- Activity
- Budget
- Inspiration
written by Greg Dickinson
updated 22.10.2018
Find inspiration and
information for your next trip.
Get a local travel agent to
plan your personalized trip.
Book & travel securely with our money-back
guarantee and local expert assistance.
written by Greg Dickinson
updated 22.10.2018
Former National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Alastair Humphreys is the pioneer of the microadventure. Greg Dickinson caught up with him to discuss walking around London’s M25, cycling around the planet and the joys of sleeping in a bivvy bag.
When I got back I wanted to write a book about it, so to fund my life I started doing talks at schools and got paid a bit. Then I started to think… hey, maybe I can make adventure my life.
I wanted to show that you could still have adventures around those constraints. If you’re unable to spend four years cycling around the world, it’s better to go cycling for the weekend than to do absolutely nothing at all.
If you go and do that once, you then realise it’s much easier to go and have a weekend trip. Then you start to get a bit of momentum, and before you know it you’re speaking to your boss requesting an extended chunk of annual leave.
I was really surprised by quite how much I enjoyed it, and how many similarities the trip had with something like cycling around the world; going to new places, meeting new people, doing something challenging, finding beautiful places to sleep. It was a really stupid thing to do, but I was trying to show that you can find adventure and wilderness anywhere, even in the most unlikely of spots.
People finished work, we climbed the hill, rendezvoused for sunset, had food and a couple of drinks, slept on the hill in a bivvy bag and disappeared the next morning back to work.
The mountains are really big, wild and beautiful but they’re also so tiny that anybody can go up them. From thinking of the UK as being a rubbish place for an adventurous person to live, I now absolutely love it. That’s been a real revelation for me.
If you find it difficult to motivate yourself for an adventure then I’d advocate just sleeping in your garden for one night, just to remind yourself what it’s like to see the stars and hear the birdsong.
Got the microadventure bug? For more ideas, listen to Episode 6 of The Rough Guide to Everywhere podcast. We talk to Alastair about his latest microadventures and our very own editor and Rough Guide to Everywhere host, Greg Dickinson, tries it out for himself.
Alastair blogs about his adventures and microadventures on www.alastairhumphreys.com. His highly acclaimed book, Microadventures, can be ordered through his website (UK) or on Amazon.
Photos by Alastair Humphreys
written by Greg Dickinson
updated 22.10.2018
Plan your tailor-made trip with a local expert
Book securely with money-back guarantee
Travel stress-free with local assistance and 24/7 support