He's been on expeditions all around the world, traveling through over 80 countries by bicycle, boat, and foot. Foot. He was named as one of National Geographic's Adventurers of the Year for 2012. He's going to talk to us today about a new book, How You Can Use Microadventures in Your Life, and we're just going to dive into his journey. Welcome to the podcast.

[02:13] Microadventures: Thank you for having me.

[02:15] Paul: So you might not have called it adventuring, but it does appear you had a certain energy for the outdoors from a young age. You talk about doing the Three Peak Challenge in England, which I'll link up to if people are curious about, but was the pull towards adventure always there for you, or did you have some other influence from, uh, people around you?

[02:37] Microadventures: So I still maintain that I did not have a particularly adventurous upbringing, nor was I a very adventurous kid, but I did grow up in rural England in the countryside, and, uh, the Three Peaks Challenge is this 20-mile hike over three Well, they're called peaks, but this is Britain, so not very big mountains, but 20-mile hike. You have to do it in 12 hours and it's a sort of steady day challenge. But the interesting thing was that my junior school compulsorily made every single kid go and do this. So 200 kids from the age of 9 just went trudging off and did 20 miles through the hills. And because everyone else was doing it, we thought it was normal. And I think that's really interesting when everyone else is doing something, you just think it's normal.

So off you go. I look back now and I think, "Wow, that was quite hardcore." But I actually also think it might give a wrong impression for me as my personality and my upbringing because I genuinely was not particularly adventurous. I was a bit of a book-reading, nerdy kid, and it was only as I left high school and started thinking about university that I started to think a bit more about traditional adventures.

[03:48] Paul: Yeah, so you said that you didn't get into adventuring until after you left high school. Was it deciding that after— I think you wrote after university you knew you wanted to take a big trip, but what was the first moment for you which you might look back and label as adventuring or desiring an adventure?

[04:08] Microadventures: I think there are a couple of different things. So when I was 18, finishing high school, before I started university, I took a year out and I went to Africa. I went to South Africa with a friend, and the two of us, we taught in this little school in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was terrifying and thrilling and totally new world for me. And that opened up my eyes to thinking, wow, the world is bigger even than England. There's more of this that I want to see.

And then when I got to university, I started to get really interested in physical challenges of running mountain runs and long bike rides. And I gradually decided I wanted to try and combine this enjoyment for challenging myself with the curiosity about the big exciting world out there and put the two together by going on a long bicycle journey.

[04:59] Paul: Yeah, so before we dive into the bicycle journey, when— I mean, a lot of people are interested in like hiking, outdoors adventures like this, but Geographic magazine described you as clearly slightly bonkers. So when— what was the transformation from that to how you described then? We can build to some of these stories, but I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this now.

[05:27] Microadventures: Okay, so the transformation from normal, slightly weedy kid and youth to bonkers, which means crazy, is I suppose just a step-by-step thing. It goes from learning that I enjoy doing a run in the hills that takes 2 hours to to then doing one that's 24 hours, to then cycling for a week, to cycling for a month, to cycling for 4 years. And each is just a step by step by step process. You know, when you've done one thing, doing the next thing seems easier. Once you've got a bit of confidence and momentum, you think, ah, the horizon expands. And so it was just a step by step process.

I think one aspect though was that it was the thing that kept pulling me towards this was from reading so many books of expeditions and journeys, I really held these sort of people up as a high, almost a moral compass of, I want to be ascetic, to live a really simple life. I want to push myself as hard as I can. There's quite a lot of masochism in there and a lot of curiosity about how much I could push myself and what that might reveal to me about myself. And like a lot of people, I grew up feeling not particularly confident. I felt pretty ordinary. I felt quite mediocre by the time I finished university.

And I had this yearning that I wanted to do something outstanding that I'd never really shone in any way before. So I think that also pushed me to wanting to try and do something really big and difficult and different as well.

[07:04] Paul: Yeah. So who were some of those influences, either authors or other travel adventure writers?

[07:12] Microadventures: In England, when you're 18, you do really big exams that set you up for going to university. I remember when I was supposed to be studying for those, I discovered two books. One was called Living Dangerously by a guy called Sir Ranulph Twisselton Wycombe Fiennes, which is just the perfect explorer name. His book just opened my eyes to this life of mad, tough, bold adventures. And then the other guy at the same time was Benedict Allen, who did very, very big, hard journeys. He crossed the Amazon by himself, but in a very, very simple, minimalist, understated way.

So I could talk for a long, long time about, well, The Worst Journey in the World. There's a third book to throw into the mix. But books like this were really what opened my eyes to a life that I'd never really considered for myself, but which I was starting to see might become possible.

[08:09] Paul: Yeah, so as you were graduating, you were thinking about biking across— were you thinking about biking across the world at that point, or did it evolve into that?

[08:21] Microadventures: Well, I was kind of thinking about becoming a high school science teacher. That's what I was training for. But being a high school science teacher is seriously hard work. So a much easier option in life was to go on a long, long bike ride. My initial thought, I got this map of the world on my room at university and I thought it'd be great to cycle from England to India. But then I thought, if you've got all the way to India, why don't you just keep going to Australia?

And if you got to Australia, why not try and cycle around the whole world? And so the idea just grew until I thought, well, I'll try and cycle around the world. Of course I won't make it because the world is massive, but at least setting some huge ambitious goal will open up my bravery to doing something moderately big.

[09:10] Paul: Yeah. And I guess if you put it out there in public, it starts to hold you accountable and say, oh crap, I actually have to go do this now. Did you have that moment?

[09:18] Microadventures: Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for showing off loudly in the pub after a few beers. I think that's the start of a lot of foolish but exciting projects in life.

[09:30] Paul: So you decide to take this trip, and you've written about since how you were afraid that if you didn't do this, then you might get a mortgage. And I also love this— you're concerned you're going to get a mortgage and a cat and other things that might hold you back from traveling. Um, maybe you can help other people who are thinking about taking trips right after university or even early in their career? Like, what's the argument for this? Because so many people are concerned about, oh, I have to put in my time, I have to do these early career things to establish credibility.

[10:09] Microadventures: Oh gosh, I could— oh, I'll have to try and keep this answer short.

[10:13] Paul: Could be a book there.

[10:15] Microadventures: Yeah. So first of all, you will never have more time than you do right now, or at least you won't have more time until you're old and your knees have packed up. So you will never have more time. Life will never get simpler than it is at the time you are now. Life just gets more complicated and more tangled. So the best time to go is now.

In terms of job type things, we are all going to be working for decades and decades and decades. Certainly in Britain, there's going to be zero pension money left for anyone. We're all going to be working a long time. So I don't think we need to hasten into 50 years of office work or whatever it might be, however exciting and fulfilling that might be. There's time in life to do other things, and it makes sense to do them first. And personally, if I was an employer and I had a list of resumes of people who've got all the same grades, they all fill in the form saying the same stuff, they all done the nice extracurricular things and violin lessons and looked after old grandmas.

And then someone says, and I also took a few weeks, a few months, a few years out to ride my bicycle and go learn about the world and myself. I think that would give you an advantage in any job you try to do.

[11:30] Paul: Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think so many people are scared of taking that first step. And I think you've almost discovered a way to combat these excuses. With the Microadventures, maybe you can tell us how that first came to you. I'm guessing it might have came in one of these conversations you were having like this, and somebody said, well, I don't have enough money, I can't do it now. And maybe you can just tell us what a Microadventure is and how it came to be.

[12:05] Microadventures: Okay, so I spent— after cycling around the world, which took me 4 years, I then spent several more years just chasing big, hard, epic, tough adventures. That was what really excited me, rowing oceans and crossing deserts and stuff. And a few things started to happen simultaneously. One, I started to realize that the, the reason— the, the stuff I loved about these adventures was the same whether I was in the Arctic in Greenland or whether I was in the Empty Quarter in Oman. It was this feeling of of living the life of my choice and setting my own standards and then daring myself to try and match them. This feeling of doing something new and difficult and exciting and fun.

And I realized that all those feelings all came around adventure I could have anywhere. Also at this time, I was starting to get more people getting in touch with me saying, I'd love to do adventures like you, but I don't have enough time. I don't have enough money, and then the thousand other excuses that all of us make because it's scary just to commit and do something. So I started to think, how can I find adventures that show that you don't need a lot of time, you don't need a lot of money? So I started trying to do the stuff that I loved, but in short, simple, local, cheap, affordable ways. So for example, instead of canoeing down the Yukon River, I got some tractor inner tubes and drifted down a river with some friends.

Instead of going on a huge cycle around the world, I walked around London. And I started making them smaller and simpler and smaller and simpler until— and just removing the barriers, removing the excuses down to, well, perhaps the simplest example I could give is that the idea of the 9-to-5 working life really constrains a lot of people. And I understand that. But what about if you flip it around and look at the 5 to 9? So 16 hours a day of at least theoretical, hypothetical freedom. What might we be able to do in those 16 hours of freedom between leaving work and getting back to work?

And an example for myself, it's Monday morning, I'm speaking to you. I had a busy weekend. I've got a lot to do this week. But at 10 o'clock last night, it was pitch black. I shoved a couple of things in the rucksack. Cycled out to the nearby woods, put up my hammock, slept out, woke up with the birdsong, a beautiful spring morning, made myself a coffee in the woods, cycled back home ready to start Monday morning before most people had even woken up.

[14:40] Paul: It seems like a cure for somebody that might in the past need to constantly be on the road taking these trips. How often do you do this?

[14:49] Microadventures: Well, the third aspect of why Microadventures started to become important to me was because finally real life did— has caught up with me. So I'm now married with a mortgage, 2 kids. I don't have a cat, but real life has caught me and grabbed me. And there's good sides to that. But there's also times when I think, man, I just want to hit the open road and go live in Bali, but I can't do that now. So to get my fix, I just go sleep in the woods when life gets stressful, and then I come back feeling a calmer, more patient, better man.

So to answer your question, I do it probably— well, when the weather's good, I do it every couple of weeks.

[15:34] Paul: Do you have examples of people— I, I read a couple of the testimonials of people that have shared their own Microadventures with you. Do you have examples of like really simple ones, especially maybe somebody that you just wouldn't think would be taking something like this and a shift that it helped them take?

[15:54] Microadventures: I have quite a few generic examples in my head of increasing numbers of emails which just aren't diminishing at all of people who are too stressed, dreaming of adventure, got all sorts of problems in their lives that they're willing to pour out to me, random stranger via email on the internet. And things are just made briefly better, or at least put in perspective by the simple act of getting a hammock or a bivvy bag, heading away from their normality, turning off their phone for the night, having a swim in a river, and coming back refreshed. And whether that's overstressed working people, it's parents struggling to get their kids off screens and struggling to connect with their kids. Or office colleagues or just people who are a bit lonely and haven't quite figured out their direction in life.

There's a lot, an increasing number of people going to sleep on hills and swim in rivers, which makes me very happy.

[16:55] Paul: I love that idea. I think when you, on your site, when you talk about the Microadventure, you just start out saying, why not go sleep on a hill? And it's It's so simple, but I think whenever I'm in nature, you just feel connected in a different way that's really just hard to explain and hard to recreate in our modern world.

[17:18] Microadventures: The reason I start with that "why not" is because I get really bored of people's endless barriers and obstacles like, "Oh, I can't do this because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I think the whole idea of Microadventures as a stepping stone towards big adventures, I think The reason I really have come to like it is because it stands for whatever you want to do in life. Even if you have zero intention of going camping and you think that's just dumb, it's just removing the excuses and the barriers and thinking, okay, I can't cycle around the world or whatever my equivalent of that is, but what can I do? I must be able to do something. And then finding the smallest little manifestation of that and getting started. And then from that comes enthusiasm and momentum.

[18:02] Paul: Yeah, it— I mean, in some of my work, it just seems that people are professional sometimes in coming up with the excuses why they can't do something. And I think part of this is because convenience is easy to achieve in a lot of respects, right? And especially when you're traveling now, we have all these apps and it makes traveling almost so smooth. So what's the argument maybe for taking an approach which you might mess up or face a little more uncertainty?

[18:36] Microadventures: Well, I guess just tossing a little grit into the oyster to try and make a pearl. I think I like trying to have a little bit of struggle in my life to try and stretch myself. I also just like things that are a bit miserable and a bit hard, like for example, sleeping in a hammock. You don't get much sleep, so that tonight when I'm in my normal bed in my house, I will I'll appreciate that briefly. I'll remember to be grateful for my life again. And I think that's a benefit of it.

But I think also it's just we become so conventional and we all get in little ruts, whatever rut we are. I don't know, office worker or hipster or goth or whatever rut we end up in life. We trundle down the same old boring ruts once we get grown up because that's just in our comfort zone. Stepping out of that briefly and daring to scare yourself is a really liberating thing that opens up all sorts of horizons.

[19:32] Paul: Yeah, so what have been some of those moments for you? I know you've done some pretty, uh, pretty challenging adventures. Uh, I was watching the trailer of your video about your journey pulling a wagon with another man through the desert. Uh, maybe you could share a little bit about that and some of the challenges you faced and what those moments were like.

[19:57] Microadventures: So yes, I— yeah, the cart you saw, which is a terribly designed piece of engineering designed by me, we dragged it. It weighed about 350 kilograms, so 700 pounds of food and water through the Empty Quarter desert on the Arabian Peninsula. And for years, that was the epitome for me of adventure. It was just doing something that was really tough, really difficult, striving to be elite, to do things that other people wouldn't dare to do. That made me feel good about myself and pushing myself hard. But I did these things for years, and as you do that, you get better at it and you get better at it and you get more comfortable with it.

And so, for example, now, if I had to just get on my bike and cycle to China today, I could I know I could do that quite easily. It wouldn't really scare me, and therefore that isn't actually an adventure for me. That's me being in my own comfortable routine rut. And that actually led me to— so the Microadventures was a way of starting to think differently about adventure. And then more recently, I had a, a really big realization that carrying on just doing tough stuff was not adventure anymore. I needed to come up with a totally different challenge to scare myself again.

[21:16] Paul: Yeah. So what has that been like? What is that leading you to?

[21:21] Microadventures: Okay, so my early inspiration, I talked about these travel and adventure books, and one of my favorite books that I read when I was at university is called As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. And it's this young guy walks through Spain in the 1930s playing his violin, and it's a beautiful, poetic travel book, and it really captured my imagination. And ever since, I thought, I really want to go do that trip myself. However, I can't play the violin or any other musical instrument, and actually, the thought of having to stand up in public and perform terrifies me. It's something I'm really bad at, something I've never done before, and something that really frightens me. And so I kept putting off this idea.

Until I started to have this thinking process about what adventure meant. And I realized that actually, for me now, adventure isn't going off to cycle to China. Adventure is doing something that scares me, which means learning to play the violin. So I had this epiphany on a train, and before I had time to get scared and wimp out of the idea, I got my phone and I quickly emailed a local violin teacher I found on Google. For a lesson. I turned up at her house the next day and I started to learn the violin.

And after 7 months of lessons, which I discovered is way, way, way less than you need, I was absolutely terrible after 7 months. I went to Spain and I started following Laurie Lee's route for a month through Spain. And then the kicker to really make it scary was I left my wallet behind. So no money, No credit card, only the violin playing, only the busking to earn me money. And in terms of what adventure meant, the very first day I stood up in this town square, no money in my pocket, picked up the violin. I'd never played in public before because I deliberately wanted full fear on day one.

And I realized that this moment, I was as frightened— the last time I'd felt this frightened was the day I set off to row the Atlantic Ocean. 4 years earlier. And I found that fascinating, that adventure, rowing an ocean, that's quite frightening. Here I'm standing in a little sunny plaza in Spain, equally terrified, feeling equally that this was an adventure.

[23:41] Paul: Wow. I was a bit scared just hearing that story and trying to picture myself in that moment.

[23:48] Microadventures: Yeah, it's really interesting when I do talks about adventures. You talk about cycling around the world or walking across India and people think, oh, that's quite fun, and they like the stories. But when I start to tell an audience about, imagine standing up in a town square with a violin having to perform and you're really bad at the violin and you have to do it if you want to eat, then you can really see a connection with the audience of people thinking, wow, that is scary. Because we're all afraid of putting our vulnerabilities on show and and we're all afraid of what people might think of us and laugh at us and being embarrassed. We don't seem to grow out of that even after elementary school.

[24:30] Paul: Yeah, it almost seems like there could be a parallel there as well in terms of redefining what success is. And in your case, it's almost redefining what adventure is, right? I think a lot of people I talk to in the business world are so caught up in, "I need to climb the ladder. I need to reach this position," right? And I think I know for adventure athletes, I've run— I forget the name of it. There's a book by Stephen Kotler, The Rise of Superman.

I think he talks about adventure athletes and—

[25:02] Microadventures: oh yes, I've read that.

[25:03] Paul: Yeah, and they can get trapped in needing to do more and more, and when you do that, you're really raising the stakes on like living or dying. So it's fascinating how you've almost redefined like what adventure is in your life and Sounds like you still have some of that like deep desire to be out there in some scary wilderness, but have you thought about like what success is for you?

[25:30] Microadventures: I spent years thinking about success because I jumped on my bike to try and cycle around the world with success being I will make it all the way around the world. So I had 4 years anticipating success, which is really dumb. And quite exhausting. And about 2 years into that ride, I was in Bolivia, up in the high altiplano on a big, huge salt lake called the Salar de Uyuni. It's about 200 miles of salt, freezing cold. And I had my little tent there, 200 miles of emptiness.

I'd been cycling for about 2 years at this point and still therefore had over 2 years to go till the end and success. And I remember walking way away from my tent so it's small in the distance and stopping and looking at it and then turning my back and looking in the other direction and just realizing that I was actually doing quite well. I'd come a long way to get here. I'd cycled for 2 years to get to this point and that really I should congratulate myself and say well done on my progress and not worry too much about the success. And that ever since then, I've really tried in my life to measure progress, not success. And I find that a much more helpful thing to do and also a much better route towards sanity and happiness as well.

[26:50] Paul: So I'd love to shift gears and explore just how you started to think about sustaining this life. It sounded like early in your adventuring, you realized that you weren't going back to be a teacher. And this might be something you want to sustain, right? And it comes back to the age-old question of how do you make a living, right? And I think you had the advantage of being early on. You didn't have an expensive life, but you started about— you talked about just getting started, right?

Creating, writing in new ways, eventually creating videos, experimenting with photography. How have you thought about getting started doing those things and then whether or not you are thinking about how you can make money or making a living?

[27:40] Microadventures: So I began, I began by saving up, just saving, having bar jobs and jobs like that and saving up money for my bike trip. And I did the whole round-the-world trip on $10,000, which is pretty cheap for 4 years. So the first thing about trying to make a living is trying to not spend any money and make your money go far. So while I was cycling around the world, I was raising money for charity. So I did about 300 talks about my adventure, all unpaid during that time. So that was a good apprenticeship of learning to get good at speaking.

[28:19] Paul: So with the speaking, So there's more detail behind that. At first you weren't making money from the speaking, right? So maybe you can give us a little more detail of like, what was the beginning of speaking like? Because I think this is a key point for people is that they only see, oh, I need to become a paid speaker immediately.

[28:40] Microadventures: And do a TED Talk.

[28:42] Paul: You were speaking to anyone, right?

[28:44] Microadventures: My very first talk was in my mom's living room the day before I set off to cycle around the world. So I hadn't even begun. So you can imagine how many stories I had to tell to about 20 of her friends. And I had a world map on a corkboard. So I was doing these talks to earn money for charity, and I often in return got food and lodging for it, which was helpful for me, and connections and contacts. But I wasn't doing the talks to earn money.

I was doing talks for other reasons. But in the process of it, I was getting good at them, and getting good at anything takes a long, long, long time. But the benefit of that meant by the time I got home after 4 years, I had no money, but I knew I now had a good talk I could do. So I started giving talks at schools, elementary schools, high schools, for tiny amounts of money, but enough just to pay for my life a tiny bit. And every couple of months I'd put my fee up by £50, do a few more, put it up by £50, keep going till eventually someone complained and then figured out that was the level I was at. And I just did loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of those to pay for life while I started writing my first book.

I've now written 11 books. I'm still a long way from being able to earn a living out of writing. So that's a that's something you have to do for other reasons than just pure cash. And really, speaking about adventure has been what has gradually become my income, really. In recent years, I've branched out into making films with or for brands, and I'm sponsored by a couple of brands who give me gear and cash. So that's how I pay for my life these days.

But People often see the online adventurer sitting in a nice shed with lots of books on the walls and they go, "Oh, I want to do that," and neglect the fact that you're going to have to put in years and years of really boring work to be able to buy a shed.

[30:47] Paul: Yeah, and I think part of what makes that possible for you is that it's truly what you want to be doing, right? And I think you make the point of this, as long as this is something you truly want to be doing, you can kind of commit to that over the long term, whereas other people, they may be in it for other reasons or it's a short-term thing. That seems to be the thing that really stands out for you.

[31:12] Microadventures: Yeah, when people ask me how do I become an adventurer and earn a living from it, the first thing I say is don't. Go and become a banker, make massive amounts of money, and then just take adventures in your spare time or work 6 months a year. Second option, go and become a teacher, work all year. You get the long 2-month vacation in the summer. Go do something amazing in that and write books in your spare time. Only if you enjoy the whole process of trying to get work and grow work and build a brand and social media and writing and photography and all the package that goes with it should you embark down the route that I go on.

I'm lucky in that I absolutely love almost every aspect of it. Not every aspect, but almost every aspect of it.

[32:05] Paul: Yeah, and you described the process as a very gradual, non-strategic thing, which I think is a great way to describe it. You did smaller adventures and that basically gave you the information that you wanted to do more. I think what holds people back to do these kind of things or even to make simple things like a career transition is they're framing everything as an all-or-nothing choice. So have you seen people go from these Microadventures to wading a little deeper into the, uh, adventuring world?

[32:41] Microadventures: Yeah, I've seen— I think the adventuring world is actually an easier place to take these steps because it's quite clear thinking, oh, I want to row an ocean or cross a desert. So I think it's an easier place to make big choices in life than just in normal everyday lives where people, as you say, are often hesitant to set off down a direction because they see they need this all-or-nothing end result. And I think much more useful is to think, how do I change my now? How do I change what I'm doing now to be something that's enjoyable, sustainable, and interesting? and that then leads on to the next now and the next now and the next now, and it builds up non-strategically, but each moment is trying to do what feels right and useful at the time.

In terms of actual adventures, yeah, loads of people now— and this is something I find quite rewarding out of what's inherently selfish pursuit— lots of people have seen things I've done or read things I've done and gone off and quit their jobs and cycle around the world and things like that, and I find I find that's quite rewarding. I feel quite a responsibility because I'm often saying, oh, adventure is great. And then people go off on their bike and they actually, this sucks. It's really boring 90% of the time.

[33:55] Paul: Yeah. I think the only way to find out is to get out there and do it. Yeah.

[34:03] Microadventures: And I think in the case of adventure type things, I think that's a very good point because You might think, I want to be an adventurer, therefore just get on your bike, cycle to China. If halfway you think, you realize, oh, actually, I completely hate this, then just come home, carry on your life. At least you've tested out that theory. You won't get old living with regrets. You've done it, you've tried it, didn't work for you. Then you can try something different.

I think is that people put so much pressure on themselves that the choice they make has to be perfect and therefore it's easier to make no choice.

[34:40] Paul: So what's the scariest adventure you've done?

[34:47] Microadventures: Fear comes in different forms, so I found deciding to not be a teacher and not be a professional like all of my friends were being at the time and to change direction and go and ride my bike for a few years, I found that process very frightening and the notion of beginning that huge journey very hard. I found different, a more visceral fear. I found being in the middle of an ocean in a large storm, really unpleasant experience. And then I found standing up in a small sunlit plaza in Spain being extremely vulnerable, also very frightening. So there's quite a different way, different ways. Oh, and then last night sleeping in my wood, I got scared about axe murderers.

So I guess there's all sorts of different formats of fear that come from fear of the dark up to fear of what people think about us and then capsizing in the ocean.

[35:43] Paul: Yeah, so I'd love to hit the opposite side of that as well. I think when you were in the video talking about your journey across the desert, you were talking about how you were surprised with the degree of some of the random acts of kindness. Maybe you can share one or two of those stories that really stood out for you.

[36:05] Microadventures: I think anyone who's traveled much in the world will have just experienced countless acts of kindness. And I remember before I was planning my big trips, people used to say to me, oh, you can't go to there. It's really dangerous there. They're all terrorists. They'll all kill you. And I'd get really scared about the world.

And you read some of the newspapers in Britain and it tells you that the world is dangerous and terrifying. And then when you actually step out into it, you find normal, nice, decent people just like everyone is, just trying to get on with their life. And kindness became so— well, I just came to sort of accept, expect it really on my trips because it's just so prevalent in my journeys. Syria is a good example because that now, if you haven't been to the Middle East, it might look like a terrifying war-torn place, but Pretty much every town I stopped in, in Syria, someone would grab me, drag me into their house and force-feed me tea and give me food and want me to stay the night and meet their grandparents. And that's just so common with all the travel experiences I've done.

[37:10] Paul: That's amazing. And you've been writing a book. So what's that book about and what's the story you're telling through that?

[37:22] Microadventures: The book that I've just finished, it's called My Midsummer Morning, and it's the story of my violin trip through Spain. And the subtitle to it is Rediscovering a Life of Adventure. And the reason for that is because it's, on the one hand, I hope, just a fun travel story of some idiot trying to play his violin through Spain and walk for 500 miles. But it was also me trying to get my head straight with the balance between my real life now and the acceptance that I am now a middle-aged dad with a mortgage. And therefore there are good parts to that, there are responsibilities to that. But in my heart, I'm still a 20-year-old vagabond who wants to be exploring the world.

And I found it very difficult at times to try to— for these two aspects of life to fit together. And I found that really hard in recent years. And this trip through Spain was me trying to just work out how in my head I could still live adventurously but also be present and a good dad, essentially.

[38:28] Paul: And touching on that, what advice do you think you're going to give to your kids as they grow up?

[38:34] Microadventures: Well, one of the reasons I went to do that trip was because I'm constantly trying to tell my kids that I want them to be curious and wild and bold. They're the 3 things I always go for. Be curious, be wild, and be bold. I was telling them that, but I wasn't really doing it myself anymore. I realized I'd just become boring and middle-aged, and what I really needed to do is not tell them, but show them. So I went and did that trip partly for those reasons.

But I take my kids camping, but I have no expectations that they will want to go and be adventurous themselves. I don't care what they want to be as long as they choose consciously whatever route they go down and don't just drift down the route that everyone else is doing.

[39:17] Paul: Any thoughts you want to leave us with? Any places you want to point people?