Local adventures
If the mountains aren’t accessible this winter, or even if they are, Trai● discovers you’ve often got all the adventure you need right outside your front door.
Discover a world of exploration, right on your doorstep!
“SOME OF MY BEST MEMORIES ARE OF DAYS, NIGHTS OR JUST STOLEN HOURS IN MY LOCAL COUNTRYSIDE”
I’m in the woods, just after daybreak. I close my eyes and stretch back in my hammock, strung up lazily between a couple of old pine trees. I hear nothing but the twitch of wind through the trees, smell nothing but wet pine needles. I’m only around 10 minutes’ walk from a busy car park, but right now this could be anywhere. I open my eyes in time to see the shadow of a raptor skim low above the treetops, in search of breakfast. A green grasshopper creeps off the woodland floor and onto the lid of my rucksack, looks around, then silently melts back into undergrowth. I’ve happened upon this spot after a pre-dawn walk along the beach, just a few hundred metres away, its dark sky alive with the honks of migrating geese so numerous that their skeins appear like plumes of black smoke against the soon-to-be-rising sun.
Every so often the spell is broken by the cheery hello of a dog walker, or the pounding feet of a passing runner. I spotted some guy crawling out of a sleeping bag among the sand dunes on the way here, bleary-eyed through lack of sleep but no doubt feeling exhilarated from his night exposed to the coastal elements. I’m not the only one who’s had this idea, and in many ways there’s nothing special about this place. Or what I’m doing. But at the same time, everything is special.
I’ve visited this local beauty spot many times before, but never at this time of day. I’ve never brewed up in the sand before sunrise, never left the path and walked without an agenda, and never taken the time to properly experience what it feels like to be part of this ancient landscape just a short hop from home.
There’s a temptation in life to always search for bigger and better. Jobs, houses, cars and, topically for this magazine, mountains; more often than not our eyes are fixed squarely on the horizon scanning for that next major objective. In a normal year, in a normal country, on a normal planet, that’s just the way it goes. We like to plan, and to dream, and to make tomorrow that little bit more exciting than today. And that’s the way it should be.
But if 2020 has done anything, it’s brought the world directly around us back into sharper focus. Back in March, confined to the few small miles around our homes for the first time in most of our lives, we were forced to take a step back and get to know our local landscapes in a way we’d never even considering doing before.
The experts tell us 65% of people in the UK used some form of outdoor exercise as a way of coping with the unprecedented pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 90% of those people say it had a positive impact on their physical and mental health. With holidays, weekend breaks and even day trips all of a sudden out of bounds, most of us did what comes naturally by sticking on a pair of boots or trainers and going for a walk. Or jumping on our bikes. Or camping in our gardens. Or dusting off our binoculars and pointing them
at the nearest tree. We all did whatever we could think of to keep our minds and bodies active and connected to nature during those surreal early stages of national lockdown.
For me, it felt like a long overdue reawakening. Rather than focusing on what big-name peak I wanted to climb next, or what country I wanted to visit, I pounded the footpaths around my house. I found little pockets of woodland I never knew existed, exploding with the birdsong of early spring. I carried my baby son on my back along well-trodden trails while my four-year-old learned to ride his BMX without stabilisers next to me. We ate picnics by lakes, jumped off tree swings, camped in our garden and paddled in the river. When lockdown restrictions started to ease, we started canoeing, paddleboarding, wild swimming, visiting beaches and campsites, and generally had the most memorable family summer I can ever remember. Right up until the moment I snapped my left leg in half doing something daft on a baby slide, but that’s another story…
Who knows what this winter will bring? Will we belatedly be able to walk and climb high in the wild places we love? Or will we be laid low, constantly refreshing news feeds on our phones and hoping, finally, for some good news? Pandemic or no pandemic, Britain’s hills and mountains are a very different place in winter. More harsh, more volatile, more dangerous. It could be that, even if there were no lockdown restrictions, you’ve already decided those mountains aren’t where you want to spend the next few months. So, how will you fill that big adventurous hole in your life?
A few years ago, I met a fascinating bloke called Alastair Humphreys. In his 20s, Al was a globetrotting adventurer, and more recently has become something of a social media celebrity – you may well follow him on Instagram or have read one of his books. But the best thing about Al is he’s just like you and me. A normal guy with a normal life who’s made it his mission to inject as much fun and adventure as possible into every day. He works from a cool wooden shed in his garden, climbs trees, cooks outdoors, sleeps out on his local hills, pedals his bike to the beach, jumps in a lot of rivers, and was the first to coin the now very commonly used term ‘microadventure’. Al’s the undisputed champion of making the very best of the world around him, seeking out small but exciting everyday adventures and then spending what spare time he has inspiring others to do the same.
We live in a country where, apparently, threequarters of children spend less time outdoors than prison inmates; with their connection to nature becoming so severed that they suffer from diminished senses, attention difficulties, higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses, and even the loss of basic everyday abilities like assessing danger when crossing the road. Facts like this scare the life out of me, and make me question my own sanity every time I reach for my iPhone or TV remote instead of my map and compass.
Many of us spend way too long living for tomorrow. Constantly planning that next big adventure that never happens, never quite booking that dream holiday, or forever putting off climbing that bucket-list peak. But when I think back, some of my best memories are of days, nights or even just stolen hours in my local countryside. On my own, with my crazy old dog, laughing with friends, exploring with my kids, living in the moment.
With my mind back in the woods, I unhook my hammock, then start the short walk back to the car, stopping on the way to unleash my inner child by climbing the low-hanging branches of a gnarled tree delivering big views over the dunes and down to the sea. I realise this place is far more spectacular than I’ve ever given it credit for.
Back at the car park, I grab a greasy breakfast roll from the beachside café. The whole place is crawling with people now, making me feel even more smug about my swift pre-dawn raid.
On the way home I pull the car onto the grass verge of a single-track country lane, then wander along a muddy bridleway in search of a trig point I’d spotted on the map earlier. In stark contrast to the epic mountain locations we usually associate with these old-fashioned concrete pillars, this one is aptly located in the bowels of a hedge separating two farmers’ fields. Having made the effort to come this far, I tussle through the branches and perch myself on top of it. For a few seconds I assume I’m the only person ever to have made this essentially pointless pilgrimage, but then spot the tell-tale broken branches that give away the presence of fellow trig baggers. What a wonderfully weird bunch of people we are in this country.
Whatever happens with winter lockdowns, or access to winter mountains, trips like this remind me there will always be adventures to be had on my doorstep. And that it’s always worth that little bit of extra effort to seek them out.