Grand Adventures

HANNAH ENGELKAMP

WALKED A LAP OF WALES WITH AN ECCENTRIC DONKEY

Money-wise, if you do something that involves walking and camping, it’s likely to be an awful lot cheaper than ordinary life. Really, it’s a matter of getting your head around stopping what you’re doing now and just doing something completely different.

DAVE CORNTHWAITE

MADE 25 NON-MOTORISED JOURNEYS

I learned to just downsize my life and limit my outgoings, which I think is a nice lesson overall.

ALICE GOFFART & ANDONI RODELGO

CYCLED ROUND THE WORLD FOR SEVEN YEARS

During those years, including having two children on the way, we spent less than €50,000. That’s what some people spend on a car, and nobody asks them how they did it.

ANTS BOLINGBROKE-KENT

NUMEROUS VEHICLE-POWERED EXPEDITIONS

My money diet mantra was ‘no unnecessary spending’. The only clothes I bought were off eBay or from charity shops (difficult as a lover of fashion). I made sure my saving didn’t overly impact on my relationship, though. This adventure malarkey can be rather selfish and I wanted to save cash, but that couldn’t mean becoming a miserly bore.

GRAHAM HUGHES

VISITED EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WITHOUT FLYING

When asked how can I afford to travel so much, I feel like retorting with: how can you afford your rent? To keep a dog? To have children? To smoke? When I travel, I have no rent to pay, so 100 per cent of the money I have can go on travel.

JAMIE MCDONALD

RAN 200 MARATHONS ACROSS CANADA

I spent three years saving up for a house. The only reason was because everyone else was doing that. I was just choosing it for someone else’s sake. So I bought a second-hand bicycle for 50 quid out of the newspaper and I flew to Bangkok. And then I cycled home back to Gloucester.

ANDY KIRKPATRICK

BIG WALL CLIMBING & WINTER EXPEDITIONS

Before my first trip to the Alps I was working in a job where I got £100 a week, and just the bus ticket from Sheffield to the Alps cost me £99! I saved one week’s pay, spent it on the ticket and packed in my job. Every penny we spent was considered.

JASON LEWIS

SPENT 13 YEARS CIRCUMNAVIGATING THE PLANET BY HUMAN POWER

I ended up in the clink [prison] in east London for trying to run out the door of the chandlery there with our shit bucket and a scrubbing brush, coming to the total of £4.20. I was rugby tackled by security guards at Woolworths. So yeah, we were just desperate.

© Alice Goffart and Andoni Rodelgo

© Tim and Laura Moss

MATT EVANS

TRAVELLED OVERLAND FROM THE UK TO VIETNAM

I bought a big ceramic savings pot that needed to be smashed to get all the money inside. Every day we came in from work and put all the loose change in our pockets into it. No excuses. This might sound silly but after a while it became normal, and when we finally had a grand ‘Smashing of the Jar’ ceremony, we had £962.28 in it. That’s quite a lot of money for a small daily ritual that didn’t seem to take much effort. The funny thing was, once we’d saved up the money without living like hermits or living on beans on toast, we looked at each other and wondered why we hadn’t been making these changes to our lives since we met. We hadn’t felt unduly broke, we hadn’t lost any friends, and we didn’t feel as though we’d worked our fingers to the bone. Yet somehow we’d saved enough money to have the adventure of a lifetime. All it took was a little thinking, a few tweaks and a bit of willpower.

SEAN CONWAY

FIRST PERSON TO COMPLETE A ‘LENGTH OF BRITAIN’ TRIATHLON

I don’t have much money, so I just got loads of credit cards. That kind of got the funding out of the way initially.

KEVIN CARR

RAN AROUND THE WORLD

Unless what you’re considering is crazy expensive, it’s probably much less hassle to work a part-time second job/overtime than it is to chase sponsors.

PATRICK MARTIN SCHROEDER

TRYING TO CYCLE TO EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD

I know this: travelling made me richer, even if I have less money. The slower you travel, the less money you spend. Money is probably not the thing stopping you, but the fact that you have to leave your comfort zone. That you have to do something scary. Once you step over that line, once you are on the road, everything gets easier.

CHRIS MILLAR

CYCLED TO THE SAHARA

I worked as a rickshaw driver to save some pennies, get fit and learn the basics of bicycle maintenance.

NIC CONNER

CYCLED FROM LONDON TO TOKYO FOR £1,000

We realised with our pay cheques it wasn’t going to be too much of a budget we were going to be living on, so we thought, ‘Right. Let’s work with this and make it a challenge.’

JAMES KETCHELL

CYCLED ROUND THE WORLD, ROWED THE ATLANTIC, CLIMBED EVEREST

I was working as an account manager for an IT company. I moved back home with my parents; this made a big difference to my finances. Not particularly cool when you’re in your late twenties but it goes back to how much you want something. I took on an extra job delivering Chinese food in the evenings.

© Alastair Humphreys

A SHORT WALK IN THE WESTERN GHATS

I once walked 600 miles across southern India because I wanted a challenge but didn’t have the time or money to walk 6,000 miles. I was trying to understand what drives me to go on all these adventures I feel addicted to. In order to understand, I felt I had to push myself really hard…