I’m Alastair Humphreys, adventurer, book writer, and overexcited sender of four different newsletters. Nobody needs that many emails from me!

You’re reading Shouting from the Shed. Please check it’s the one that suits you best – or switch to a better fit:

1. Shouting from the Shed – my news and interesting bits & bobs I find.
2. Adventure + Purpose – how can those of us who love the wild world do our bit to fix it? Subscribe here for a Saturday read.
3. The Doorstep Mile – helping you live a little bit more adventurously in everyday life. Get it every Monday, here.
4. Ask An Adventurer – how I build a career as a solo creative. Tips every couple of weeks.

It is the season for getting on your bike, making plans for weekend microadventures, or at the very least squeezing in 15 minutes to sit under a tree in your lunch break to notice the magnificence of May. Send me a photo!

Thank you so much to all of you who help support these newsletters via Patreon and keep the metaphorical lights on and the newsletters going out to 15,000 readers.

If you enjoy this newsletter, please forward it to five friends. I’d love to find 5,000 new readers this year. If you don’t enjoy it, please click ‘reply’ and let me know how it could be better!

• 🎤 I used to love recording my Living Adventurously podcast, so I was very pleased to have an excuse to dust off the microphone and chat to Craig Mod about his long distance walks, books, discipline, design, and nerdy newsletters. (There’s 65 other interviews to dip into here.)
• 🏃‍♀️ Jasmin Paris and the Barkley Marathons. A wonderful film about wonderful people, starring an incredibly inspiring woman.
• 📖 The Story of the Ice Balloon – The line between courage and folly is a fine one.
• 🚶 Karl Bushby Begins Home Stretch of 27-Year, Round-the-World Walk. Amazing that he is still going! I ‘overtook’ Karl whilst cycling through Alaska in 2004. I’m now gently eating toast. He’s still marching across continents! 🤯
• ✂️ No Mow May is great for nature and a nice excuse to do less gardening this month.
• 🐱 The freedom to travel: Discover free & unique homestays around the world, in exchange for caring for adorable pets.
• 🌴 Do you know someone extraordinary? Nominate them for the Venari Partners Challenge to the Jungle! It’s a chance to give individuals who have had a tough time a break and  to raise money for their chosen charity.
• 🥾 The Right to Roam campaign now has a West Yorkshire group if you’d like to get involved.
• 🤓 I’ve been finding the app Otter really, really useful for dictating book chapters, and also for producing summary notes after Zoom meetings.
• 💣 However stressy your day feels, it’s actually pretty chill compared to this high-stakes Russian stuntman! 😀

Let me know if you have a relevant project that my readers would appreciate.

Here’s what you guys have been up to recently:

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• The Glorious, Almost-Disconnected Boredom of a Walk in Japan: “I have configured servers, written code, built web pages, helped design products used by millions of people… I can’t help but feel that I am the worst version of myself, being performative on a very short, very depressing timeline. A timeline of seconds.”
• “Wanted: desert island resort in Maldives seeks barefoot bookseller” — the dream job?
• Alfred Wainwright’s coast-to-coast walk is to be made into a beautiful National Trail.
• “It’s a totally pointless mission, important only to me, but I still push myself hard every day to do the best that I can do, and succeed on my own terms.”
• OK, I feel a bit of a wally about this, but I’m now available for personalised birthday video greeting messages.

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• There is so much good news in the world — useful ammunition against the curmudgeonly complainers at your Christmas dinner.
• A fascinating look into the world of origami (honestly).
• Lazy: a manifesto.
• A randomly selected collection of the ‘Best Bits’ articles from my blog. Different every time you dip in…
• If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, you could do a lot worse than climbing a tree once a month. (It need not be as big as this one.)
• Barbara Hillary has died. She was the first Black woman to reach both poles, doing so in her 70s after deciding she wanted a little adventure in her life.
• A hypnotic live stream of the Earth from space, as seen from the International Space Station.
• Watch the International Space Station pass overhead — it’s the third brightest object in the sky and easy to spot if you know when to look up.
• A beautiful gallery of expedition photography from the Arctic Ocean.

(If you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here.)

Cheers,

Alastair

After years of expeditions all over the world, adventurer Alastair Humphreys spends a year exploring the small map around his own home.

• Would you like to try out my other newsletters: The Working Adventurer, The Doorstep Mile or Adventure + Purpose?
• I have four podcasts you can listen to: Living Adventurously (a series of interviews), Adventure + Purpose (me trying to figure out my life), There Are Other Rivers (a story about walking across India), and The Doorstep Mile (a friendly kick up the bum).
• I’ve written 16 books, for both adults and children. Hopefully one of them might appeal!