Touring news
It’s a festival full of ideas.
London’s Adventure Travel Film Festival, fast becoming a fixture for overlanders, is also fast approaching – make a date in your diary for August 10-12 at Mill Hill School, NW7.
Organised by film maker Austin Vince and travel author Lois Pryce (the closest thing we have to adventure travel royalty) it’s a full weekend of travel-themed films, talks and workshops, with live music and camping thrown in.
Lois Pryce told us how it got started: “Over the last 10 years or so we have been sent tons of fantastic travel films from all over the world by largely unknown film-makers. They came from all over the globe and covered every form of transport – boats, bicycles, buses, motorcycles, 4x4s and even hitch-hiking and trainhopping. The ‘adventure travel’ shows we saw on TV, although polished and professional, were nothing in comparison to the real-life dramas that were arriving in our letterbox. We were amazed, and excited, that adventures of this quality, old and new, were essentially unknown by the public. Our mission is to change all that.”
Lois and Austin are best known as motorcycle overlanders, but the festival has expanded to include films and talks from travellers of all types and modes. That’s reflected in the film programme – of course there are biking tales. Take two French hipster sound engineers who buy a couple of Enfield Bullets and ride back to France, recording local ethnic music on the way, while festival regular David
Darcy shows his film about riding across Mongolia. There’s huge variety: a Swedish woman runs across Iran solo; a Moroccan hitchhikes around Iceland; people fly round the world in a homebuilt plane and kayak down the Colorado in 1938.
Speakers for this year hadn’t been finalised as we went to press (though judging by previous years it’ll be a decent line up), but we know there are workshops on open fire cookery, medicinal plants and even yoga for travellers, plus film making (on an iPhone) and travel writing. Better still, this year’s ATFF is being run in association with Honda UK, so there’s the chance for both on- and off-road test rides. Anyone over the age of 14 can sign up to learn the basics and three-times world motocross champion Dave Thorpe will be on hand to give some expert off-road instruction.
It all sounds pretty good, so see you there! Tickets are pre-booked at £79 for the whole weekend of August
10-12, which includes all films, talks, live music and camping. Kids under 12 go free.
For more information go to: www.adventuretravel filmfestival.com