Grand Adventures

£20 is not a particularly large amount of money for me, and that’s probably the case for many of us who are in the privileged position in life of even being able to dream of adventures. I spend £20 in the pub, or on a meal to cook for a few friends. £20 is within my financial comfort zone.

But £1,000 does feel like a large amount of money to me. For much of the world, of course, it’s an impossibly vast sum. For some people it’s mere loose change. But I imagine that most people reading this book are, approximately, on a similar financial level to me: £1,000 sounds like a lot of money, but it’s more or less achievable if I set my mind to saving £20 a week.

I know from experience that £1,000 is enough to fund a phenomenal trip. I once flew to India, walked from one coast of the country to the other, and then flew back home for far less than that. I have cycled thousands of miles through extraordinary places for £1,000, a grand adventure. Almost all of the trips I have done – including canoeing the Yukon, crossing Iceland and cycling round the world – I funded by saving up my own money and then doing the trip as cheaply as I could manage.

If you travel under your own steam, eat inexpensive food and sleep in a tent then expeditions don’t cost much once you’ve bought the essential equipment and plane ticket.

Some of my more recent trips, in places such as Greenland and the Atlantic, have required sponsorship, because they’re beyond the depths of my wallet. But I’m a strong believer that you should walk before you run. Building up a solid CV of expeditions will help you secure sponsorship further down the line, but the best thing to do is begin with exciting projects that you can pay for yourself. Some of the journeys described in this book are expensive, but the lessons you can draw from them will help with any debut, budget expedition.

Saving a little bit of money regularly and seeing how that accumulates into a large amount is a handy metaphor for everything in this book. Things that seem daunting at first are not nearly so bad once you begin chipping away. Start small, but do start. Start rubbish, then get good along the way.

I have chosen £1,000 as a pretty arbitrary figure upon which to hang the adventures in this book simply because I loved the neat simplicity of putting aside £20 a week then hiking off into the sunset a year later. You can do something amazing for less than £1,000, although many journeys will cost more than that. It doesn’t really matter; this is not the book to help you with detailed budget planning. It’s simply the spark which, I hope, will light the fire inside you and get you to commit to the journey of a lifetime. After that, you’re halfway there.

© Alastair Humphreys

A more useful way of thinking about expedition budgets than absolute figures such as ‘£1,000’ is to consider how long it takes you to earn the money. There is the absurd social convention of spending between one and three months’ salary on an engagement ring. (If anybody ever proposes to me I would far rather they spend that money on a grand adventure for the two of us than a highly squashed pebble.) So rather than focusing too much on the notional figure of £1,000, perhaps you should try to think about what fraction of your income you’re able to save for an adventure.

Throughout this book, never think, ‘I can’t do that’. Instead, try to think of a way round the difficulty that still fits within your particular circumstances. If you can’t afford to save £20 a week, save £10 instead: you’ll still get there in two years. Just put aside what you can when you can. More often than not, replacing the words ‘I can’t do that’ with ‘I choose not to do that’ will give you an honest insight into how much you truly want to make something happen. Are you really in the position of saying ‘I can’t save £20/£10/£5 a week’ or is it more like ‘I choose not to save £20/£10/£5 a week’?

If I gave you £1,000 to go on an adventure, what would you go and do? Grab a pen and write a list of ideas. Physically write them, don’t just think it – you’re more likely to make stuff happen if it’s set down in black and white.

I am not actually going to give you £1,000. I’m a Yorkshireman. However, I am going to help you begin saving it. If you can save up that much money and therefore eliminate the biggest perceived barrier that stops people having the adventure of their lives, what else can stop you making this thing happen?

HERE ARE A FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR IDEAS OF ADVENTURES YOU COULD HAVE FOR £1,000:

‘I would go south, hitch-hiking into Africa.’

Steve Dew-Jones, hitch-hiked to Malaysia.

‘I would leave the front door with my camping kit, and I’d just walk. It’d be really interesting to walk without a destination, away from home day after day. It wouldn’t be very expensive, so that £1,000 might last a very long time.’

Hannah Engelkamp, walked 1000 miles round Wales with a donkey.

‘I’d jump on a skateboard and go around India.’

Jamie McDonald, ran 5,000 miles across Canada.

‘I’d go climbing illegally in China – it’s the permits that cost so much. Or I’d go somewhere you don’t really need permits, like Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan.’

Paul Ramsden, climbed ‘lots of big mountains’.

‘I’d cycle to Istanbul. If I made sure my bike was fairly worthless, I could leave it there and then just fly home for £70 at the end.’

Tom Allen, cycled, packrafted, walked, hitch-hiked and rode horses on five continents.

‘I like the idea of sea kayaking from Finland to Sweden through the archipelago.’

Karen Darke, Paralympian and expeditions by bike, sea kayak and sit-ski.

‘I would sail out to the West Face of Ball’s Pyramid and climb it: it’s only 2,270 foot high, but 312 miles off the east coast of Australia.’

James Castrission, kayaked the Tasman Sea.

‘I’d like to walk to the midnight sun. Set out from home and walk north up to the Arctic Circle.’

Sean Conway, first person to complete a ‘length of Britain’ triathlon.

Some people may consider spending £1,000 on adventure to be a flippant use of money. I know that it is not saving the world, but I suspect that, when I’m on my death bed, I’ll be more grateful for the experiences that adventures have given me than for spending that amount of money on things like a massive TV or a trendy handbag.

You know that when you are old and looking back on your life you’d prefer to remember a bike ride through Borneo or a train journey across Tibet rather than the extra work you did and the extra £1,000 you’re going to have to pay death duty on. So why don’t you get out there and do it?

THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO GET MORE MONEY IN LIFE:

Earn more. Or spend less. I’m definitely not the right person to advise with Point 1, but here are some ideas to help you begin spending less money.

Remember, in order to save £1,000 for your adventure you need to save less than £3 each day for a year.

Think about all the ways you spend money and where you can make some savings. Consider the small changes you can make which will help lead to a big adventure and a big change in your life. I’m not advocating anything drastic, just tiny tweaks that won’t hurt day-to-day but will accumulate into big piles of cash. If you think you’ll struggle, try writing down every single thing you spend in the course of a week – you might be surprised where you can make some savings for your Adventure Fund.

If you’re serious about saving money, do some Googling: there are blogs more knowledgeable and specific on the subject than I could ever pretend to be. But I hope this section will get you thinking. All the examples below are worth trading for the adventure of a lifetime, especially as they generally make your life healthier anyway.

— Daily routine: Cut out a daily takeaway coffee and you’ve almost made it to £1,000 in a year already. Take a packed lunch to the office and you’re really saving.

— Commuting: Can you work from home occasionally? Can you share a lift or cycle one day a week?

— Home bills: Turn your thermostat down a notch and put on a jumper. Wash your clothes at a lower temperature. Have an occasional cold shower (they are good for the soul, the environment and your bank balance!). Sell your telly.

— Entertainment: Eat out less often or search online for restaurant discount vouchers.

— Alcohol: A pint in a London pub often costs £5. One fewer pints a week and you’ve saved almost 25 per cent of your £1,000. If you’re tempted for ‘just one more’, consider that the price of that drink can easily equate to a day on the road in some of the world’s wildest, cheapest and most exciting regions. Which would you rather have? Beer tastes better on a beach in Belize anyway!

— Smoking: Stop it.

— Eat more veg: An average UK family spends £5,300 per year on food. A moment’s Googling leads me to a site of recipes that will feed a family for just £1,168 per year.

— Stick to essentials: Only buy stuff you really need. We all suffer from ‘stuffocation’. Look around your house and ask, ‘Do I need this?’ When did you last use or wear some of it? Would you miss it if it were gone? Sell ten things on eBay and transfer the proceeds to your Grand Adventures fund. eBay is a great place to buy all the kit you need for your adventure, too. You can save a fortune this way.

I hope I’ve demonstrated that saving £1,000 is achievable through taking small steps. Remember that the same metaphor applies to all the other obstacles standing in your way. Overcoming inertia, generating momentum, getting out the front door, beginning: if you want it enough, you can do it.

Tiny steps. Grand adventures. Are you in?

WISE WORDS FROM FELLOW ADVENTURERS

JAMIE BOWLBY-WHITING

HITCH-HIKED THOUSANDS OF MILES, RAFTED THE RIVER DANUBE AND WALKED ACROSS ICELAND

It is possible to travel entirely without money by a combination of free camping, Couchsurfing and foraging.