• I’m interested in how far ahead you are planning the next 1, 2, 3 adventures. Are you always planning multiple things? – Fraser
• Where do you get your adventure ideas from? I know you’ve recreated a couple. – Andrew
• How do you ‘come up with’ adventures? And how do you pick your next adventure to challenge you even more than the previous one? – Anne

Hopefully this walk-through of the way I come up with ideas might get your own adventure cogs whirring…

• Cycling round the world: I’d done some test trips already: 6 days cycling round Scotland and down to Yorkshire (exhausting!), the spectacular Karakoram Highway, Mexico to Panama and Buenos Aires to Lima.
  So I knew that I wanted to do more cycle touring. I accepted that I’d need to do it alone (though I kept scrabbling around to find a companion through nervousness about being lonely). And I was ready to go bigger than I had done before.
  From there the idea just spiralled, really: “maybe I could cycle to India? If I get to India I might as well carry on to Australia. If I get to Australia I’m halfway around the planet; I might as well keep going. If I’m going to cycle round the world I want to do the job ‘properly’: I should ride the length of the Earth’s three main landmasses.” [There’s a map of my eventual route here.]
  I’ll summarise this technique as “Test a small idea, then grow it to the limits of your enthusiasm (and budget and time). Go big to avoid future regrets.”
  
• The Marathon des Sables: This was my brother’s suggestion. He thought it would be a useful chat-up line. I was looking for a challenge and the self-proclaimed tag of the “toughest race on Earth” piqued my curiosity and ego and overcame the stonking price tag. “Adventure as challenge and pub-boasting-fodder.”
• On foot through India: I’d never been to India, I’d never done a long walking journey. So far, so easy. But, where to go?! There are a million lifetimes’ adventures to be had in India. I could have become paralysed by choice. I narrowed it down quickly by the Goldilocks Method: not too far for the time I had available, not too short, just right. After that I only had to pick a suitable river to follow (following a river is always a good idea for a journey) and began. “Adventure through a process of elimination.”

–An absolutely pointless, not very good, and excessively time-consuming diagram.–

• The South Pole: this is the biggest project I have been involved in that wasn’t ‘my’ baby. It is also the only one that I did not see through to completion. I suspect there’s a strong link between those two things… This idea began with dreams of Antarctica having read loads of polar literature. I knew that I did not have the credentials or the type of character needed to raise the enormous sponsorship sums required for a polar expedition.
  So I began looking for an existing project I could get involved with, initially via the RGS. Because of my four-year bike trip I began making friends with lots of different folk in the adventure ‘scene’, including Ben Saunders who was plotting an audacious return journey to the South Pole. Long story short: I partnered up with Ben, we spent 5 years futilely chasing sponsorship, I quit the team, Ben found the cash and a new partner and headed off down South. 😀 “Adventure through joining someone else’s idea.”
• Iceland: Pick up a map and dive in. ‘Read’ it like a book, searching for patterns, oddities, round trips, beginnings and endings, mysteries and uncertainties. Look for where you have never been; perhaps even look where nobody has ever been. Look for where people have been and told their tales, then tweak their story to create your own. Look, look, look and you’ll find ideas galore.
  The idea of crossing Iceland came from a map: oh look, a conical-shaped country of manageable size. What if I started at one shore, went up to the high land in the middle, then down to the other side? Beginning and finishing an adventure at the sea is always satisfying.
  Once I had the framework for the trip I could fill in the details according to my whims: why not packraft the ‘downhill’ section? Why not carry a month’s food supply to make it all pleasantly self-contained? “Pick up a map and start scheming.”
• Rowing the Atlantic: In a similar vein to a polar project, I knew that I didn’t have the logistical gumption to ever put together an Atlantic row by myself. Therefore when I received an email out of the blue asking if I fancied joining an up-and-running expedition that was due to depart mere weeks from now, I knew this would be my only chance to row an ocean. I was more than happy to join someone else’s project and just do what I was told to get the job done. So I said, “yes” even though I was busy etc. etc. “Seize opportunities at the expense of regrets, even when they are inconvenient or pricey.”
• The Empty Quarter desert: An attempt to replicate a spellbinding story I’d read in a book. Inspired by Wilfred Thesiger, I had dreamed of this trip for years. But the logistics, faff, and expense of dealing with camels kept putting me off. So in the end I accepted my limitations and went for the dumb human-camel approach. “Pragmatic compromise based on a hero’s wonderful journey.”
• Busking through Spain: Another trip inspired by a book that I loved. But this time with zero compromise on the initial premise. This trip was seeking a different set of challenges to the usual adventures I went on. “Ask what living adventurously means to you these days. Go and do that.”
•  Walking around the M25: I hate the M25. Everyone does. Its humdrum tedium is the very antithesis of ‘adventure’. And yet, at the time, I was becoming increasingly convinced that ‘adventure’ was more about your attitude than your latitude. In which case, could I find adventure in the least-adventurous place I knew? “Adventure via hypothesis. Imagine how something not obvious might pan out.”
• Packrafting to Muckle Flugga: I was listening to Test Match Special on the radio when the lighthouse keeper at Muckle Flugga was interviewed. I had never heard of Muckle Flugga. I learned that this was the northernmost tip of the British Isles. Somewhere extraordinary in my own country that I had never even heard of? I was hooked. “Adventure hatched through curiosity. Look close to home for newness, surprise, and a romantic-feeling quest.”
• Suilven: My favourite mountain –a stunning, jagged shark fin– that I had often looked at but never got round to climbing. A great friend who was always up for adventure if I came up with the ideas and sorted the boring logistics. And then just a greedy feast like when you put chocolate ice cream on top of strawberry on top of raspberry: pile all my favourite means of transport on top of each other and I was left with a pleasing-sounding mission. To get from central London to a tent on top of my favourite mountain by sleeper train, bicycle, packraft and boot. Perfect! “Think of the places you love, the people you love, the adventures you love. Mix them together and make them happen.”

I hope that these examples answer Anne’s question about how I make the next adventure challenge me more than the previous one. If I was a specialist I would need to search for something higher, harder and faster every time. But because I am a generalist, I am able to make the next adventure more challenging by making it differently challenging. That is really important for keeping adventure fresh for me.

The first task is to block of as much time as you can manage in your diary. Defend this with your very life!

OK, you’ve done the two hardest parts for making big stuff happen in life. It’s time now to make a cup of tea, get out a notebook and start asking questions.

Turning an empty calendar and a lack of direction into an exciting, rewarding, challenging, money-generating expedition is both easy and difficult. (I’ve written before about making stuff happen.)

This is the point I was at when trying to plan a month-long adventure for the summer of 2019. I was starting from fresh, with all the world before me: what a treat! (By the way, if you’re still reading and this all feels relevant, then you would definitely benefit from my Doorstep Mile newsletter.)

I began by writing all the places I’d love to go… Alabama, Bangladesh, Yemen, Zimbabwe… The traveller in my heart drooled at the possibilities! But it feels so 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 helpful. Far from making me sad, this simplification brings a lightness and enthusiasm for what is still available.

In this case, I knew that I no longer wanted to fly for an adventure. Which instantly narrowed down my options.

I began considering different means of transport (bike, boat, boot), different styles of journey (light&fast, slow&chatty), and different ways of telling the story (book, film, social media, podcast). Here are some of my scratchings at that time.

1. How much time do you have?
2. How much money do you have?
3. Where do you want to travel?
4. How do you want to travel?
5. Do you want to go alone or with a friend?
6. Do you want to tell the story of the trip or not? (I’ve argued before that nobody should blog on their first trip. And here’s some advice about getting started on your first expedition. Here are some other pros and cons of deciding to tell your tale. Here’s some thoughts on different ways to tell your story. And here is How to Tell a Bad Adventure Story on Social Media.)
7. What is more important to you – the Adventure or the Story? That will clarify many decisions.

If you like asking questions such as these to narrow down your choices when the whole world is waiting, here are 36 more. I’ve also written in more detail about the nuts and bolts of planning the trip.

Back when I used to fly to lots of speaking engagements I had many wonderful experiences by trying to think adventurously about what could otherwise have been fairly boring ‘business’ trips (airport, nice but same-y hotel, nice but same-y food, do my talk, hotel, airport, home). So much more fun to trade the hotel for a hill. For examples see: Barcelona, Mallorca, Hong Kong, Singapore, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Scarborough, Scotland.

At the back of my mind I’m 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! Here’s a dip I found on a recent bike ride:

Ordnance Survey maps are a treasure trove of ideas. (You can use all of them for free on Bing maps.) Finding a location for a microadventure is a fun puzzle not a headache (here’s how I do it). Where’s the Path helps you translate a nice-looking curve of contour lines into a magnificent spot to pitch your tent (Double check it here). Elite climber Paul Ramsden sniffs out his next challenges on Google Earth.

Use Flickr to fire your imagination. Read Sidetracked and some cheap old National Geographics. Watch these adventure films. Come to the next Night of Adventure.

And –of course– read, read, read. If you’re new to adventure literature, begin here. 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, thumb through them and look for connections, serendipity and ideas. It never fails.

To demonstrate this method, I closed my eyes and plucked two books at random from my shelf:

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 – their stories with the river and my own adventure a mere gossamer thread holding it all together. I like this idea!

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

“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.

A quick Google to see what my new river actually looks like… I’m sold! What a wonderful journey that would be! And I can totally envisage how telling the story in this way could make for an original and fascinating book.

And there you have it: this is how I come up with my adventure ideas. What ideas do you have? Hit reply and let me know!