Once you decide that you want to go on adventure, there is an important thing to do before you even start thinking of ideas. The first task is to block off as much time as you can manage in your diary. Defend this with your very life!

Next: get saving as much money as you can!

OK, you’ve done the two hardest parts for making big adventures happen. It’s time now to make a cup of tea, get out a notebook and start asking questions to help you generate ideas. Turning an empty calendar and a lack of direction into an exciting, rewarding, challenging and potentially money-generating expedition is both easy and difficult. 

You are starting from fresh, with all the world before you: what a treat! I begin by writing all the places I’d love to go. Alabama, Bangladesh, Yemen, Zimbabwe… The traveller in my heart drools at the possibilities! But it feels a bit overwhelming as well. What if I make the wrong choice? What if I never get to Ouagadougou?

But it is easier than you might think to narrow down your options to a level where you can start to make decisions. Eliminating what you can’t do or don’t want to do is really helpful. Far from making me sad, this simplification brings a lightness and enthusiasm for what is still available. Nowadays, I know that I no longer wanted to fly to an adventure. This instantly narrows down my options.

Consider different means of transport (bike, boat, boot), different styles of journey (light and fast or slow and chatty) and different ways of possibly telling the story afterwards (book, film, podcast, social media, talk). All of this comes down to personal preference. Ask yourself questions to work out what you really want to do and eliminate what you don’t want or cannot achieve.

As well as consciously trying to carve out periods of adventure, I’d also encourage you to seek out adventure wherever you happen to be. Many opportunities arise when you stop thinking in terms of ‘adventure time’ versus ’rest of my life time’.

Back when I used to travel to lots of speaking engagements, I had many fantastic experiences by trying to think adventurously about what could otherwise have been fairly average ‘business’ trips (airport, nice but same-y hotel, nice but same-y food, do my talk, go home). It is so much more fun to trade the hotel for a nearby hill. I have done this in places as diverse as Barcelona, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Singapore and Scarborough.

At the back of my mind, I am always looking for adventure, concocting ideas or making mental notes (or actual scrapbook notes) of places I’d like to go. Just yesterday, whilst researching something on Google Maps for a book I am writing I ‘dived in’ with the brilliant Street View mode and found a glorious river swim spot in the Dordogne. Similarly, every time I spot a river on my SatNav or cross a bridge on a train my ‘river radar’ starts to ping!

Spin the globe and jab a finger. Take a train to a town you have never heard of, explore it then cycle home. Be rash and random and spontaneous. Roll a dice, toss a coin, take a chance.

Use Flickr to fire your imagination. Read Sidetracked and some cheap old National Geographics. And, of course, read lots of travel books. One of the reasons that I love having shelves of real books in my shed rather than just a Kindle is because seeing and feeling the books helps fire my imagination. When I am beginning projects, I always pull out every relevant book, make piles on the floor and thumb through them to look for connections and ideas. It never fails.

To demonstrate this method, let me close my eyes and pluck two books at random from my shelves. They are A Walk Along the Ganges by Dennison Berwick and One on One. 101 True Encounters by Craig Brown.

Haha! I’ve made things tricky for myself here… OK, stream of consciousness typing: an old book about walking the length of a holy river in India and a clever book about a famous person who met another famous person who met another famous person and on and on goes the chain…

Well, this would be a lovely idea for a story of a long walk. Focus on telling the story of a person you meet at the beginning. What connects them to the next person whose story you tell? Write a whole book based on 20 thorough true encounters. Make it about their stories and have the river and my own adventure as the thread that holds it together. I actually really like this idea!

But I have already walked one river in India. What other holy rivers are there? (Pause to Google…)

I’ll take the first entry on the first page I opened: the Beki River. I have never heard of it! (Pause to click on the link…)

‘Beki River, also known as Kurissu River in Bhutan which comes from Himalayan glacier. Beki River is one of the right bank tributaries of the mighty Brahmaputra River. It touches flows from Bhutan touching Mathanguri, Naranguri, Khusrabari, Valaguri, Mainamata, Udalguri, Barpeta Road, Nichukha, Sorbhog, Kalgachia, Balaipathar, Kharballi, Bardanga, Kamarpara, Srirampur, Daoukmari, Jania, Chanpur, Rubi, Sawpur, Gobindapur, Moinbari and Balikuri.’

Amazing! Gosh, those names just make my heart zing with anticipation. (Pause to Google what my new river actually looks like…) I’m sold! What a wonderful journey that would be. And I can definitely envisage how telling the story in this way could make for an original and fascinating book.