Introduction
Alastair Humphreys has spent years on big adventures. He cycled around the world and rowed across the Atlantic. Those trips taught him a lot about the world and about himself, and gave him more focus, purpose and perspective than he used to have. The good they did felt too important to keep to himself. So he set out to break down the things that keep ordinary people from adventure. That’s how the microadventure was born.
Don’t think of a microadventure as a watered-down, second-rate version of the real thing. It isn’t. A microadventure is an adventure. At heart, adventure is a state of mind. It’s trying something new and leaving your comfort zone. It’s enthusiasm, curiosity and an open mind. If that’s true, then adventure isn’t only crossing deserts and climbing mountains. It’s everywhere, every day, and it’s up to you to go looking for it.
You probably can’t go on huge adventures all the time. Everyone has to juggle the demands of real life. But you don’t need to fly to the other side of the planet to find wilderness and beauty. And you don’t need to be an elite athlete, expertly trained, or rich. A microadventure is an adventure close to home. It’s cheap, simple and short, but it keeps the challenge, the fun and the escape of a big trip, packed into a weekend or even a midweek night away from the office.
Think of it as permission to enjoy wild places the way you did as a child. Humphreys has slept outdoors well over a thousand nights, and only about ten of those were at a proper campsite. His way of starting has three steps. Think big, and let your imagination get carried away. Think small, and name the first tiny step you need to take. Then start small. Climb a hill, jump in a river, sleep under the stars. What’s the worst that could happen? A microadventure is a refresh button for a busy life.
Chapter 1 — Stop Waiting for One Day
Most people want adventure. The excuses change a little, but they all come down to the same line: one day I want adventure in my life, but it can’t be right now. Waiting for all your stars to line up is a sure way to make sure the adventure you want never happens. Waiting until you suddenly have loads of money and plenty of time, both at once, is daft.
So treat the ideas in this book as starting points, not rules. If something sounds too hard, do an easier version. If it sounds too easy, make it harder. Just make sure you do something.
The same goes for your big dreams. By all means dream of big adventures. But why not boil your big idea down to its smallest version and begin with that? If you want to cycle around the world, first try cycling across England. If you want to climb K2, start with some local hills. If you want to walk to the North Pole, see if you can walk across your county.
If you struggle to commit, sign up for a race. Committing is by far the hardest part of any adventure, and an event that’s already organized is the easiest thing to commit to. Someone else has picked the date and the route. All you have to do is enter. And doing something hard gives you a stepping stone toward bigger adventures.
And if you can’t decide where to go, let chance decide for you. Close your eyes, point at a map, and go there. What you see and think about along the way will probably be more interesting than that random point on the map. But without a destination, you’re unlikely to do the hardest part of any adventure: begin. You can let chance choose how you travel too. Roll a die. One means bike, two means walk, three means run, four means swim, five means canoe, and six means you decide.
Chapter 2 — Start at Your Front Door
The easiest place to begin is right outside. One evening, stuck on the same boring hamster wheel, Humphreys decided to escape, even if only for a night. He grabbed his sleeping bag, a headlamp, a pillow and a book, and walked out into his backyard to sleep.
The novelty alone was refreshing. He tried to read, but the night was full of distractions. It was noisier than he’d expected. He counted stars and satellites. He woke as the sun came up and grinned when he realized where he was. He hadn’t slept outside at home since he was a little boy. He felt more relaxed and cheerful than he usually does first thing in the morning.
You can start just as small. One weekend morning, eat breakfast outside. Eat dinner in the yard, even on a cold winter night. Work out in the park instead of the gym. And if you have a hammock and know how to tie yourself safely to a tree, sleeping up a tree is a lot of fun.
From there, the trick is to change how you see the places you already know. Microadventures are about looking at familiar places in fresh ways. Start looking for wildness close to home, in places that seem familiar and dull. The more you look, the more you’ll find. One easy way to make that shift is to go somewhere you know very well, but at night. A harvest moon, the full moon closest to the start of autumn, is a good excuse.
Or set out from your front door and make a loop around the place you live. Once you’re off the roads and following fields and footpaths, it starts to feel good. On a summer evening the air smells of cut grass and wildflowers. On his own loop, the rain came. He chose not to let it get him down, because, as Shakespeare said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” If you can talk yourself into enjoying rain, it can feel wonderful, especially in summer.
Even the trip home from a night out can be an adventure. When he was training for a marathon, he ran home from all his evenings out in London. Sometimes he was a little too full or tipsy to be at his athletic best, but he always enjoyed seeing his city in a different way and finding new parts of it.
Or pick a simple goal nearby. Cycle to the biggest cathedral or the oldest museum in your county. Ride to a friend’s house and show up unannounced. Travel slowly and with a smile on your face, and you’ll meet different people and learn something new about the world and about yourself.
Chapter 3 — Find the Time You Already Have
Add up your weekends, vacation days and public holidays, and you have about 130 free days a year. The trouble is that they come in bits and pieces. So if you have an adventurous streak and a proper job, you have to be determined to use your weekends instead of frittering them away at IKEA or in front of the TV.
Here’s the secret. Get up early and you’ll have time to get up high. For every hour of sleep you give up, you get one glorious hour somewhere beautiful. It’s a fair swap. Ride the trails at a mountain bike center. Or take a weekend course in something new, like kayaking, sailing or mushroom foraging.
Weeknights count too. Plenty of adventurous people feel stuck in 9-to-5 jobs. But what about the 5 to 9? Think about the 16 free hours between leaving work in the evening and going back the next morning. Life is more complicated than that, of course. But what adventure could you squeeze in between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m., even just once?
Sleeping on a hilltop is a cheap, simple answer. There aren’t many easier ways to clear your head and feel content. He’s found that a sleeping bag and a Scotch egg on top of a hill are about all it takes to make him happy. You might walk into work a bit crumpled, especially if you used your suit as a pillow, but that’s a small price to pay.
The best hill is the one closest to where you live, because then you’re more likely to actually go. And if you learn that you’re happiest staying at home, congratulations. That’s a nice thing to find out too.
The busier you are, the more you need this. Busy people need microadventures so the good of adventure doesn’t get squeezed out by the very busyness that makes it so vital. Humphreys feels strongly that adventure must not slide to the edge of his life, a fun but rare treat like a trip to the circus. It matters more than that. So now and then, drop what you’re doing midweek and go. He’s convinced you’ll more than make up for the lost hours with better work when you get back.
Chapter 4 — Escape the City After Work
In a busy city it’s easy to forget that somewhere out there are fields and rivers and peace. The commuter’s microadventure is about finding bits of beauty in built-up places, starting from the same trains and streets you use every day. You might even get a show. On one of his evenings out, someone a mile or two away set off fireworks, as if to celebrate his little microadventure.
A work night is enough time. On one trip a group slept out under the stars with no tent and went to work in the morning. It wasn’t all smooth, but they kept going. That’s the key to doing almost anything interesting in life: you’ve just got to get out there and do it. Sleeping under the stars without a tent is a powerful thing the first time you try it. Add an espresso and a bacon sandwich, a swim in the sea and a fast bike ride to work, and you have a happy start to a working day.
Big cities are closer to the hills than they feel. On a normal weeknight, he and some friends took the train out of Glasgow and into the hills. When he heads into the hills, he feels a lightness in his step and he breathes more easily. He puts it down to a few things. You’re somewhere new, away from the places you link with stress. You can’t deal with all the annoying stuff life demands, so you worry about it less. Your thoughts slow down. And there’s fresh air, scenery and exercise.
That’s the way to look at this: not as a big, complicated hassle, but as something you can do on a normal weekday. In no time the group was back at the station and swallowed up by the busy city again.
It can even take the place of a normal night out with friends. Catch the 5:15 train, meet your friends for a quick drink, then wander up a grassy hill in the same clothes you wore to meetings all day. He liked it when a meeting wound down into small talk and someone asked, “Got any plans for tonight?” He’d answer, “Oh, I’m just meeting a few friends for a meal. On top of a hill.” The looks he got were a mix of amusement, astonishment and envy. That hint of gentle madness is one of the best parts of microadventures.
On that hilltop night out, it was all about the food. And the fire. And the hilltop. And the beer. He even likes the smell of smoke that stays on his clothes the next morning, the sweet vagabond’s perfume of freedom on the train back into town.
Einstein said that “creativity is the residue of time wasted,” and you could do a lot worse with an evening than sitting around a fire with friends. So talk your friends into meeting on a hilltop next time. It’s nothing very different, but it’s different enough that you’ll probably still be talking about it a year from now.
Chapter 5 — Get in the Water
Rivers are a great place to start planning microadventures, and the best way to see one is from the water. When you have a frog’s-eye view, the world suddenly becomes wild, wherever you are. The angle you look from shapes how the world looks back at you. So slide down into the water and swim a river. If you can, go when the moon is full. A full moon swim is a magical thing.
Even when the water is cold, you never regret a wild swim. You just dread it a little beforehand. That makes it a cheesy but true picture of doing hard things in life. It’s scary before you start and a shock at first. Once you get going, it’s not nearly as bad as you expected. And once it’s done, it lifts you up. So tiptoe in and surprise yourself. Try to include a wild swim in every microadventure you do.
Rivers are good for slower days too. Try to catch a fish, then cook it and eat it outside. Even if nothing bites, the time isn’t wasted. There’s something deeply relaxing about spending a couple of hours beside a river.
Or float down one. On one trip, he and some friends each took an inner tube and drifted down a gentle river. There’s a good rule for travel: the slower your journey, the richer the experience. Few journeys are slower than this one. “All the greatest adventures are marinated with the spice of uncertainty,” he wrote. “The same applies on a quiet Wednesday afternoon on a gentle river in a small town in Wales.” When they stopped, the inner tubes turned from fabulous boats into fabulous armchairs. They dug out four enamel mugs, opened a bottle of wine, brought along for cooking reasons of course, and toasted their epic river journey.
For a longer trip, follow any river on Earth from its source down to the sea, and you’ll find an interesting journey. On his own river trip, he liked how simple life was out there, and how that let him switch off from his thoughts and worries.
Where the river ends, the sea begins. You don’t have to go far to feel far away there either. Creating the feeling of being remote is almost as refreshing as the real thing. One night by the sea, he had that feeling. “I unrolled my sleeping bag on the soft sand,” he wrote, “and fell asleep looking up at the stars and listening to the waves rolling onto our private, secret beach.”
An island in a lake works the same way. Camping on one feels like a small escape from the real world. The worst that can happen is that you hate it and learn you love your normal life and a warm bed more than you knew. That’s not a bad thing to learn. But more likely, you’ll treasure the trip and come back seeing your normal life more clearly. As Arthur Ransome wrote, “Grab a chance and you won’t be sorry for a might-have-been.”
Chapter 6 — Make Up a Reason to Go
A theme that runs through this book is making up a journey just to give yourself a reason to head out the front door. Your own family history is full of them. Go and visit the places where your parents were born. Ride from your elementary school to your high school to your college. Visit your great-grandparents’ graves. The point is simply to think of a journey that means something to you, and then go and do it.
The map gives you reasons too. On one trip he traveled from the highest point in his county to the lowest. One highlight was a clever camping stove made from a beer can, a masterpiece of frugal minimalism. Taking a general challenge and applying it to your own county or state opens up lots of possibilities. Climb its three highest peaks. Or link its best mountain bike trails into a loop that could become the local challenge everyone tries.
Trips like this give you a lot, so here’s a simple way to give back. From now on, don’t just leave no litter. Take home a little extra litter, and help make the countryside better for everyone.
You can also just go in a circle. Why not do a lap of something close to home? It could be a lake, your county, or a small island. It could even be a ring road. Don’t plan too much. Just go. On his own circular journey, he took off his watch. He challenged himself not to care about the time or where he was going, and only to enjoy where he was right now. He wanted to relax, slow down and take detours. That’s true for life in general, not just for a microadventure. As the poet Tennyson put it, “’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
Or head for the edge of the map. The Germans have a beautiful word, fernweh, which means a craving for distant places. He has it badly, and microadventures have been a great cure. On one trip he traveled to the far end of his own country, and it didn’t take a plane ticket. All you need is something challenging, somewhere new, and a bit of imagination.
Even the dullest place will do. To prove that microadventure is more about attitude and imagination than about having great wilderness nearby, he went looking for adventure in the most boring place he could think of. He and a companion set out to walk a lap of the M25, the busy highway that circles London. On the walk they slowly got back into the rhythm of life outdoors, and they proved the point. If you step just a little away from the main road, away from the route everyone else takes and the one you’ve always taken, you can see things differently.
If you want one challenge to aim for, try the Bivvy Challenge. Here are the rules. Your journey must start and finish at your front door. You must cover a loop of at least 30 miles, or a distance that’s fairly hard for you, without a motor. It must include a night away from home. You must sleep outside, with no tent, in a place you’ve never been before. And you must have an outdoor swim. There’s one last rule. Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise.
Chapter 7 — Follow Someone Else’s Path
One of the easiest ways to plan a microadventure is to recreate someone else’s journey. Two kinds are especially easy to copy: historical journeys and journeys from books.
The oldest paths carry the most footsteps. On one trip he spent a few days walking an old Roman road, moving no faster than his feet could carry him. “This was a holloway,” he wrote, “a sunken path worn down over time by millions of feet like mine. It’s an impressive visual reminder of all of the footsteps, all of the stories, that I was following along behind.”
Old routes can carry you across a whole country, and you don’t need a long vacation to do it. A couple of hours’ ride or walk from any city will take you somewhere new, somewhere wild, somewhere beautiful. He set out to cross Britain from one coast to the other in the short stretch of spare time he had. He more or less made it. And when the other choice would have been to do nothing, he was pretty happy with that. Later he crossed again on a wilder route. Out there he felt uplifted, at peace and inspired in a way he rarely does in the real world. He wasn’t worrying about work, his bank balance or his future plans. He could just live in the present and enjoy it.
Famous race routes are another path to follow. On one ride he followed the route of the Tour de France. It was just an ordinary day on his bike, but the route made him see everything with different eyes. Tucked down low on the downhills, he found himself daydreaming like a child. Some people ride routes like this as a credit card tour, riding by day and paying for a bed at night. It’s a pleasant way to travel if you’d rather have a hotel than a bike loaded down with a tent. But he found that bivvying, which means sleeping out in a waterproof bag with no tent, is even easier than finding a bed and breakfast. The views beat a five-star hotel, though the bed is a little less comfortable and you bring your own minibar.
You can do the same with your local marathon route. Hike it over a day, or cycle it in a couple of hours. Or take on the Bob Graham Round, 42 peaks in England’s Lake District in under 24 hours. Ordinary people can enjoy it as a great two-day hike.
Some paths come from history books. He and his friend Tom built a raft and followed Millican Dalton down a river in England’s Lake District. About 100 years earlier, Dalton, another mildly eccentric man in his thirties, had escaped the rat race to look for solitude and wilderness on that same stretch of river.
Building the raft in the sunshine reminded him of playing beside a river as a boy. Again and again, the trips for this book felt childlike, in a good way, not childish. They’d have enjoyed the raft trip anyway. But they enjoyed it more knowing about Dalton. The views were the same a century apart, and so was the joy of paddling very slowly through the countryside.
Chapter 8 — Go a Little Wilder
Some trips hardly need a plan. For one night in the woods, he and his friends stopped at a supermarket, filled a basket with food and a bottle or two of cheap red wine, and headed out of town. They weren’t going anywhere beautiful. They just wanted to get away, or feel like they were getting away, for a night. Sleeping in a wood is a perfect way to do that. It’s easy to escape a town, a computer or a routine. The hard step is making it happen.
Woods are only one kind of wild place. You can build a microadventure around a mountain, a lake, a desert, or even a city. Britain has one desert, Dungeness, on the Kent coast. You can also go underground. Look online for advice on a good first caving trip.
The woods can also teach you to live simply. “We decided to spend a few days in the woods together,” he wrote, “living as simply as we could manage, and attempt to live solely off the land.” Food tastes better when you’ve earned it. For most people, the realistic version is simpler. Pack a little food, a few tea bags and a box of matches. Leave your phone behind. Head out alone into the woods for a while and try to quiet your racing mind.
You can even build your own shelter. People often invite him along on their own ideas, and one of the best invitations came from Kevin in Glasgow. Kevin asked him to help build a wild hut from natural materials and then sleep in it. They cut branches to length and tied them together with garden twine, the only man-made thing in the whole hut. Whether they had a warm night would depend completely on their own hard work and skills. He liked that.
A lot of his microadventures have felt like playing. It took him a while to stop worrying that he was wasting his time. Children play because it’s fun, but also because they’re learning and growing. The hut had everything he wants from a microadventure. He went somewhere new, met interesting people, did something he’d never done before, and learned new skills. And it was fun.
Even a hint of wildness, those tiny forgotten pockets behind your town, can refresh the soul. But there’s still something extra special about truly wild places. They can also be hard going. He admits he’s spent much of his life pushing stubbornly on in the hope of enjoying it later. That’s known as Type 2 fun. Any misery is fine, the theory goes, because one day you’ll look back and be glad you kept going. And when it’s over, there’s a simple reward: up a mountain, down a beer.
Sometimes the wild wins. A friend named Alex came up with a triathlon through some of the finest landscapes in Britain. They’d mountain bike cross-country to the sea, paddle to the mountains of Skye, and then take on the fearsome Cuillin Ridge. It appealed to Humphreys right away. “I’m on my way,” he replied.
The mountains won. He was disappointed to let Alex down, but also a little impressed to have failed. You don’t often get beaten by the landscape in Britain, so he felt a twisted satisfaction at being humbled. He’d underestimated those ancient mountains.
Mountains don’t care how you do on their slopes. They were here for millions of years before you, and they’ll still be here long after. You might win or you might lose, but they don’t care either way. Maybe that’s part of the appeal. It’s a good picture for doing big things in life: do it for the doing, not for other people’s praise.
Chapter 9 — How to Have Your Own Microadventure
Start by making a calendar of microadventures you can have through the year. The sky gives you dates to plan around: the spring and autumn equinoxes, the summer and winter solstices, a harvest moon, a supermoon, a blue moon or a lunar eclipse. Then get your kit together. You don’t need much. You can borrow some of it from a friend, and what you do need to buy can be found cheap or secondhand.
For a first trip, take a backpack lined with a garbage bag to keep things dry. Take the sleeping bag you already have, with extra sweaters if you’re worried about the cold. Put it inside a cheap orange survival bag, with a foam mat under it for a half-decent sleep. Add a flashlight, a raincoat and a woolly hat, even in summer. Bring food that doesn’t need cooking and about 2 liters of water. And bring a notebook. Even if you never keep a diary, it’s a good chance to jot down a few thoughts.
When you pack, ask two questions about each item. Will I die or fail if I leave this behind? Will I enjoy myself a lot less if I leave this behind? If the answer to both is no, leave it behind.
Winter nights take a little more care, but staying warm isn’t complicated. Find a spot out of the wind. Wear a woolly hat and loose layers, and never sleep in wet clothes. Eat a hot, fatty meal before bed, since it takes a long time to digest and keeps you warm through the night. Then go to bed warm. Your sleeping bag holds heat in, but it doesn’t make heat. So do some jumping jacks or push-ups before you get in.
If you light a fire, only do it where nobody’s likely to come by until every trace has grown back. Dig a hole first to keep it out of the wind. In the morning, once it’s completely out, put the earth and turf back. The best wood is dead wood still hanging in trees, not lying on the damp ground. And try corn on the cob, still in its husks, laid on the hot embers. It’ll probably be the best you’ve ever eaten.
Photos and video can help you pay more attention to where you are and how it makes you feel. But make sure your gadgets add to the experience instead of distracting from it. Trade tweets for birdsong. Sit still for a while and really look. Listen to the silence and feel the winter air nip your nose and ears.
Finally, learn a little about the natural world around you. Whether it’s recognizing birdsong, picking out stars, or reading the clouds for tonight’s weather, the more you know about the world you’re out in, the more satisfying your microadventures will be.