Categories
Fundraising

How To Fundraise For Your Expedition (Or Other Adventurous Project)

This article is based on a lecture I gave for the Royal Geographical Society at the 2019 Explore expedition planning conference. If you’ve arrived here expecting an ‘ultimate guide’ or ‘blueprint’ with three easy steps to finding funding for your expedition, then I am afraid I must disappoint you. Not only is your expedition unique, […]

Categories
Flight Free 2020 Life On The Road Philosophy Of Travel

#FlightFree2020: About The Time I Travelled The World Flight-Free For 4 Years (And Nobody Cared)

My Flight Free 2020 pledge hasn’t come out of nowhere. Call it a rekindling of a long-forgotten conviction that the example I set might actually matter. Because we are all participants, now, in this huge and never-ending conversation we call global society. Our impact is measured in terms of the number of people paying attention […]

Categories
Travel Photography

10 Illustrated Tips For Improving Your Expedition Photography No End

Last weekend I flew to London for the annual Explore expedition planning conference at the Royal Geographical Society (the one chance I get to catch up with a lot of people I wish I saw more often). On the Sunday I joined the expedition photography workshop to share my thoughts on the storytelling medium of the still […]

Categories
Transcaucasian Trail Travel Blogging

5 Ancient Monasteries In Armenia’s Dilijan National Park (& How To Hike To Them)

The experience of exploring Armenia on foot is characterised by three things: an abundance of breath-taking landscapes, being invited in by locals to drink homemade oghi (vodka), and stumbling upon at least one ancient church or monastery per day. Dilijan National Park – part of the forested northeastern province of Tavush – is no exception to […]

Categories
Life On The Road

9 Reasons To Make Yerevan Your Next Digital Nomading Basecamp

Given the title of this article, you might be expecting to read a list post designed as clickbait for bored tech startup founders in co-working spaces in Chiang Mai, probably written by an underpaid copywriter who’s never been to Yerevan and has dashed off this piece after an hour or two of Googling. Not quite. […]

Categories
Adventure Filmmaking

Is The Canon XC10 The Adventure Travel Filmmaker’s Ideal Camera?

People keep asking me for camera recommendations for travel videos and adventure films. Here’s one: the Canon XC10. (With a few accessories, on which more later.) Both Leon and I are shooting on this camera right now. Indeed, we’ve both worked our way through the exact same progression of cameras over the years. First came the Sony HVR-A1E, which […]

Categories
Spirit Of Adventure

Why Do Adventure Snobs Hate The Camino De Santiago?

There is a certain snobbery in the adventure travel world about the Camino de Santiago. I’ll assume you’ve heard of it, but if you haven’t, the Camino — as it’s known for short — is a network of Christian pilgrimage routes that all end in Santiago de Compostela, an ancient city in north-west Spain. Santiago (San Tiago) is the […]

Categories
Life On The Road Philosophy Of Travel Story Of My Life

Behind The Scenes On 15 Years Of Location-Independent Digital Nomading

I first published this piece in 2016 as an evergreen article which I’ll update as, well, life goes on. The latest updates were made in March 2022. My location-independent journey as a digital nomad began before it had a name. It was 2007, I was 23, and I’d set off on a bicycle to explore the world. I sold everything I […]

Categories
Travel Blogging

How To Start A Travel Blog (And 8 Good Reasons To Make The Effort)

Because this article will later become quite detailed, here’s the super-quick version of how easy it is to start a brand new travel blog: Visit WordPress.com. Enter your new site address, click Create Website, and follow the simple on-screen instructions. You’re in! Create a new Page, title it ‘About Me’, write a short introduction to yourself, upload […]

Categories
Adventure Filmmaking

The State of Adventure Film: The War of Art & Money at Kendal Mountain Festival 2015

A couple of weekends ago saw the 2015 edition of Kendal Mountain Festival, which started with a bunch of mates in the back room of a Lakeland pub and is now the most well-known celebration of mountain culture, outdoor sports and adventure in the UK. Its remit is broad: while climbing, mountaineering and other activities involving […]