Last week I had the pleasesure of attending a session by Alastair Humphreys, micro adventurer at the Capgemini offices as part of sustainability day.
I was uber excited, as I had discovered Al a few years ago and subscribed to his blog and earlier this year finally read one of his books, My Midsummer Morning (link), which is fricking excellent, relatable and inspiring. So seeing him in person and getting to shake his hand, I went all fan boy excited, and invited him to my podcast.
In the book he set himself the challenge of walking across Spain roughly following the route Laurie Lee wrote about in his book As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (link), with only a violin to busk with to provide food. When he decided to do this, he could not play the violin.
His premise around life is to build in small adventures into our daily lives rather than planning and saving time for that adventure of a lifetime.
Following the APM Conference Projects for a Better Future, equally inspiring, I have been considering changing my approach to travel to reduce my carbon and one was to cycle to my local town where I drive every fortnight to work out of a coffee shop rather than by normal home office. So I planned to do that on Friday. Life got in the way of that so plans adapted.
My new plan was to drop my daughter into town, then either go for a walk to a hill that we used to frequent as a kid. Take my guitar,a pad and a pencil and try to write a song or drive a little further and wander round a woodland and do the same.
Once I parked up and got some lunch and did a bit of admin (being a grown up sucks) then I adpated again and decide to walk to the woodland and play my guitar….while walking along, When I mentioned this to my daughter later on she said “You are just like the cockeral from Robin Hood” and my wife just said “I hope no one I know saw you?”
Why are you doing this I hear you say and who gives a flying fig what I am up to. Well, in short no one else, just me. However I have been thinking about how I can make myself do this kind of thing everyday, maybe not the 6 mile walk I ended up doing and getting sore feet as my ‘walking’ sandals are not that cushioned or my feet are not tough enough, not for me to say.
My bright idea is to create a microadventure section of my website and blog about the microadventures every day, even if no one reads it, it will help hold me to account. So here is number one. A bit later than planned.
On Saturday, my sore feet stopped me from doing much, but I still managed to have a walk around a local town I do not go to often and popped to a guitar shop I had been meaning to go to and a tiny walk along a section of canal seeing pond skaters and water lilies. When I met back up with my wife and eldest daughter, they were sat by the canal cooling their feet in the water, having a microadventure of their own. I commented about it to them, but it went right over their head.
I am finishing this off on Wednesday morning, but hopefully, I will be a bit quicker in getting something written.
