Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1180: 15,000 Miles of Human Powered Fun with Richard Harpham

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Ep. 1180: 15,000 Miles of Human Powered Fun with Richard Harpham · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for adventuring with us, as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Linville.
0:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi friends, and happy presidents day.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a question for you.
0:24
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you afford your adventures?
0:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Richard Harpom and I talk about that a fair deal in today's episode, but it's not the main subject, but it is one that matters.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Because adventures take time, they take gear, sometimes they require travel, and sometimes that travel gets expensive, or if you have a more adventure-focused lifestyle where you're always living the adventure, then how do you afford that lifestyle?
0:54
[SPEAKER_01]: How does your adventure-focused life provide you with the means to live life?
1:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I would love to hear some ideas and see some discussions in the show notes, so please answer the question if you have some ideas for us.
1:08
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you afford adventure?
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, if you know someone that you think would make a great guest for the Adventure Sports podcast, even if that someone is you, please let us know.
1:20
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to make sure that we have a constant full of great content for our listeners,
1:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Please remember to share your favorite episodes with your friends and now on with today's episode.
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, friends.
1:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining the Adventure Sports podcast today.
1:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoy talking about connecting with nature through canoeing.
1:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I have found that however you get on the water, it can be one of the best ways to encounter nature.
1:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll talk more about why during the show today, I have guessed Richard Harpen with us and Richard has 15 years in which they've covered 15,000 miles of human-powered adventures.
2:06
[SPEAKER_01]: and he and his wife Ashley have written a book about it actually great British paddling adventures.
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: They also have some companies that train people in water sports like this and we'll go into all the details but today is about canoeing and connecting with nature but not only that it's also about doing it in a way that makes it difference for other people and rich calls this the inspired life and we're going to get into
2:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, I'm delighted to be here.
2:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm really excited.
2:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, lots to talk about.
2:40
[SPEAKER_01]: People are already saying wait a minute.
2:41
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not an American accent.
2:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So where are you talking to us from Richard?
2:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm in Great Britain and we put the Great in Great Britain and I don't really have an accent per se I mean obviously I sound English but I moved a lot of times and when my early life so if I talk to you for a little while I'll probably develop a twang and you'll go hey is he from my side of the pond?
3:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Richard, you've been canoeing for quite a while now, and you did a lot of adventurous kind of other sorts of athletic endeavors in your life as well prior to this.
3:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you were a rugby player for one, but it seems that you've been active and you've been outdoors for a long time.
3:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you kind of give us a summary of that?
3:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I was really lucky that I don't think I really traveled much as as a youngster and other than all around the UK and we every holiday involved taking the dog maybe a camper van or a car and we would be around Scottish midge or Welsh black fly or something it would be raining, it often rains in Britain with famous for all weather and
3:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I just grew to love being on the hill or being on the water and I joined the local kayak club and so kayaking in the early days everything was fiberglass and we didn't have very much roto-molded kit.
4:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I did a little bit of canoeing and I canoeed in the what we in the UK.
4:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you may call them their grums.
4:16
[SPEAKER_03]: and the aluminium ones that were, and it was super hot, you could fry an egg on it, and it was super cold, you would freeze your butt on it.
4:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just loved paddling, I loved the outdoors, I joined the scouts, and I just grew up.
4:32
[SPEAKER_03]: That was my happy place, being outdoors, my brother and I, and we would always be up to some mischief or other, but we were in the outdoors, it was great.
4:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I lived a parallel life to that, maybe less canoeing, maybe not.
4:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in a town that had a scenic river and canoeing was one of the things we did several times the summer, just, you know, it was just part of everyday life for us.
4:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But more than that, it's being connected to the outdoors.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: What would you say to someone who's not had that experience?
5:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You say, okay, I've had a lifetime outdoors.
5:05
[SPEAKER_01]: This person hasn't.
5:06
[SPEAKER_01]: They say, why?
5:07
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your answer?
5:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think, I mean, I can talk about a bit of research in the UK and I bet it's similar state side, but in the UK, I think it's 18 million people of a population of about 70 million still
5:23
[SPEAKER_03]: have a latent demand to be outdoors.
5:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And in this digital era, this digital overload that sometimes we experience, I think getting into the outdoors, seeing nature, seeing whatever it is an owl, a deer, a bird of prey,
5:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, we have these magic moments that I see a lot of on my expeditions or my wife and I see and I think all of that just infuses into our soul and makes us feel alive, makes us feel temp-feet tall, makes us feel happy.
5:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It is partly the antidote.
5:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think sometimes people say, wow, you know, I don't know where to start and it's that age-old, you know, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
6:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
6:09
[SPEAKER_03]: but also find the local guide, find the local higher place, get somebody to be your handrail, and then you've got that sort of safety net if you need it.
6:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that, you know, I grew up just trying things, gotten into a lot of trouble that way.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But I have learned the value of learning so much more quickly how to do an outdoor sport.
6:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever it is, if you go with someone who knows what they're doing, because you get the right tips to start in the right way and just have a much better experience.
6:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm all about that.
6:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Find somebody who knows what they're doing and see if you can't get along with them.
6:48
[SPEAKER_01]: that I think that's a beautiful way to approach it.
6:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I think take a little bit of time, which is, you know, time is a rare commodity in our busy lives, but take a little bit of time to check that, you know, whether it's exports, club that you're joining, or with a friend, or with someone who is a coach, that, you know, there is that chemistry, because,
7:12
[SPEAKER_03]: um you know we often get people that come to us that have done a lot but somebody has an explain something that's a foundation and you're like come on and wish we'd help them so that they don't walk up a mountain or upper upper hill where in the wrong shoes and jeans and they get wet and the water wicks and they have a bad experience whereas we want them to have a great experience to maybe have a little bit of their Everest you know that moment that
7:40
[SPEAKER_03]: and they feel like they've achieved but not to the point that it jeopardizes safety.
7:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
7:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's let's get a rewind here.
7:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You talk about 15,000 miles of human-powered adventure.
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Explain what you mean by that.
7:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, stepping back into
8:02
[SPEAKER_03]: In 2009, I kind of reached a junction where some things in life hadn't gone according to plan and I dislocated my right knee, it was kind of the last big rugby injury that I thought I can't keep doing this at this level.
8:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And I had a company that had gone bust and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna do something five big charity challenges and they were all kayak.
8:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So I would kayak around a small island off the South Coast of Britain.
8:35
[SPEAKER_03]: That was 85 miles on the sea.
8:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I would kayak the length of the river Thames and we ended up doing that during the blizzards in 33 hours.
8:45
[SPEAKER_03]: 10-6 miles.
8:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Coyack lands into the Isles of Silly, which was 36 nautical miles, 40 miles, basically a 10-hour sea kayak.
8:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Across the channel to France, none of that prepared me for the fifth and the biggest one, roughly a thousand miles from Vancouver on the inside passage to Alaska and to Glycia Bay, which, in all honesty, changed my life, changed my life.
9:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That is an impressive trip, and I have talked to maybe three or four people that have done that inside passage, but everybody has a different experience, and I think most of them are traveling south.
9:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You traveled north.
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll tell us about that one.
9:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You said it changed your life, what was that about?
9:32
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the funny thing is we can talk about a thousand miles, we can talk about 15 thousand miles.
9:39
[SPEAKER_03]: but we could equally talk about one mile of that that was like the Everest mile.
9:44
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
9:45
[SPEAKER_03]: It was so tough, so gritty, so you know, maybe you want to give up.
9:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And there were many moments that were tough.
9:53
[SPEAKER_03]: We got flooded in the middle of the night.
9:56
[SPEAKER_03]: There was basket in the woods and
9:59
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the highest spring tides for 25 years, so we set our alarms.
10:05
[SPEAKER_03]: The alarm was slightly too late, the temp was full of water.
10:09
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a pretty disconcerting science fiction like way to wake up.
10:15
[SPEAKER_03]: There is on YouTube, BBC One have used it, there's a clip of a hump-back whale nearly hitting me and it rolls under my kayak three meters away and my voice goes up.
10:28
[SPEAKER_03]: 27 octaves and you know these moments were incredible and we often said on this trip people would be taking their boats in the fishing boats would be coming in the little day cruisers would be coming in and we'd be going out.
10:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we paddled in big conditions because we'd set a very demanding schedule like roughly 35 miles a day, one rest day every seven and whatever the weather we kind of paddled and I think there were two sayings that really
11:12
[SPEAKER_03]: you know you're just you're not going to win and I think the second saying was this idea of a last mile octopus and we were near catcha can and the Reverend Bob came out to kayak with us we kind of became local news so the Reverend Bob comes out and he kayaks with a six-shooter.
11:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like a six shooter for and he goes, if I get trouble with bears, I've got my six shooter and I was like, no way can you send a guy I could fire around a bear.
11:44
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not happening.
11:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think.
11:46
[SPEAKER_03]: But he made him feel safe and the Reverend Bob said, the last mile up to person is you're just, you know, you're getting close to port, you're getting close to a place where you can rest, you're not while camping and you start to dream.
12:01
[SPEAKER_03]: you dream of whatever the food group that you're missing is, you know, I really want to stay or I want fish and chips or something and the last mile octopus grabs you and it slows you down.
12:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're like, I just not getting there.
12:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not getting there.
12:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, so we had this incredible journey.
12:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And I near the end of that year of doing incredible
12:29
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, I was on a beach near Admiral T. Island, just south of Juno, and I thought I had one little bit left on my iPod.
12:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I was listening to, I can't remember the tune, I had a fire and orcas were patrolling up and down the water.
12:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And I could hear in my head, Darth Vader, this thing that I would have thought, there is not a chance on earth that I don't want this to continue.
12:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And that really was the genesis of many more adventures and, you know, during that time, I then met my wife and adventures with her and essentially we only, we count the ones that, you know, we don't count ones that we repeat something generally, we just count ones that we go, yeah, that's the adventure that's worth the juices worth the squeeze.
13:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, that's fun.
13:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So many things that you listed there.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Work is humpbacks, bears, high tides, flooding your camp.
13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Ha ha ha ha.
13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you did start by saying, it changed your life.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: How did it change your life?
13:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Think that it changed my life because,
13:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it gave me definitely a bit of peace.
13:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I was in my place.
13:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I was where I was supposed to be.
13:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes athletes would call it flow state or in the zone or something.
13:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I just felt alive and it felt like my calling, this is where I'm supposed to be.
14:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And I still feel that now, different pressures, different life things, you know, obviously you can't just disappear.
14:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, in that year, I think I was five months.
14:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You know certainly maybe that was the second year.
14:21
[SPEAKER_03]: One of them was five months on the trail.
14:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, I can't do that every year.
14:26
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, last year I think I was two months camping out of 12.
14:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's still not quite the five-month peak.
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I loved the sound of that one, and I have, I've been in the areas that you're talking about, but I have not seek eye-acted, and it's something that I think sounds so appealing to me.
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So attractive.
14:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And just in the day-to-day experience of it, what's it like?
14:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think certainly, I also love sailing, but I can't afford a yacht.
15:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I can definitely afford a sea kayak, and I think sea kayaking makes the world very accessible to explore, and I often describe it as if you're on a flat river, then you're in a kind of 2D environment.
15:16
[SPEAKER_03]: The river may speed up and slow down, but it's not going to change much.
15:24
[SPEAKER_03]: When you see kayaking, you have 3D, you have wind tide, you have waves, you have breaking waves, that's a 3D environment that's forever changing and I love that that I could visit it today and it would look different tomorrow.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
15:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I could be there and a seal pops up next to me or as happened one time we got chased by sea lions.
15:48
[SPEAKER_03]: That's good on me.
15:49
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so different.
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, is it, will you tell us the story of the flooded camp with the sea coming in?
15:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Why, you said it's a crazy way to wake up.
16:00
[SPEAKER_01]: What did you do?
16:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, so, there's a game we like to play where it's, um, it's not a board game, but it's like find the perfect campsite.
16:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And on the inside passage in particular, you may have a stretch where there's only one
16:16
[SPEAKER_03]: in a rocky area, or any way, only one really good campsite for 20 miles, but sometimes there's lots, and the same when I see kayaked around Malta, in the Mediterranean, and other places, so you're like, is this the campsite for me, maybe?
16:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And you start to look at it, you know, what are the resources, and you can make it again.
16:36
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the view like?
16:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there a cave?
16:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there a lighthouse?
16:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there something?
16:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But in this instance, it wasn't really like that.
16:45
[SPEAKER_03]: It was kind of driftwood.
16:46
[SPEAKER_03]: The big logs all washed up on the shore and depending on the tide, you either have a sludge and a trudge through the mud or you get in and you're making camp.
16:57
[SPEAKER_03]: But there was a lot of basket in the woods and we were like, yeah, I don't really want to be on the bare trail.
17:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Prevention is better than cure.
17:06
[SPEAKER_03]: will camp just short on the beach but we knew it was a high tide so we set our alarms I think for 1 a.m. and I think I woke up at 12 and my partner at a time she was quite light and she floated on her mat and I was sort of underwater because I said hey so I woke up.
17:30
[SPEAKER_03]: What is this?
17:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And our other teammate he appeared out of the dark in his kayak with his poncho top wrapped around him like Clint Eastwood in the High Plains Drifter or something.
17:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And he goes, we gotta go.
17:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, where are we going?
17:51
[SPEAKER_03]: We got to go.
17:52
[SPEAKER_03]: We got to go.
17:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't remember where we were near.
17:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It might have been catch a canal, Prince Rupert.
17:57
[SPEAKER_03]: We got to go.
17:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was like a 75 mile kayak.
17:59
[SPEAKER_03]: We're like, we're not going.
18:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we ended up sleeping on these logs on the like these floating logs.
18:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
18:08
[SPEAKER_03]: It was relatively miserable.
18:10
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think it comes back to this, you know, over time, you could develop resilience and grit.
18:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you could be wet for a while,
18:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And our ancestors, of course, they survived so much more than we generally have to survive now.
18:29
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they were exploring with different maps without the ability to call help.
18:35
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we, by comparison, generally have it easier.
18:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the first humans to come to North America.
18:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They're debates about this.
18:44
[SPEAKER_01]: The accepted story is they travel down the area that you were
18:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Landbridge is there doing it with glaciers blocking off big, big chunks of the land.
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It was an icy cold climate following game, going south.
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But you were traveling through the same area, granted 10,000 years later.
19:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But you still had to endure a lot of the same experiences.
19:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I think that in my world, you know, there's plenty of, and I get it, the world's full of social media and chest beating and first, far this, you know, first to do whatever it is.
19:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's, there's a real beauty in, and I have done races, you know, I've done the Yukon River Quest, and I've done the Mascoca River X, and other canoe and quiet races,
19:38
[SPEAKER_03]: and having time to, um, I suppose connect again, it almost in a communion to the way we did a lot of the stuff that would be campcraft and bushcraft across millennia really.
19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's something about that connecting with how humans have interacted with nature for eons, right?
20:02
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something about it still works and it's still fulfilling.
20:05
[SPEAKER_03]: It does.
20:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Look at the way a campfire is, you know, a campfire can hold your attention better than any TV show.
20:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yes.
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know what's so beautiful about it?
20:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You always see your people's talk, they say campfire talks, or like we're saying they're around the campfire, having a conversation and that goes back thousands and thousands of years.
20:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's where people gather and you're watching the dancing flames, but somehow that just warms, it warms the heart for the conversations that need to be had.
20:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's such a wonderful experience.
20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder how many of our listeners have never done that rich.
20:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I hope that some will hear it and feel inspired to, you know, sit around a campfire.
20:51
[SPEAKER_03]: One thing I feel, I've spent a lot of time in Canada in particular, and I know it's the same in Canada as Northern America where
21:02
[SPEAKER_03]: these sort of camps were the bigger camps where canoe camps and I think I was in Canada when it was 150 year anniversary of one of those camps, Kuwaitan camps.
21:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like actually that really as far as I could understand from the North American continent has been a right of passage for so many that it's still love today, go to a camp.
21:26
[SPEAKER_03]: have your eagle feather when you want to speak the fire and I guess see a bit of how our ancestors would have lived life.
21:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
21:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I highly encourage people to somehow have those experiences.
21:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we have a fire pit in our backyard where several times a year.
21:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, whenever we get the the urge will cook on it, we'll sit around it as a family and we'll just have conversations late into the night.
21:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just a part of living for us.
22:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But people that have never experienced it, it's special.
22:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope that they do.
22:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It truly is.
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're understating it, but we should move on.
22:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You have developed businesses around these things that you love, and you help other people to experience them.
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the main points that you talked about before we started here is being a social entrepreneur and the idea of the inspired life.
22:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Will you explain what these concepts are for us?
22:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I guess I'll flick back in the time travel mode again, okay, I feel like I've got a delorean on hand, but I'm I'm I'm going to go back to 2009 and in 2009 a friend asked me Was I interested in being involved in the Ghana ski team as in Ghana in Africa and wait a minute does this know there?
23:01
[SPEAKER_03]: No, there's no snow, there's no snow.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, this is a ski team where there's no snow.
23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm with you.
23:05
[SPEAKER_03]: No, so he learned indoors in Milton Keynes, which is down the road from me.
23:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, from a country with no snow, with learned indoors, and with no funding, he qualified for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, and people obviously made the comparison between him.
23:26
[SPEAKER_03]: His name was Kwame and Kruma Atchenpong.
23:29
[SPEAKER_03]: and of course no one could easily pronounce that, so they called him the snow leopard, and like cool runnings before him, it became the underdog story of that.
23:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And I sat at that Olympics.
23:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I was the manager of the ski team, which was managing really one person and a coach and a lot of PR and media.
23:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And after that, we thought, well, it would be amazing to pay it forward, to pay forward the kindness that we'd receive from strangers, to make a difference for young people.
24:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And
24:04
[SPEAKER_03]: We effectively created two pathways.
24:07
[SPEAKER_03]: One was an adventure company that is called Canutrail, and I'm proud to say this year already.
24:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I think we're nearly 15,000 activity sessions that we have provided of which.
24:23
[SPEAKER_03]: nearly half a young people, so these young people learning around the campfire, learning climbing, learning paddling, axe-roaring archery, all of those things, but also expeditions, the Yukon, Algonquin Park, a lot of UK expeditions, and the other half of it was the inspired life work,
24:49
[SPEAKER_03]: a kind of life coaching model based around our strengths and with that we've written we're just actually rewriting a fourth book and those books are books that we deliver on our programs for young people generally but sometimes communities and churches and faith and they're all about taking a strengths and building the future you.
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the inspired life part.
25:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's inspiredlife.org and Cadutrale.co.uk as per my heart actually, shameless plug.
25:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Is the sort of work we do and then in between those, we have this thing called adventure school and adventure school is where bit like the camps we're talking about.
25:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We run things like the Duke of Edinburgh, a ward scheme.
25:34
[SPEAKER_03]: We get young people into the outdoors, in particular charities, arm we work with
25:43
[SPEAKER_03]: to see a like bulb moment for those young people.
25:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that if people want to learn more the the websites are canoetrail.co.uk.
25:54
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also rich at venture.com as in Richard, Richard Victor.com, but I guess there's a play on words there I would think.
26:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what is the third
26:09
[SPEAKER_01]: inspiredlife.org.
26:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So these are all places where people can learn more and of course, I'll put this in the show notes.
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you want to find out what Richard is up to with all of this, it sounds really inspiring to me.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Richard, I want to ask a couple of questions about this.
26:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So many people in the world today, they're doing what they can instead of what they want.
26:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And to some degree, we're all there, right?
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's actually there's wisdom in that.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Do
26:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's part of taking the action that gets you to where you want to be, I think.
26:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But that said, we've just talked about 15 years of you building these outdoor focused programs, helping other people doing adventures.
26:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess the first question is, how did you get from an idea to a successful lifestyle of doing these things and reaching so many people?
27:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you've brilliantly teed that up for me to say that there's brains and there's Braun.
27:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I am the excited Peter Pan Braun and my wife is the brains and she is definitely more pragmatic than me.
27:27
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, to the extent that sometimes you'll call it and say well hold on, I would still be writing programs and books without paying a mortgage.
27:37
[SPEAKER_03]: she is way smarter than me.
27:40
[SPEAKER_03]: But I guess that aside, we have tried to, I think, work from a place of plan P passion and to, we both had business experience before, but I think
27:57
[SPEAKER_03]: in what we've done here, we're delivering something we absolutely love and so I think if you do what you're good at and do what you love, that is the first two quarters of building something successful so if someone's got an idea, I've spoken to Billbrett as before, keep hold of something where you're not jumping and you put all your money on red 42.
28:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we're going to be a millionaire by next year, I mean, we're not, and we're not doing it for that reason.
28:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But doing something you're good at and doing something you love, I think means it is that vocation, that calling, you don't feel quite like you're working and the bottom two quadrants of that model are do something that makes a difference and do something that earns you money.
28:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And if I look at my life crazy paving, then sometimes I've been in a place that I've been able to earn good money, but I've not been doing something I love.
28:57
[SPEAKER_03]: for example and there are times where it's not made the difference that I would like it to.
29:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So what we, you know, it doesn't always work but the sweet spot at the moment is the ability to make a difference to other people and earn living and that makes us happy.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: As you were saying that I was thinking about the inside passage from Vancouver North to Alaska and I was thinking about well that's something you're good at and that's something you love and if you just kept doing something you're good at and something you love you'd starve out of you know you wouldn't make it for forever at that rate and a lot of I've heard a lot of entrepreneurs say something well will find something you really really love and just the best at it and in the money will follow.
29:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, hmm, really?
29:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got to be more difficult than that.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the pragmatic step?
29:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how do you begin to monetize doing what you love and making a difference for others?
29:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's, I mean, we, on the inside passage, some, the humpback whale clip got put on BBC One and our local tourist officer for our local authority, our local council said, amazing, you know,
30:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And they said, we will give you, we will find you a grant, we will support you.
30:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, that grant never came and we started, we started with, I think, six canoes and kayaks and one little trailer.
30:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And if we had a really good month, we would maybe earn hundreds of pounds.
30:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So I guess, hundreds of dollars.
30:36
[SPEAKER_03]: My friends in America would describe it as what you've got going on, you know, what's your, not what's your hustle, but, you know, how will you make this work, but we would, in fact, I can tell you the day after we got married, we had to go in the morning and put people on our local river.
30:53
[SPEAKER_03]: to do a little higher trip, and they paid us whatever they paid us.
30:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't remember.
30:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And we were feeling pretty groggy, and we put them on the river.
31:01
[SPEAKER_03]: They probably will never have known that it was, well, we'd probably told them actually, you know, we're just married.
31:07
[SPEAKER_03]: But now we have roughly 25 staff.
31:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a bit seasonal, and we have over 300 craft.
31:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And we have an outdoor center and we have a woodlands.
31:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So we do a lot of bush crafts and a lot of getting people camping and back to nature.
31:27
[SPEAKER_03]: But I guess that has been a journey of step-by-step of trying to stay doing the right things and earning a bit of money.
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So it sounds like a lot of hard work and a lot of wise decision-making.
31:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's her.
31:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm the brawler, remember.
31:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's lovely.
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's lovely.
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's conneutral.
31:53
[SPEAKER_01]: If people want to experience what you do there, it's conneutral.co.uk.
31:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and we're, you know, all the time we're looking at what used to happen was I would off to doing the first five adventures the next year.
32:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought, let me do another five and so I see Cliak to round Malta and gozo in the Mediterranean and I Cliak to round a lot of Scottish islands and eventually the fifth one of that year, the second year, which all of which were raising money for charity in fact, but the fifth one was that I would Cliak and Cycle London to Marrakesh, London to Africa.
32:34
[SPEAKER_03]: and that threw up a whole load more adventures and things and things that went wrong and things that went right and you know some pretty scary moments at times and then it just evolved where I would be writing for magazines and someone would say you know do you want to come and do this race or do you want to do um
32:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, uh, do you want to paddle this area?
33:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So I did a whole lot of stuff, you know, gone quick and park and we now run trips.
33:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So I've gone quick park because I knew the area.
33:08
[SPEAKER_03]: We had done a trip to the Yukon.
33:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I can do the Yukon and that is a place that I can sit in my second home.
33:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been there nice.
33:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I think 10 or 11 times and I love it.
33:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It's, you know, end of the line wilderness.
33:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
33:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Neat.
33:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Boy, I can hear all the people right now saying, I want to go.
33:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to do this.
33:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to, you know, figure this out.
33:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds great.
33:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the gap that most people face and maybe you have a word of advice for people, but it, it's a matter of saying, well, eventually my idea could make enough money to be a lifestyle.
33:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's going to be a time period there when no one knows me.
33:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And no one's calling for trips.
33:50
[SPEAKER_01]: No one wants to be a part of the experience.
33:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And those are the skinny I'd like to say days.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to say months.
33:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But the reality is it's years.
34:00
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you survive those skinny years?
34:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think this idea of, um,
34:07
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, having something going on where you can earn money doing other things.
34:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, over time, I have done all sorts of things.
34:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been a magazine editor, I have written for magazines.
34:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I've done a lot of motivational talking and I suppose I wouldn't say anyone of those has earned me a fortune, but it's kept, you know, kept me afloat.
34:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And part of that, I described, if I was talking to a friend, I would say, keep one hand on the tree before you jump for the next tree.
34:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what I mean?
34:42
[SPEAKER_03]: So the shuffle off the edge, don't jump, or at least make sure you've got to kind of secure
34:49
[SPEAKER_03]: pathway really.
34:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think the other thing is, when I was in business, there was a much misused word which was partnership.
35:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, we're going to do partnership working and often I would describe that as small p, not large p. Small p would mean it was talked about but it
35:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think if you really embrace partnership, we've had so many opportunities where we are effectively providing a great service, but with a minute.
35:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So to give you an example, we do a lot of national shows where we will run the climbing walls or the water sports or something.
35:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And that show may be a hundred thousand people.
35:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're a key cog, but we're not the ones organizing the whole show.
35:49
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a really good example of a partnership approach.
35:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And sometimes that will mean we get PR marketing stuff that we just couldn't do on our own.
35:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what I would say is another useful thing in, you know, identify those key partners and really value them and treasure them and work with them.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Good advice, good advice.
36:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk a little bit more about the inspired life side of this.
36:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I really want to hear more about how you're impacting people positively and you mentioned before we hit record that you've now worked with over 54,000 young people.
36:27
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a lot of people.
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It does.
36:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It does.
36:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us about that.
36:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, some of that, um...
36:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Over the years, a lot of my friends ended up being either extreme sports athletes or Olympians or sometimes there were artists, sometimes there were musicians and they just had this incredible story.
36:50
[SPEAKER_03]: There were great role models for young people to pursue a big dream and we would always say, we had this saying in inspired life, we had two actually.
37:01
[SPEAKER_03]: One is that your future is not defined by your past
37:05
[SPEAKER_03]: your future is not defined by your past.
37:08
[SPEAKER_03]: How would I have envisaged that I would go to an Olympics and manage an Olympic ski team or become a magazine editor or become someone who did adventures for a living if I had gone right back to when I was at school?
37:23
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you want to be?
37:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And I go, oh yeah, you know, I want to do this.
37:27
[SPEAKER_03]: That was never on those, that road map.
37:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And the other one that we often say is dream big, see the possibility for you, and a lot of friends who are Olympians Olympic medalists would kind of have a very similar dream big.
37:46
[SPEAKER_03]: If you can vision it, you can become it sort of statement.
37:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think what often happens is that
37:53
[SPEAKER_03]: um people you talked about hard work I think you know see the possibility then you need some form of plan that will and then action and then from that can become success but it's not going to happen overnight that's the very very small few people that you know wave a magic wand and you know everything happens and falls into place I that's not my story
38:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The one thing that I think a lot about, which I would assume that young adults might be thinking about, you know, they're learning to make their way in life, and especially these days, they work very, very hard to break even just to pay the bills, to keep up, and they would like to put a lot of time and energy in developing that dream that you're talking about.
38:44
[SPEAKER_01]: right.
38:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But they have no time.
38:49
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a 60-hour week commitment to get to work in back and to pay the bills.
38:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And that doesn't leave a lot of time once you take care of a few items around the house.
38:59
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you bridge the gap?
39:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Good question.
39:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I think if I go way back before I was sort of doing the human-powered stuff, what I would often happen was I had a job that had, you know, very much like you said, 60 hours a week and more and I would get to the holiday and I would take a rucksack and I would go somewhere, I would go and walk the incatrail or
39:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I would go and play rugby somewhere like in America, in New York or somewhere else.
39:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I would just embrace these escapes, there were really escapes, they weren't quite the same as it being my whole lifestyle, but it showed me enough that that was worth pursuing.
39:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I think what can happen is,
39:46
[SPEAKER_03]: like anyone who starts a company, you become way more focused on not wasting.
39:51
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we can't waste money.
39:52
[SPEAKER_03]: We can't buy five coffees out at that price.
39:56
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to take a flask.
39:58
[SPEAKER_03]: We can't afford to eat that food in that way.
40:01
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to make a sandwich.
40:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, we're going to batch cook food and we'll take our lunch the next day and my game why wife's brilliant at, you know, in our household, our son, um, my wife and I, that's, you know, that's how we roll.
40:15
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll cook and it will be six portions.
40:18
[SPEAKER_03]: The next day is taking care of.
40:20
[SPEAKER_03]: because we don't have the disposable income necessarily or we don't choose to have that disposable income to burn on things that are, let's say, more consumable.
40:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think, for young people that would be a definite, you know, do we need it or do we want it?
40:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Where are we on that continuum of, do I need the latest phone or do I want it?
40:45
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, well on on that, um, and to give you an example, I cycled the Sahara for £200, um, wow, you know, I, that was the flight and then I, you know, well, count my way around £510 miles of getting some iconic June shots of cycling on a fat bike, and you know, I didn't buy the bike.
41:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I was loaned that, so that's fine.
41:07
[SPEAKER_03]: The shared economy, but I had a great experience
41:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to say there was a time in my life where I said, man, I wish that I could just earn a whole lot less money.
41:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that sounds crazy, but what I meant by that was, if I could get my lifestyle.
41:25
[SPEAKER_01]: two-half of what it costs now, or maybe two-thirds of what it costs now.
41:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I could afford to do so many other things.
41:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I could choose different career paths.
41:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I could start companies because I could live on less.
41:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I could take bigger risks and have more adventures if I could live on less.
41:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I wish that I could earn less money.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that there's an angle there, rich, that you've kind of shared with us.
41:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's choosing a lifestyle that affords you these life experiences.
41:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's a richer way to live.
42:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, there's a lot said about, you know, we've got one life and, you know, how we live it.
42:08
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think in the UK, for example, we have 15 national parks and we have 15 national trails.
42:16
[SPEAKER_03]: There obviously not as long as some other trails.
42:19
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, you can hit the trail for very little money.
42:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
42:26
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a fact.
42:27
[SPEAKER_03]: You could go to, in the UK, you know, you have these, I mean,
42:32
[SPEAKER_03]: things on Facebook where you can go to outdoor gear exchange and you can find something secondhand.
42:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm lucky I get gifted gear, but also I tend to buy secondhand as well.
42:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to pay full ticket.
42:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I have trade accounts in the companies so that helps.
42:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm also Scottish by the sense.
42:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't like paying a lot of money for things.
42:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think you can hit the trail.
43:00
[SPEAKER_03]: You could find ways to get onto the start line of an adventure you want to do for much less than you think.
43:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
43:09
[SPEAKER_01]: there is a way.
43:11
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a way.
43:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And the other thing that I have to point out here, and I'm not meaning to be critical of the outdoors industry, but the outdoors industry is in the business of selling new things.
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And if they have the latest tech and the latest gizmo and the latest gear and the best fabric, and this is when you really need, but it all worked a hundred years ago without it.
43:31
[SPEAKER_01]: People still did the same adventures.
43:34
[SPEAKER_01]: and there's a way.
43:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to have the latest perfect Gizmo to get out there.
43:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Some day you may want that Gizmo because it makes the experience better for you in some way, but you can start much simpler.
43:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, definitely.
43:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, set next to me is a jacket, a bought second-hand on Facebook or whatever.
43:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And I guess it was about 80 pounds.
43:59
[SPEAKER_03]: It's probably a 250 pound jacket, but I'm not $154.
44:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's the kind of thing, isn't it?
44:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, how we value stuff?
44:11
[SPEAKER_03]: How much value do you put on a $2 headnet if you're getting eaten?
44:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you share with us a life impacting story, something, some adventure story that you had somewhere that just stands out to you as, man, that that was amazing.
44:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, sure.
44:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think one that springs to mind is I was very lucky in that I had spent a bit of time in the Yukon and I'd done a thousand mile sea kayak and then I'd canoeed from Whitehorse down to Circle in Alaska.
44:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And that left a gap of 250 miles from Juno to Whitehorse over the chill-cute trail.
44:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought to myself, amazing, I can't leave that gap.
45:02
[SPEAKER_03]: If I join it up, it's 2,400 miles of uncontinuous trail, or I've got 250 mile gap.
45:10
[SPEAKER_03]: and ironically that's not the story I'm going to tell you.
45:15
[SPEAKER_03]: But what it did do we ended up on the lake systems in the Yukon paddling the last bit in pack rafts when pack rafts first came out.
45:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And for me I just look at these things whether it's a standard paddleboard or a pack raft or a
45:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, I'm paddling down this lake with my brother, you know, I've sold him the idea of another great holiday.
45:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It rained on time and avalanche zones and all the rest of it.
45:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And this guy comes the other way in a boat fishing and he says, ah, you only come here when the weather's good and it turned out it was a guy I knew.
45:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is the one guy that I know in the Yukon and I've met him in the middle of the wilderness.
46:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It was weird.
46:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And he said, you want to come in and
46:10
[SPEAKER_03]: and he told me about a first nation tracker called Alex van Biber who in 1943 had led this expedition through the McKenzie mountain range for 42 days with I think 12 days sub-minus 50.
46:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
46:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, what a great story.
46:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, I ended up meeting an interviewing Alex van Biber.
46:38
[SPEAKER_03]: He was still alive then at 98 with two broken ribs, still hunting in the Yukon winter.
46:47
[SPEAKER_03]: He was tough as old boots.
46:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And he told us about their story.
46:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And we tried to follow in his footsteps a few years later.
47:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And the idea was we would follow his route, this historic route from 1943, 50 miles through to Norman and I think one thing that taught me was if you push
47:15
[SPEAKER_03]: hard enough, you know, to be at the edge at the limit, eventually it'll push back, and that adventure taught us a lot.
47:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It was psychologically scary.
47:29
[SPEAKER_03]: We were at one point something like 200 miles from the next living person.
47:35
[SPEAKER_03]: We were pretty much the coldest place on
47:46
[SPEAKER_03]: We felt that we had reached our own limit of human powered endeavour really and you know we were we were skiing and pulling pokes man hauling our own body weight and more on a frozen river and then every so often you get to these open water traces at minus 50 and wonder this terrifying thought of you know if I fall through the ice here
48:11
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no coming back, you know, to me.
48:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
48:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It was pretty, yeah, pretty gnarly, as we would say.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You told that story in such a gentle way, but it sounds terrifying, it really does.
48:24
[SPEAKER_01]: 50 degrees below zero.
48:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Exhaustion, so far from help.
48:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you ever get to the point where you just thought, hmm, this might be it?
48:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We may not make it.
48:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I've had that a couple of times.
48:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, I mean, what happened was on day four, so you spent a lot of time with buddy systems there.
48:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So I would look at your ears, your nose, check.
48:50
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we haven't got frost nap frost bite.
48:53
[SPEAKER_03]: But on day four, my brothers' feet were numb and there were three of us, Simon, who is an ex-rawering, ex-special forces, myself and my brother.
49:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, I dragged my brother along for another holiday and he's toes were numb and we discovered that it was a start of frostbite and there was no logical explanation other than he used
49:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But we had to have him extracted and we then kept going up the river after he'd gone.
49:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But I remember when he, you know, skidoo's arrived and took him and we then carried on.
49:35
[SPEAKER_03]: This feeling of desperation, isolation, and a genuine,
49:46
[SPEAKER_03]: fear that you know we were taking ourselves in a place like people do on Everest I suppose into the death zone if this goes wrong you know it's going to unfold quickly and in the end we made a decision that we weren't going to be able to make it through the mountain ranges or if we were going to do it it was going to be all or nothing does that make sense you are literally putting your
50:15
[SPEAKER_03]: into the mixer and going, I'll see, you know, heads I win, tails, you lose sort of thing, you know.
50:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are high stakes, rich.
50:23
[SPEAKER_03]: High stakes.
50:23
[SPEAKER_03]: So, in the end, we found a deserted cabin and what a difference it made to be able to have a fire and have some warmth because we were living in tents, you know, right?
50:36
[SPEAKER_03]: We could get the tent to minus 20 with two stoves going.
50:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And one stove was leaking fuel because it was so cold that the seals had shrunk in the cold.
50:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's quite disconcerting when you can see fuel spilling and then at the other end something super red hot.
50:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course we're burning about 6,000 calories so the exhaustion levels were high.
51:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we made this cab in our kind of home and we explored mainly, you know, day trips from there out skiing into the wilderness.
51:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we were in the wilderness anyway, but, and it was an extraordinary time and remember at the end of it, wondering how Alex would have viewed it.
51:23
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, this was a guy who
51:26
[SPEAKER_03]: was one of Canada's most decorated outdoorsmen.
51:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And he was very humble and he was very gracious with his time for us when we did the interviews with him.
51:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think I got to the place, the acceptance that I think he would have been okay that we had tried.
51:41
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I mean, I don't think he would have wanted us to die to write.
51:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something to be said for that.
51:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Many people do die trying when they're pushing the envelope to that degree.
51:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're the ones who don't tell the stories.
51:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, at least I'm in a cell to story, right?
51:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You're here to tell the story.
51:58
[SPEAKER_01]: The ones that survive are the ones that are still here to tell the story.
52:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's very important because we don't want to reach beyond
52:07
[SPEAKER_01]: our ability or beyond our preparation or beyond, you know, sometimes, I mean, Mother Nature will always win if you reach far enough.
52:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like you said, you know.
52:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, on the London to Marrakesh trip, there is some footage on our, on the company YouTube channel at Cadoux Trails, and there's footage of a
52:32
[SPEAKER_03]: We've break and even now my wife's like, no, no, you are never doing that again.
52:39
[SPEAKER_03]: You are so stupid.
52:41
[SPEAKER_03]: But I mean, it was the closest thing to insanity that, and I think the ski to the edge was more psychologically terrifying because it was day after day.
52:54
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, if you took your hand out of your glove, you had less than five minutes before the inner glove meant frost snip.
53:01
[SPEAKER_03]: We're walking along the frozen river and the Wolverine comes the other way because it's not expecting to see us.
53:06
[SPEAKER_03]: You come to another bit where a caribou is being whacked by the, you know, that we're on the wolf highway following the walls who were smart, you know, one follows the other.
53:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That was deeply psychologically terrifying.
53:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I think in a different way, sea kayaking out into four meter waves in the Atlantic was,
53:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess a different version of insanity and, you know, we live to tell the tale.
53:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's kind of amazing.
53:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like the idea of people risking their lives, but at the same time, when I reflect over my life and I think of the times where I had the thought, will I get through this one?
53:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like, I may not get through this one, but then in retrospect, when I look
53:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's worth pursuing those, but it will happen to you eventually.
54:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And when it does, I, you come out the other side and you're kind of a different person.
54:07
[SPEAKER_03]: He said he value life, don't you?
54:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
54:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So Richard, we've already burned through our time, but I would like to close it out this way.
54:19
[SPEAKER_01]: What is your why?
54:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you do these things?
54:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you do these things that are so difficult?
54:27
[SPEAKER_01]: into some degree risky.
54:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what is your why?
54:30
[SPEAKER_01]: What drives you?
54:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Really good question.
54:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I played rugby for 23 years all around the place.
54:36
[SPEAKER_03]: That's an amateur level, but a reasonable level.
54:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was something great about rugby.
54:41
[SPEAKER_03]: You get knocked down, you get up again, you make tackles, you take tackles, you, you know, those this real camaraderie.
54:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think,
54:49
[SPEAKER_03]: My adventure, my bigger journeys coincided with that, not being able to play rugby, but I think both things gave me a real freedom from all the other stuff in life where you're consumed by everyday things.
55:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And in particular, I mean, my wife regularly informs me, you know, I always
55:17
[SPEAKER_03]: you're you're you're pretty hyper but I think when I was playing rugby and when I'm on the trail all those thoughts that my brain is wired to connect all the time they calm into a place of me delivering or you know taking the next step the next paddle stroke the thousand paddle stroke but whatever it is and I think that is good for me I think it's good for most people to
55:44
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, we've all, everybody has some issue or other worry and I think when you're in this much pure headspace of, you know, it's me walking, hiking, biking, kayaking, canoeing, horse riding, whatever it is, I think it just takes us back to our, like we've said already, our ancestors, um, and it just, I don't know, you feel alive, don't you?
56:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, inspired life.
56:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Inspired life.
56:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That's beautiful.
56:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you very much for sharing with us all your adventures and I'm inspired.
56:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many things that I would love to do.
56:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I've done a lot, but it never ends a list is the bucket list is long.
56:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a bottomless bucket.
56:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's interesting because it's just in talking.
56:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, I wonder whether we'll be somewhere where we could be in a canoe together or in a kayak together or you know, and I love that idea of synchronicity and connection.
56:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
56:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Like minded, we can do something that's just different and cool and why not?
56:50
[SPEAKER_01]: and why not have the life experience?
56:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so awesome.
56:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So how can people learn more?
56:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go over the details again and how they can reach you if they want to.
56:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, well, in SpideLife has a lot of free resources that we can share, so we have different models that are well-being, planning, mapping out ideas that help us achieve goals.
57:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And you could email in, so there's an email on the website, inspiredlife.org.
57:17
[SPEAKER_03]: canoe trail is all about adventure activities for people of all ages are oldest on expedition last year was 86 he canoeed three days down a river in Britain with us and our youngest was well youngest on expedition was ten youngest on our programs as five
57:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So all ages, you know, pretty much.
57:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's conu-trail.co.uk and then my own random walk of, you know, from Olympics to writing books to magazines to TV presenting is richadventure.com.
57:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And I guess the only one we really do any up-to-date social media on is conu-trails because we're quite busy out there.
58:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, end your book.
58:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Well yeah thanks for that.
58:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Great British paddling adventures and that is really a guide book but written with love and care around 50 different paddling experiences you've written by it's probably about 100 days of paddling because each one has paddling a bit further or do a multi-day trip or something so it has multi-day trips on Scottish rivers and paddling across
58:31
[SPEAKER_03]: different trips and it will definitely get you out there.
58:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh that's beautiful and you wrote this with your wife, Ashley.
58:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I did and it was a weird time because it was as we came out and looked down here and then the kind of COVID thing that we all think about and we foster dogs.
58:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So if people do buy the book you'll see lots of random dogs that are in the canoes that are going down rivers or on paddle boards or whatever it was funny.
58:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a lot of fun and the name of the book again is great British paddling adventures and it will get you out there.
59:05
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what you said.
59:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I did say that.
59:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You know that's our tagline for ending the show.
59:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just going to spring off of that.
59:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone.
59:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you Richard.
59:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Very much.
59:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone listened to what Richard has shared.
59:17
[SPEAKER_01]: He gave a lot of great advice and maybe it will help you to get out there and have some fun.
59:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks a million.