LOUISE ARNER BOYD

Louise Arner Boyd was born in 1887 in San Rafael, California. When she was a young girl, her mother, father, and her brothers died, jostling her to decide that rather than staying inside and settling down with a husband, she embarked on an expedition to Greenland.

She documented the explorations extensively, and used photography to showcase these areas that had rarely been seen before. She became the first woman to fly over the North Pole privately, topping this all off with sailing through the Arctic, crossing the Pole and circling it, before dying at an old age in 1972.

HELEN THAYER

Helen Thayer has to be one of the coolest explorers ever – with her extensive exploration history beginning in 1944 (aged nine) where she scaled her first 8,000 foot peak with her parents. She spent three decades as an award-winning discus thrower, before moving onto becoming the first woman to solo the North Pole, both walking and skiing. She took a black husky called Charlie on this big expedition, who officially joined her family when she arrived home from this expedition from hell. Even when things were tough, she was never unhappy – not even in the snow storm that nearly ruined her, blinding her for weeks and destroying her body and food and water rations. She went back with her husband Bill in 1992 and they became the first married couple to make the trek.

The couple walked 600 miles across the Yukon in 1994, and 1400 miles of the Sahara desert just two years later. On her 60th birthday, she went on a solo expedition to the Antarctic. She is still thriving today, although the expeditions are less frequent than they were before.

FANNY BULLOCK WORKMAN

Possibly one of the most famous Victorian era female explorers, Fanny Workman was born in 1859, and went on to do some incredible things. She held a ‘votes for women’ flag on the bright surface of a remote Asian glacier, having climbed the 20,000 feet to the top. She then broke the record for climbing higher than any other woman at 22,815 feet, and she held the record for an incredible 28 years.

She identified a new route across uncharted snowfields to the ice mass of the Kalberg Glacier, and wrote books about these trips and her expeditions from the Atlas to the Sahara, which she cycled.

CATHERINE DESTIUELLE

Catherine is now 59 years old, and is still out here doing epic things. In 1992 she became the first woman to complete a solo ascent of the Eiger’s north face – all 20,470 feet – in a record-breaking 17 hours. Despite facing horrendous injuries and ailments, she never stopped going. She carried on climbing after breaking her back and leg and fracturing her pelvis, and is not the sort of person to back down when things get tough. She is quoted as once saying, ‘in mountain climbing, there’s the real adventure.’

Catherine’s spirit of not backing down in the face of difficulties is worth learning. If you also have a goal you want to achieve, you can try to use Custom Challenge Coins as a motivation to motivate yourself to move forward.

You can design the challenge you want to complete, Catherine’s deeds, favorite mottos, and even the time you want to achieve your goal.

Put the challenge coin that represents your determination in a place where you can see it at any time. Whenever you want to give up, you can think of Catherine’s experience and her spirit of never giving up, which will make you full of motivation again.

FLORENCE BAKER

Florence was born in 1841, and when she was a young girl underwent the severe trauma of her whole family being massacred. A man called Samuel Baker rescued her when she was later put up at a slave auction, and the two fell in love. Sam bought her with a whole pound of ostrich feathers, and once they became official, the two lovers travelled to Africa to pinpoint the source of the Nile. On this trip, they ran into the John Speke (no joke) – after Sam had been rejected from David Livingston’s famous expedition.

The pair often found themselves in incredibly dangerous scenarios, but Florence was quick-witted and was able to talk them out of them. For example, when they found themselves in a tricky situation with King Kamrasi, she stood up ‘with the countenance of Medusa’ and made a grand speech in flawless Arabic – and Kamrasi was so impressed with her character that he let her go. Together with Samuel, she then found the shore of Luta N’Zige, which they called Albert Lake, after the royal lovers Victoria and Albert.

MIRABAI

Mirabai was a 16th century poet and wanderer who had been married against her will to a prince of Chittor, near Udaipur. She was famed for her talents in singing, writing, and spiritual studies, but her family still felt as though she brought dishonour to the family by not behaving in the way that a lady should. They tried to poison and drown her but she survived both, escaping to travel widely across northern India to Vrindavan, and eventually to Dwarka in Gujarat, where she disappeared under mysterious circumstances at age 50. Nowadays, she is a celebrated Bhakti saint, and is well-known in Indian culture for the incomparable beauty of the poems and bhajans she composed and sang in devotion to her beloved god, Krishna.

ARLENE BURNS

‘I wanted to go somewhere where I didn’t know anything or anybody in order to learn who I was. I wanted to put myself in the unknown to see if I would sink or swim… And what I found was how little I knew, and how curious I was to learn more.’

Arlene was born in 1960, and has done some incredible things during her time on earth. She has scaled remote Russian volcanoes, navigated forbidden Tibetan rivers, galloped across Mongolia astride a half-wild horse, and even trained Meryl Streep for a role in the River Wild. Her stories are amazing and I highly suggest that you research her further, as I couldn’t possibly begin to go into depth about even a third of the cool things she’s experienced. Oh, and she was the first woman to work as a white water guide in New Zealand.

IDA PFEIFFER

Ida Pfeiffer became an explorer merely out of spite, marrying a lone widower in order to escape the confines of her home. She became the breadwinner before travelling through Asia, the holy land, Egypt, and Italy, staying with tribes in Borneo and Brazil – after being told numerous times that as a female she simply would not be able to do it.

She became an icon for women of the era as steamships and railways began to offer her free travel, and the Austrian government granted her 150 florins to continue her travels. In some ways, she was the first ever travel writer to truly finesse the system.

Ida survived headhunters and cannibals, along with endless ailments, but died after contracting tropical fever – which never would have happened had the Queen of Madagascar not been threatened by her and subsequently thrown her in prison, but alas.

YVA MOMATIUK

Growing up in war-torn Warsaw, Yva would escape each summer to be foothills of the Tatra Mountains. When she was old enough, she moved to NYC and became an architect, before tiring of that and becoming a ranch-hand in Wyoming (goals). She met John Eastcott at the Grand Tetons and said later, ‘We had felt a growing conviction that, had we continued our city-bound lives, the proverbial four walls of apartments, schools and offices would surely kill in us what we cherish the most: the sense of discovery.’

They spent five years together in the Canadian Arctic on assignment for National Geographic, and documented their time living with the Inuits. Yva is still alive and doing cool things, and has earned her title as one of the most interesting female explorers.

DIAN FOSSEY

Who doesn’t know Dian Fossey? She was born in 1932, and when her parents divorced, her dad disappeared from her life forever. Like Yva, she also worked as a ranch-hand, but this time in Montana. She studied pre-veterinary studies against her stepdad‘s wishes, but switched to occupational therapy when she didn’t get the grades. She had always wanted to go to Africa, and when the lust became too strong, she decided to up and leave.

Dian met the one and only Dr Louis Leaky, who furthered her interest in gorillas. His attention had been drawn to her articles and photographs of gorillas from her Africa trip, and suggested that she went back to study with him. He told her to have her appendix removed so she could join, to prove her loyalty – which she did. When she found out it was just a test she merely shrugged it off and got her plane tickets.

She mirrored the gorillas’ behaviour so well that a very shy gorilla called Peanuts overcame its anxiety and touched her hand – possibly the first encounter ever between a wild gorilla and a human. Because of her work saving gorillas in areas that depended on their deaths, orders were issued to shoot this problematic Westerner on site. She was hauled off by soldiers to a detention centre for ‘her own safety,’ but used stealth, her smarts, and a bribe to escape.

She was a fierce threat to poachers, black marketers, and exploiter-despoilers, and received many threats along with this order. She died by an unknown assailant splitting her skull, and the mystery has never been solved.

My favourite movie about Dian has to be Gorillas in the Mist – go on, watch it. Tell me it isn’t wonderful.

ISABELLA BIRD BISHOP

Isabella is probably one of the most well-known female explorers, whose journey began as a child when she accompanied her reverend father on rough country lanes as he made his parish rounds. Her health problems (namely regarding her feet and spine) should have kept her sedentary – but at the age 22 she single-handedly stopped an assassination attempt against a Cabinet member. Things only spiralled from there.

The family doctor suggested a long trip to the sea when medication couldn’t stop her depression and listlessness, and from that, she managed to worm her way into a seven-month voyage. This started her career as an author as she told tales of her trip in the novel, the Englishwoman in America. 

She explored the Sandwich Islands on horseback (after her ship nearly capsized on the way there) after the majority of her family members died. She escaped an unwieldy admirer by going off to Japan, but on the journey back was told her much-loved sister Hennie was ill. When she died, Isabella decided to marry her admirer, who also died. She ceased travel – at least until she left for Asia where she travelled China upon a Sedan chair.

In North America she rode, climbed, and camped with ‘Mountain Jim’ Nugent. He was a legendary figure of the raw-mannered and violent West, and her time sharing his ‘breezy mountain recklessness’ helped form her most popular book, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains.

She was the first woman to address the Royal Geographical Society at one of the London meetings, and met with endless members of royalty. Nicknamed the ‘Stormy Petrel,’ it is said that Isabella ‘would have probably have accounted her journey a failure’ had she not faced any difficulties or issues along the way.

Her last words were, ‘Oh, what a shouting there will be!’

DERVLA MURPHY

Not to brag, but I have been emailing Dervla for a couple weeks and interviewing her about her adventures, and she is such an effortlessly cool woman. When she undertook her greatest cycling journey, she said, ‘If someone enjoys cycling and wishes to go to India, the obvious thing is to cycle there.’ She’s a very straight-forward woman with a solid head on her shoulders, and I can only admire her more for it.

‘I presented myself to the Afghan embassy… Only to be told that under no circumstances would they grant a visa to a woman who intended cycling alone through Afghanistan. Apparently, six years ago, a lone Swedish woman was carved up into small pieces, and since [then] solitary female travellers have been banned… It looks as though I’m beaten… However, I have a few schemes to be tried tomorrow.’

Dervla spent her womanhood trapped, taking care of her dying parents, and when she was suddenly freed from her duty, she left. She carried only the essentials with her, such as a .25 automatic pistol which she used to fight off wolves and rapists. She’s known for her genial stoicism, ironic intelligence, and temperamental inclination to always wonder ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ And there’s a movie out about her, titled Who is Dervla Murphy?

FREYA STARK

Dame Freya Madeline Stark worked in Italy as a nurse during WW1, and despite having zero education, had a deep interest in Arabian culture (which she put down to 1001 Arabian Nights). After the war, she travelled to London to study Oriental History, before leaving to travel extensively across Baghdad, Iran, and the Arabian deserts – visiting things that no Westerner had ever visited before.

When the second world war hit, she was already stationed in the Middle East, and since she was there amidst it all decided to work in Cairo for the British Ministry of Information. She continued to travel across Europe and Asia after the war and wrote several world-altering travel books such as Baghdad Sketches, The Valleys of the Assassins and several volumes of memoirs. In 1972, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

AMELIA EARHART

Everyone knows Amelia Earhart, but I can’t help but mention her here, too. Her story began when she was working as a nurses’ aid in Toronto in World War I, where she met a group of young militarily pilots. She fell in love with the glamour of the job, and decided then that that was what she wanted to do with her life.

On her expeditions across the planet, she never let inconveniences get in the way of a good old adventure. Even when her wings were iced and there was flames erupting from her engine and the gas reserves were leaking – which all occurred on her first transatlantic flight – she didn’t stop.

Amelia was the first woman to solo the continental US roundtrip, the first person to solo the Pacific, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, and she broke the women’s nonstop  transcontinental speed limit not once, but twice. Her plane disappeared near Howland Island on her most daring voyage, and she was never seen again.

There’s a super cool movie about Amelia called The Final Flight, which offers an insight to her final journey.

SHANNON LUCID

Shannon had a really tough start to life, spending six months of her life in an internment camp before she’d even reached the age of one. She had always dreamed of going to space and was furious that the first seven Apollo astronauts were all men, so decided to go out and get her PhD and a Pilot’s License – and yet after all of this, she still couldn’t get any kind of flying job. She once said in an interview, ‘they weren’t hiring females, period.’

After years upon years of hard work, she was finally accepted into the space program. She decided to learn Russian in order to be able to converse with her fellow astronauts, and spent everyday living ‘every scientist’s dream.’ She has spent more hours in space than any other American to date.

President Clinton referred to her as a ‘determined visionary’ and presented her with the Congressional Space Medal of Honour. Nowadays, she’s still out here, breaking records and doing incredible things.

HARRIET CHALMERS ADAMS

Harriet even dressed like an explorer should, with the hard hat and the khaki-coloured jackets and the stoic expressions. At the age of two, she went on her first expedition, accompanying her father to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Six years later, she explored the Pacific coast on horseback, all the way from California to Yosemite to the Canadian Rockies. And then, when she was just 14 years old, she again accompanied her father on a year-long ramble from Oregon to Mexico. She went on to say that ‘the adventure and romance of exploration are full compensation to some of us for discomfort, hardship, and stranger.’

As she grew older and began to undertake her own adventures, she experienced incredible hardship. She survived a Bolivian earthquake, sheltered amongst a pack of llamas during a blizzard, survived a close encounter with a vampire bats, boa constrictors, and alligators, and was the first woman to travel from Amazon river to Cayenne. Even when she broke her back, she didn’t stop travelling. Harriet traded rum for a baby grison in Paraguay, and she travelled with her until she ate poisoned toucan stew.

Harriet wrote articles on her adventures for National Geographic, and became fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, and French. The NYT wrote that she ‘reached 20 frontiers previously unknown to white women.’

SYLVIA A. EARLE

I haven’t mentioned any deep-sea explorers yet, but hold your horses because Sylvia is one of the coolest ocean adventurers of all time. After years of studying, she became a marine biologist, and on a project sponsored by the US Navy, lived underwater for two weeks. She was incredibly dedicated to protecting the ocean and its wildlife, she was named by Time Magazine as the first Hero for the Planet in 1998.

Sylvia set the woman’s record for a World Solo Dive Depth, and became the first female chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Even today, she’s still out and about, doing her bit for the ocean that she loves so much.

GERTRUDE BELL

Once described as the ‘most powerful woman in the British Empire,’ Gertrude is considered to be even more influential than the Welsh explorer T. E. Lawrence. Not only did Gertrude help to form the modern state of Iraq, but she was also an archaeologist, spy, and diplomat all across the Middle East. She travelled extensively through Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia, and helped to support the Hashemite dynasties in what is today Jordan.

T. Lawrence was said to have been ‘intimidated’ by meeting a woman who was ‘his intellectual equal’ and who ‘spoke better Arabic than him.’ Due to her extensive knowledge and contacts, Gertrude served as a mediator between the Arab government in Iraq and the British officials, and explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making.

Rightfully so, there are a bunch of movies about Gertrude, such as Queen of the Desert and Letters from Baghdad. Both movies are epic, and things that you should definitely watch.

NELLIE BLY

There’s actually a bunch of movies that have been released that were inspired by Nellie’s story, such as 10 Days in a Madhouse and Escaping the Madhouse. In case you can’t tell from these names, one of her most popular writings include when she pretended to be ill to sneak into an asylum so that she could document the horrors that went on inside, so that she could ultimately expose them. Not only that, but she was the first woman to travel the world in 72 days, inspired by Jules Verne’s book (let’s just ignore Aloha Wanderwell). Legend.

AIMÉE CROCKER

Aimée was born in 1864 and was known for her collection of husbands, lovers, adopted children, buddhas, pearls tattoos, and snakes. She travelled extensively and survived headhunters in Borneo, a poisoning in Hong Kong, a murder attempt by knife-throwing servants in Shanghai, and lived for a whole 10 years in ‘the Orient.’ She published several memoirs about her journeys, and her talent for writing is no surprise when you consider her friendship with the one, the only, Oscar Wilde. My favourite fact about Aimée, however, has to be that King Kalakaua of Hawaii was so enchanted with her that he gave her a whole mother-freaking island and the title Princess Palal-Kalani, which translates to ‘bliss of heaven’. Such a legend.

ISABEL EBERHARDT

Isabel was high-key kinda hot, and despite the fact that she is slightly too old for me (she was born in 1877), I admire her an incredible amount. She was born to a Prussian aristocrat and an ex-priest turned anarchist, and at the ripe old age of 20 decided to convert to Islam and dress as a man. She adopted the name Si Mahmoud Saadi, and is said to have ‘drank more than a Légionnaire, smoked more kif than a hashish addict, and made love for the act of making love.’ She was super cool.

She travelled across North Africa alone and survived an assassination attempt by the French administration after witnessing the execution of an Arab prisoner, and is quoted as once saying, ‘now more than ever do I realise that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted with thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.’ There’s even a movie about her called Isabel Eberhardt, and is the best movie you will see this year.

JEANNE BARET

I’m going to go ahead and assume that you’ve probably heard of Jeanne Baret, the female explorer who dressed as a man so that the French Navy would allow her onboard a ship. Along with being the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, she is also recognised as being the first person to discover a strange new flowering vine adorned with bright pink and purple flower – which she called Bougainvillea after her commander. After sailing across the Strait of Magellan at the tip of South America, the Étoile reached Tahiti in 1767. She was discovered by her crew-mates and subjected to horrendous abuse – and yet despite that, lived until the impressive age of 67.

All of these women have shaped the world in one way or another – even if their roles do get severely glossed over in the history books. I think that they’re all super cool, and the fact that they completely went against the ideas and conventions of their time is truly inspirational.

It might be a little obvious which ones are my favourite – but tell me, which ones are yours? Do you know of any other influential female explorers that, low and behold, I have missed out, in this nearly 4,000 word post? Let me know in the comments below!

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This September, I began walking along the river Danube, with the hope that I might just become the first person to walk its entirety from source to sea. For some reason, no one had tried to walk all 2,850km of the river before, so I thought that I may as well attempt it myself. 

When I later told my spicy little Spanish friend, Inés González Miguéns, about the trip, she ended up booking a last-minute flight out to Germany and joining me for a grand two weeks. That was until Vienna, where she slinked off to a back alley hostel in Slovakia to lead bar crawls and get foot tattoos.

To date, I’ve covered 550 miles out of a (suspected) total 1,770, with the last major city stop being in Vienna, Austria. The Danube flows through more countries than any other in the world, so I still have Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine to look forward to. If they’ll have us, that is.

So far, we’ve slept in nunneries, communes, Mc Mansions, farmer’s sheds, luxury apartments, forest floors, “man caves”, and old bank buildings. We’ve stayed with spiritual healers, MLM pushers, cult leaders, Michelin star chefs, homophobes (oops), tea masters, and one guy who tried to molest us in the night. Every evening, we stay with a new stranger, relying on their kindness for food and a place to rest our heads, and have met some truly incredible people along the way (apart from that last guy, who ended up calling us “unworthy” for rejecting his advances).

Each night is completely new and a little crazy, and I’m absolutely loving it.

One question that we’ve been asked a lot along the way is, what’s the motivation for doing something like this? Apart from the temptation of international fame or elevated success within the adventure industry (neither which, unsurprisingly, have happened… yet), there were a couple other reasons to set out on a journey like this.

Doing it for the girls and the gays

Firstly, one of the biggest motivations for undertaking this expedition was to break down stereotypes for female and LGBTQ+ travellers.

I’ve always been told that travelling as a woman is dangerous, and that we simply aren’t made for this sort of thing – and yet, here I am, doing something that was previously deemed impossible. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the straight white ‘heroic’ male archetype that seems to plague the travel isles at Waterstones and the interviews on Good Morning Britain, but frankly, it’s started to grate on me. The industry is completely over-saturated with people like this, and as such, those who don’t quite fit that criteria face incredible prejudices when undertaking similar expeditions.

And so, I hope that by doing a walk like this, I will be able to challenge the stereotypes and expectations for queer female travellers in the industry, breaking down whatever walls that have been put up to stop us from doing exactly what we’re meant to be doing.

So far, this journey has been empowering unlike anything else I have ever experienced. Amongst the fairytale beauty of the Black Forest, the quaintness of European villages, and the wilderness of the continent’s many great forests, I can’t help but think, holy fry, I’m really doing it. Being able to roam the earth freely in a way that my female ancestors could not makes me feel both honoured and empowered.

And frankly, that’s enough motivation for me.

Doing it for the crohnies

Or at least, it should be, in theory.

But then there’s also the fact that I have Crohn’s Disease.

On average, I aim to cover around 35km a day, burning no less than 3,000 calories in any 24-hour period. This would presumably be quite difficult for an able-bodied person, but for someone that suffers with Crohn’s disease and everything that comes with it, it often feels pretty much impossible.

I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in 2014, and since then, have constantly been battling against an autoimmune response that aims for nothing other than shutting down my whole body. I get blepharitis, psoriasis, and all of the blood, sh*t, and tears that come along with not having a single functioning intestine. It is, quite frankly, the most horrendous thing to ever happen to me, and I still battle with it daily.

Still, I knew that I wanted to do something big, and there was no way in hell that I was letting this illness get in the way. So I bulk ordered my medication, bought endless digestion tablets, and told my doctor that I was about to do something incredibly reckless and it would be great if he could remain contactable, and booked my flight.

Luckily, we haven’t been camping as much as I expected we would (in fact, after the first night we camped and woke up covered in parasites, we sent the tent home to never be used again), so I’ve had steady(ish) access to people’s homes, and the stability of a bed and toilet each night. Regardless, the seven hours minimum of walking each day leaves a lot of room for error, and it’s been especially challenging to keep it all under control.

Regardless, I am constantly impressed that my body even has the strength to do something like this. Who knew that my diseased, withering, pathetic human shell could walk 550 miles in a month and still be ready to function the next morning? Now, I truly realise just how strong I am and how much potential my body has, and want to shout to the world about it. This is a massive difference to when I was first diagnosed and wanted to keep it all under wraps, too ashamed to tell anyone about it, and I’m proud of just how far I’ve come.

With the finish line looking to be in eastern Romania in late December, I’m super excited to see how cultures, languages, and landscapes change along the way. And of course, I am honoured to do so as a female LGBTQ+ traveller with Crohn’s disease, with my head thoroughly stuck in the clouds.

Doing it to save the river

Doing it, quite simply, for the vibes

But of course, there are endless reasons at the heart of why I wanted to do a trip like this. When people ask, I sometimes just skip all of the above and go off on something else: I read a lot of Levison Wood, I have nothing better to do, I want to be known for doing things that no one else has done, I like rivers, I wanted to explore Europe, I thought that it would be a great way of sampling each town’s version of dumplings. Whatever the reason, though, no one seems to be satisfied… So quite simply, I am doing this whole darn thing for the vibes.

Of course, I will let you all know how we get on over the next few months. To stay up to date with the expedition, you can always follow my Instagram at Wandering_Everywhere or sign up to the newsletter (subscription box is at the bottom of the page).

UPDATE: We finally finished the walk on the 14th September 2022, more or less a year after we started. Stay tuned for the next adventure!

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Even reflecting back on my time with Karen, my fight or flight instinct is triggered. She is still alive in my nightmares, and every now and then, I get flashbacks to something horrendous she said and sweat forms on the back of my neck. I had never met anybody so triggering before, and I pray to God that I never do again.

After briefly talking on the phone before our arrival to pass her selection process, we turned up at the country house expecting a very high-maintenance, graceful, Cheltenham-educated woman – presumably with long flowing blonde hair, puffy injected lips, and a flawless manicure. What we didn’t expect was a very rotund woman waddling over with a ‘HELLO DARLINGS I AM KAREN GOLDEN CRYSTAL JUNIOR!!’, naked except for an oversized white t-shirt that did nothing to hide her dark, bulbous nipples.

My girlfriend and I said our hello’s to the stranger, who pulled us both into a hug and softly kissed the top of our heads. ‘Grand tour?’ she asked, pushing us towards the kitchen before we’d even had the time to grab our things.

On arrival to the kitchen, Karen gestured dramatically at the white, high-ceilinged room, where her four cats were manically dribbling on the kitchen island next to a grand prosciutto board for lunch, licking up their food straight from the counter.

‘This is my haven!’ she declared, pointing past sticky fly traps that hung down from the ceiling and covered us all in dying insects. She turned away from the hoards of British royalty memorabilia that stood proudly in a glass cabinet, and asked us how the journey was.

‘A little difficult, because of the Covid restrictions, but–‘

She cut me off. ‘Anyway!’ She leant forward on the kitchen island, half-naked body thankfully obscured by the counter. ‘Thank God you don’t have a Welsh accent, that would have been disgusting! All I’m a taffy this, and llchchlch that, I can never understand a single thing those people say. I always pretend I’m Italian so that they stop talking to me!’

Considering I had only been on the property for about six minutes, I felt shocked, and was lowkey tamping. Considering that so many of my ancestors had been bullied into submission by English imperialists to surrender their mother tongue, and even more ancestors had been brutally attacked because of their accents, I felt my skin prick up. But, we all act strange under nerves, and perhaps the poor woman was merely anxious to have two foreign strangers wander into her home? I could only hope.

With an eager attempt to lighten his wife’s abrasive remarks, Karen’s husband stepped in with glasses of wine for us all.

‘My name is Antonio,’ he said softly, smiling at my girlfriend and I. ‘Born and raised in Rome, it was my dream to retire to the beautiful Italian countryside with a beautiful woman by my side. I have always wanted my own cabin.’

His smile beamed, lighting up the room. His skin was a dark bronze colour, with light hazel eyes and a thick, greying beard. He looked not too unlike Paul Hollywood, and I liked him immediately. Unfortunately, before he could continue with his story, Karen interrupted.

‘He means he has always wanted a house, a CASA, in Italy. Not a cabin! I have been trying my best to teach him English, but I fear his brain is a lot smaller than his big skull!’ She laughed to herself and knocked back her glass of wine, Antonio looking at the ground.

The rest of the day felt more than just mildly uncomfortable, as I informed Karen that I have Crohn’s Disease and as such cannot consume dairy, and she stated ‘I know other people that supposedly have that too, although none of them seem to be honest, and I HATE dishonesty’ – and continued to add a tin of cream to Andrea’s homemade carbonara. When I ate it out of politeness, despite the stomach upset, she continued to talk about her seething hatred for liars.

As the sun began to set, we had a short Italian dinner, before Karen retreated to the living room to curl up in a wine-induced slumber, Antonio reading a novel in Latin at her feet. My girlfriend and I decided to tackle the thousands of dishes in the kitchen sink, eager to leave a positive impression on our gracious hosts. Surrounded by cats and engravings of young Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher, we spent the next hour cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom. By the end of it, we were pretty spent – but ready to start the hard work tomorrow.

After a difficult night sleeping in a very hot bedroom, where fresh fox pelts glared at us from Karen’s spare wardrobe, we woke up at seven a.m. to start the day. We sat downstairs in the kitchen sipping tea when Karen came in, one giant knot of hair twisted up in the back of her head.

‘Good mooorning girls!’ She sung, wearing the same shirt from yesterday, still without pants.

‘Good morning!’ We both called back.

‘God, last night was heavy, huh?’ She said, before looking around at her newly immaculate kitchen. ‘We all really had a hard night of cleaning!’

Confused at her lack of acknowledgement, we continued sipping our teas. Karen looked at my girlfriend, at me, at our hands, which were laying on top of one another on the counter.

‘Where exactly did you two meet?’ She asked, suspicious.

‘In a cave in mid-Wales,’ I answered, taffy accent and all.

Karen frowned, the corner of her lips caving down into her chin. ‘I would really appreciate it if you two were honest with me. About whether or not you have Crohn’s Disease, or coronavirus, or AIDs.‘ She burrowed her eyebrows. ‘And also–‘

Antonio walked into the kitchen, gleaming smile and all. ‘Good morning ladies, how are we all?’

‘Good,’ we all said in unison.

‘Today I would like you two to paint the outside wall, if that’s alright?’

The next few hours were spent in the shade-free hot Italian sun, painting the outside walls of the farmhouse a gleaming shade of white. Cora and I were drenched in sweat, with the liquid running down our arms, dripping into our eyes, making deep welts of liquid in the band of our shorts, so we grabbed a bottle of water and sat at the outside dining table, recovering the lost fluids.

Karen came out with a breezy ‘afternoon, dolls!’ wearing a thin white shirt with yellow lemons printed on it, barely covering her torso and showing off her bright pink swim thongs.

‘Good afternoon,’ we chimed back, the sweat on our bodies cooling in the shade.

‘All finished are we?’ She asked, walking up to the wall and looking at it.

‘Yeah, two coats on each section.’

She held up a finger to the painted walls, suddenly dragging her finger down the middle of it.

‘That’s weird,’ she said. ‘Because my finger is dry. It doesn’t even look a different colour.’

‘You can see the newest area that we painted, it’s a brighter white but it dries to this duller cream colour,’ Emily replied.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I will paint it myself.’

And with that, she grabbed a (wet, quite obviously used) roller and began plastering another layer of paint onto the wall. Personally, I had never had someone run their finger over my paintwork in disbelief before, so that was definitely a new one.

Cora and I continued to sip our water, exhausted.

We watched her paint in the scruffiest way possible, slathering paint all over the ground and ignoring the neat edges we’d pored over. After ten minutes, the wall was once again wet with paint.

‘There,’ she said. ‘We’ll leave it to dry and come back to it later. In the meanwhile, how about we go on a trip, to see real Italy?’

Karen had covered up in tight purple booty shorts and a thin white shirt (those areola stared me straight in the face), with toxic pink lipstick engraved in her teeth and a thick knot of hair still standing in the back of her head. Whilst it was a welcome change to finally see her wearing trousers, this overall look was terrifying. When we had met her in the garden, all dressed up, she exclaimed loudly ‘I couldn’t possibly go out without dressing! I have a reputation around here for being a classy British lady – and who would I be for letting them down?!’

She had driven us and Antonio to the local town, which was a warm, bustling area, filled with delicious-smelling patisseries, quaint bars, and gorgeously manicured dogs. All of the signs were, obviously, written in Italian, and when I tried to use my limited knowledge of the language to translate the name of a lovely little tea shop, Karen stated, ‘oh, don’t bother, dear! These aren’t very intelligent people, apart from dear Antonio none of them can even speak English!’

We had run into several of Antonio’s friends, all tanned, moustached men with big hands and twinkling eyes. Some of them joked with us, off-handedly inviting us to local parties, and offering us a glass or two of whatever they were drinking. Sat at a bar with an olive-skinned young local, Karen grabbed the arm of another passerby.

‘Hello, dear!’ She exclaimed. ‘It is me, and these two lovely English ladies, out for afternoon aperitivos!’

The man stared at her for a second, before recognising her.

‘Where is Antonio?’ he asked.

When Karen explained that he was in the bathroom, probably talking to another Italian, he slipped out from her grasp and sped off.

‘They all know me around here,’ she announced to us.

‘It’s just like that in Swansea when I go out and run into a million other family members,’ I replied, making light conversation.

She stared me in the eyes, exaggerated a yawn, and went ‘Anyway, when my girl was young…’

We had only been with Karen for two days, and yet everything she said seemed made to anger and belittle us. That following evening, she spent half an hour asking questions such as ‘What’s the point in Wales, anyway? The language is dead, why bother keeping it alive?’ and ‘How on earth can the Welsh even consider themselves to have a culture?’

The next few days were especially difficult, as temperatures soared and Cora and I worked outside for six, eight hours a day. I don’t want to say that it was unbearable living around Karen, but it was difficult.

We once went on a walk as a group to a local house, made from beautiful old stone which had blackened slightly over the years.

‘This, girls, is the place that time forgot! Can you believe that some people are still forced to live in dirty little shacks like this?’

She announced several times that the place was a disgusting, run-down area, until the neighbour walked outside and Antonio begged her to quieten. When she went, ‘imagine living here, so ugly, so decrepit!’ Antonio shouted ‘hush!’ at her, and she threw an actual tantrum for the next ten minutes, complete with head banging against the table we sat down at until sedated with a glass of wine.

One week into the trip, and Cora and I were close to losing it. For the whole day, Karen would make snide comments about Cora and I (and everything we stood for, Wales, the working class, and Italians – especially Italians), she would shut down Antonio whenever he attempted to tell us fun stories, she would belittle every other local we happened to run into. We had visited Lombardy to experience the beautiful region, but instead we were left babysitting a very short Satan.

After one particularly exhausting afternoon, where Karen 1) said that ‘people here are civilised, not those predators from Egypt and Morocco!’, 2) had a very patronising conversation in which she told a warehouse worker step-by-step how they should be doing their job, 3) bragged about smashing up the house when she gets angry, 4) kicked a dying pigeon and laughed at it suffering for the rest of the day, 5) made uncomfortable, suggestive comments about the concept of homosexuality, and finally 6) rolled her eyes at me when I cut open my hand washing her plates and retracted my hand in pain, we decided that we absolutely had to find another place to live and work.

But just before we could tell Karen, she read our messages on our phone and told us, in no uncertain terms, that we were no longer welcome in her house and had to leave within the next 24 hours.

It was both a relief, and the worst thing that could have happened. We were situated, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere – with no back-up plans, no local contacts that could save us, and very little idea of where we could possibly go next with so little warning. We spent the whole evening staying awake, trying to figure out where the hell we could go next, and in the morning the next day, Karen threw open the door of our bedroom.

‘I see you have both decided that you won’t be working this morning?’

As it happened, despite the fact that we would be leaving in only a few mere hours, Karen had expected us to get up again at 7am (somehow finding enough time to sleep and find another host family to stay with*) to get back to work. Thankfully, Antonio had other plans.

‘The next train leaves in thirty minutes, so you should both be going.’ As we grabbed our bags to leave, he handed us each a small book, a gift for our work. ‘I am sorry it had to end like this,’ he said, and smiled sadly.

When we went out to the car, Karen called after us, ‘you’re welcome to stay for a couple days if you’re ever back in the area!’ (After kicking us out in the midst of a pandemic, in the middle of nowhere, with zero travel options available). She winced as she hugged me goodbye, but then pulled Cora in for a long, hard hug, until Cora writhed out of it and Karen planted two wet kisses on her forehead.

In the car, looking back at the house which was now a greying shade of cream, with newly-dug trenches by the swimming pool (by us), exposed brick wall which had the old plaster removed (by us), dilapidated brickwork which had been polished to perfection (by us), we felt proud of the work we had done – even if the boss had been the worst possible person to work for.

Antonio waved at us with a smile, and Karen’s bulbous nipples glared out at us from her shirt. As the gate closed behind us, I relaxed into the leather seat, knowing that I would never see her whiney little face again.

Thank f*ck for that.

* Which we did! We had somehow found a woman in Piemonte to stay with, and as it happened, she turned out to be the most wonderful person we had ever met. Our time in Italy ended on a positive note, thanks to Luisa.

I went into it – perhaps a little naively – believing that this would be the year I embarked on my dream career, maybe buying a house or two as I went along, with my first novel ready for publication at the end of December. Well, how wrong I was!

Personally, 2020 was the messiest year I’ve ever had – and yet, it really wasn’t too bad in the grand scheme of things. My friends and family are healthy, I’ve gained a new appreciation for the art of stillness, and I’ve had time to really figure out who I want to be. Not all too bad, considering the apocalypse.

As such, I’ve decided to do a little reflection post on one of the weirdest and most confusing years of my life, thinking back on the good things that a year of isolation and barricades has granted.

Without further ado, here’s (almost) 20 things that 2020 gave me.

STARTED UP MY OWN TEA BUSINESS*

*Almost!

The first thing on this list is probably one of the biggest things, as it includes a whole business plan I wasn’t expecting to start working on until I was about thirty years old.

My girlfriend and I spent the majority of this year researching how exactly we could start up our own tea business, how we could possibly begin to tackle such a big challenge, and what sort of products we would want to put out into the world. This means that hopefully, it will come into being – at least small scale – by mid-2021.

We spent most of lockdown undertaking tea qualifications and attending online tea and business talks – along with drinking over 250 different types of tea within the span of about nine months. Hopefully, it will all come together nicely, and then we can share our delicious products with you!

GRATEFUL FOR MORE TIME TO PLAN MY DOCUMENTARIES

Not only have I been able to spend more time bouncing ideas off of my favourite explorers and documentary makers about the Walking Wales Expedition, but I have also been able to invest more time into my big doc, which we will hopefully start shooting next September.

The idea of the feature will be focused around the lives of several First Nations groups in western Canada, who are currently undergoing tremendous levels of resurgence and resistance in regards to culture, language, and politics. I will go out to British Columbia for several months, learning as much as I can and bringing their stories to UK audiences.

The documentary was postponed due to Covid, which gives me a whole year longer to create deeper, more meaningful connections with the participants, and a wider timeline to sort out the itinerary, the costs, the storyline, and all of the other million little bits that go along with organising a whole documentary.

It’s going to be great, and I’ll let you guys know more about it as the time nears.

FALLEN IN LOVE WITH SKATING

I used to be such a big fan of rollerskating when I was younger, and never went very long without indulging in the sport. Saying this though, since I was about 15 I hadn’t really skated – which was such a shame as I used to be so good at it! So this year just after lockdown, I dusted off my old boots and took them to the concrete skatepark near my house, and my passion was refuelled!

My girlfriend and I would take it in turns to use this one pair of broken boots, slowly gathering confidence and skill as the sun would rise each morning. And then my first pair of Moxi’s arrived and I was able to go harder and faster and more serious, and now I can’t go a single day without posting a new trick on my skating Instagram.

The sport has given me so much – increased fitness, a reason to get up early and get stuff done, cool skatepark friends, an outlet to release negative energy – and I couldn’t have spent the past year doing a better activity.

TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHAT I WANT TO ACHIEVE

2020 gave me a LOT of time to plan out my future goals, and visualise where I want to be in however many years time. I have pretty much sorted out the whole entire floor plan for my future house, and narrowed down the countries I would like to live in to sixteen.

I have had time to figure out exactly where I aspire to be when I turn 25 – which is undertaking my first BIG expedition (even though I still have no coherent idea as to what that could be).

My girlfriend and I painted our vision boards this spring, surrounded by pu’erh tea and good records, planning out what we want to achieve in our lives. Some of the top things that I spent time manifesting were owning a tea business (woohoo!), writing for Nat Geo, travelling to the Empty Quarter, securing a train company sponsorship, maintaining a good health, having a novel I’ve written on the funky tables you get when you enter Waterstones, and getting a Guinness World Record.

I think there are worse goals to dream about!

PICKED UP A WHOLE LOTTA NEW SKILLS

Whilst a good majority of the skills I have spent time *perfecting* are pretty pointless, some I think are pretty cool. These are as follows (you can decide for yourself whether they’re useful or pointless):

• How to play chess to an okay standard. It’s still likely that I will lose to anyone I play against, but at least I understand the rules!
• How to do a handstand (against a wall, but still, baby steps)
• How to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
• What all of the different zodiacs mean, and the difference between rising, moon, and sun signs
• The different stages of the moon, and how these can effect mood and behaviour
• The complete lyrics to Un Amigo Fiel, the Latino version of Aladdin’s Friend Like Me
• The great (and not-so-great) explorers and exactly what they achieved, to a pretty good detail
• What stands for good country music and bad country music (the leader of the former is Buddy Brown, of course)
• The spelling difference between desert and dessert
• How to edit videos (albeit not very well)

REALISED JUST HOW MUCH I LOVE AND VALUE FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Being able to spend quality time with the people you love can only be a blessing, and I for one was able to learn so much from the people around me and get to understand them on a level I felt we maybe hadn’t quite reached before.

My girlfriend and I celebrated a whole year together, and were still able to have a great anniversary despite all of the hurdles that were thrown at us. We had some of the cutest dates, went into scandalous little businesses together, travelled across Europe for several months, and baked some of the best food ever. It was pretty sweet.

BECAME OPEN WITH MY SEXUALITY

As it happens, I’d gone on telling people that I was bisexual since I was about 15, and yet I never really had any evidence to back it up. But then in 2019 I realised that this label wasn’t quite right despite really being the only one that fit, and then in 2020 I learnt how to use my words and vocalise who I am and what I believe in.

This was further reinforced when I lived with the most homophobic Brummie lady in existence for a week over in Lombardy, who only cemented my ideas about myself. As it happens, she was the worst person I have ever met in my entire existence – I promise to tell you all about it next month! – and that only made it all clearer to me.

WRITTEN NEARLY 30K OF MY NOVEL

I know it doesn’t sound awfully impressive when I write about 2k a day for this blog or other blog-related duties, but considering I’ve had writer’s block with that particular manuscript (and all other novel ideas) for the past couple years, I think it’s marvellous that I was finally able to get my ideas out.

Thorough planning was my unexpected knight in armour, as for the first time since conceptualising the piece, I was able to actually visualise the characters and come to grips with exactly who and what I wanted to portray in my book. My initial goal was to write 1k a day starting from the end of lockdown, which should have put me at around 200k…but we move on.

TAKEN MY HEALTH INTO MY HANDS

With almost zero parties going on, and little desire to have alcohol and food products I know I’m intolerant to, this year has meant that I have really avoided temptation and been able to look after my own health pretty well.

I have been able to truly listen to my body and understands its needs, and from that, I have come out a healthier, more physically aware person – even if the lack of a gym means that I’m not quite as beefy as I would like to be.

MANY BREAKDOWNS LED TO MANY BREAKTHROUGHS

2020 gave me a LOT of time for self-reflection, which wasn’t always positively enlightening, I’ll be honest with you. I had so many existential crises about ageing, the concept of death, the idea that I had no future, feeling lost and depressed and isolated, and my worsening anxiety (to the point where I couldn’t even introduce myself on a Zoom call due to a lack fo social interaction and an unnecessary amount of pressure put on myself).

It’s been a hard year and I’m still working through a lot of these things, but I have definitely come to learn more about myself, who I want to be, and my whole opinion on the meaning of life through it.

COOKED MORE THAN EVER BEFORE

I’m going to be honest and say that it’s partly because of my food-orientated girlfriend – but I promise that sometimes I did do more than just trail after her in the kitchen. I assisted in baking fish cakes, handmade tagliatelli, a wide array of breads, and more sweet things than I can possibly keep count of. It’s been a very well-fed year.

Alternatively, I’ve also cooked some pretty disgusting things. Green pancakes, watery rice krispies, paella with old and tasteless seafood… but it is all experience, right?

(Although I’m not sure my flatmates would have seen it that way…)

LEARNT SO MUCH ABOUT THE WORLD OF TEA

So much in fact, that I was actually able to start up my own tea course!

I like to think that I was pretty well versed in the world of tea before, dedicating so much of my time to attending tea ceremonies and tea talks and trying as many variants of the beautiful plant as possible, but this year I have really had the opportunity (and time…) to dedicate myself to learning. My studies have covered pretty much all areas surrounding the history of the camellia sinensis plant, the incredible cultures that drink from it, and what unami actually is.

Being hands-on and learning how to work the leaves and spices myself, and then forming that into many different flavour combinations of my own meant that I have gotten an insight into the world of tea that I doubt I would have gotten otherwise.

MY SPANISH GOT SLIIIIGHTLY BETTER

I’ll be honest and say that it hasn’t improved as much as it could have – but spending some time as a goat farmer in Spain meant that I was exposed to words I’d never tried wrapping my tongue around before. With extra time to study the language, I tried translating parts of several books – and whilst this isn’t an activity that I do everyday, every little counts.

Right?

GOT BACK INTO MY UKE

Whilst I didn’t record any new songs or do anything particularly jazzy, I was able to dust off my beloved ukulele and get back into the game. I re-awakened my fingers to a whole bunch of chords I was never really expertly adapt at playing before, and recorded a couple of old songs for friends and family.

Hopefully in the future I would be able to switch out the uke for a banjo, and join an old-time country band to tour across the Bible Belt.

DID MY FIRST EVER DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW

I realised at some point during the first lockdown that I’ve pretty much planned my whole life around the idea that I want to host my own documentaries (along with other things), and yet hadn’t actually had any experience with doing so. As such, I started planning a bunch of little interviews in Wales, and had my first last month!

This first interview was with a really cool guy called Ben Gwalchmai who supports independence for Wales (and who wouldn’t?), in order to learn more about his values and mission. It went pretty well, and made me feel as though maybe I can actually host documentaries myself.

Over the next few months (COVID willing), I want to meet with a whole bunch of incredible people across Wales. There’s a psychic, a fisherman, a caver, and a handful of old Miss Wales winners, along with many more. All of that time spent binge-watching documentaries in lockdown has really come in handy!

INTERVIEWED A WHOLE BUNCH OF ROLE MODELS

One of the best things that came out of this year has to be the fact that I was able to have a bunch of conversations with some of the most influential travellers and documentary hosts out there. I was able to learn even more about how exactly to run an interview and how to stage it all – along with learning how to actually work Zoom.

I feel as though a certain type of confidence is built when you learn how to initiate a functioning conversation with the people that instil you with inspiration – and I’m kind of glad that we had to stay home for so long, as I doubt they would have had the time for me otherwise!

Some of my favourite people that I was able to talk with this year include Karl Pilkington, Vedangi Kulkarni, Liv Arnesen, Darius Arya, Ash Bhardwaj, and Mark Beaumont. I also have some pretty cool talks with people like Charlet Duboc and Chris Bonington hopefully coming about in the new year!

PUBLISHED COOL ARTICLES WITH SOME GREAT OUTLETS

I also received my highest paying commission ever, which was unexpected! I wrote so many articles for the New Welsh Review, I did a piece for Buzzfeed, and I was lucky enough to find myself published in Hidden Europe. I’ll link it when it’s out.

Along with that, I did a whole lot of smaller pieces for blogs and websites across the globe. Whilst a good handful of them only got about five views maximum, it felt good to be able to pour so much of myself into my writing and have other writers appreciate it.

I found myself on the Europe Diaries, Jessie on a Journey, Mapping Megan, Voyager for Life, and Sick Chirpse, along with so many more.

FINISHED MY DEGREE

Of course, this one kinda just happened by default – but I’m pretty chuffed with it anyway! I finished a banging dissertation and got a 1st Honours Bachelor’s Degree for it, which I’d been hoping for ever since I had started uni.

That still didn’t help me when applying for over 200 jobs during a pandemic as a post-grad though. Ouch.

READ APPROXIMATELY 42 BOOKS

I know, I know, it’s kind of pathetic considering most of this year has been spent in lockdown, but I never realised how many books I consume when travelling and flitting between places and transport.

Still, I feel as though 42 isn’t too bad a number, especially considering the fact that around half of them were freebies in exchange for my writing of detailed book reviews. I read some really cool books this year, with my favourites being:

• The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World by Torre DeRoche
• Tazmamart by Aziz BineBine
• Hitchhiking the Silk Road by Levison Wood
• The Great Railway Bazaar by the man, the legend, Paul Theroux
• The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl
• Tough Women Adventure Stories by Jenny Tough
• Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger
• The Librarian by Salley Vickers
• Expeditions Unpacked by Ed Stafford
• Stranger to the Desert by Dorothy Ross
• The Lost City of Z by David Grann
• Secret Britain by Mary Ann Ochota
• The Last Giants again by Levison Wood

Have you guys ever read any of these ones before?

And so, that pretty much sums up 2020! I can’t say that it was an awful year as my loved ones are all safe and well and nothing drastically horrendous happened to me, but it has certainly had its up and downs.

A plus side of that is that really, it can only get better!

Let me know in the comments below how 2020 treated you!

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A true adventurer at heart, I was super excited to finally talk to him and learn more about his experiences.

First of all, could you tell me a little about how your story began?

I grew up in Windsor in a very middling town, where we had really good access to the outdoors. I wasn’t really outdoorsy in any way, I just really enjoyed being outside.

When I was in sixth form I worked at the local stables in exchange for being taught how to ride horses, and that was a very enjoyable experience that I wanted to do more of. After university, I did three things that I loved – I worked as a ‘jackaroo’ in Australia, I did a season as a ski instructor, and I played rugby in rural communities in New Zealand, which taught me about their cultures and was incredible.

You don’t fit the typical explorer typecast of white skinned ex-army man – would you say that your race or gender hindered or helped you?

I actually recently joined the RAF! But growing up I was told things like ‘I don’t like Asians but you’re alright,’ so I’d always had conflicting feelings about what it meant to be British. There’s a lot of English nationalism, which I think is different to Welsh and Scottish nationalism. 

I didn’t join the army earlier because of the war in Iraq which I thought was an unjust war, but I did decide to be in the reserves as it’s a really great place to learn loads of practical and outdoor skills which are useful. I’m not of that British colonial mindset – I’m Indian, after all – and until recently, it was accepted that the British empire was a benign empire. But then you go to India and you get the real, unpleasant, story.

So, travel to me was not about going to places for physical ardour or for proving how tough I was, to me it was a way of engaging with a local culture with empathy. I went to New Zealand to get an insight into the indigenous Maori, but travel and exploration is all about cultural exploration. I actually don’t like the word ‘explorer’ as really, it’s just a pre-cursor to coloniser, conquest, disposition, conquest, and used to describe people like Burton and Speke, whose explorations led to the dis-placement of the local people.

What would you say is one of the hardest things you’ve faced across all of your journeys across the world?

They are all hard in their own way, but some of the hardest things were from me putting too much pressure on myself and not seeing that the travel is valuable regardless. You get tired, you have to walk long distances, you have to carry heavy things, but no one cares about that stuff and it’s not that interesting. 

You mentioned that you studied philosophy – has this helped you in many situations, such as meeting with the Dalai Lama?

Philosophy teaches you a skill, critical thinking. What I do now is write articles and columns, so this was really useful. Like obligations to war, justice, these are very important things, and the way that different nations approach these ideas distinguish one nation from another, when they believe in one value system to another.

But when it comes to meeting the Dalai Lama, you don’t really ask him a question, he just tells you stuff. He was great, a very charismatic person. He has a remarkable ability to make you feel important, and I’m sure he’s probably met more people of different levels of society than anyone else on earth. I also learnt compassion from him.  He was talking about having to sneak out of Tibet, and he said that he had learnt that from the Chinese communists, who tried their best to culturally cleanse Tibet. For someone to be able to know that a nation and a group had done that to his people and still have the wisdom and compassion was very inspiring.

You’ve written for big publications such as the Telegraph, so I was wondering how you broke into the industry?

I think there are two approaches – nepotism or by writing blogs, with the latter being how I did it. And then I started to do free pieces for magazines and newspapers, and eventually this became paid. I got my first by-line in a paper from CityAM, and I was attending loads of travel shows and watching people I admired.

Nicholas Crane was doing a talk at the Adventure Travel Show and I told him I loved his work and he asked what I wanted to do, and when I told him I was going to take my dad’s ashes to India he said that he loved India and then introduced me to Michael Kerr, the deputy editor of the Telegraph Travel section, so that was being in the right place and asking questions.

Can I ask with all of your filming experience what you would consider to be one of the best documentary cameras?

It depends on what you’re shooting for. For example, I used the Sony Ax53, it’s not flash, it’s the updated version of the one we used on Walking the Nile, and its robust. You don’t want to have to think about your camera in the middle of doing something, you just want your camera to work. You can hear people, you can film stuff, and it is fairly indestructible. If you’re going to have another camera on top, probably go for the Sony Alpha 7S3.

For the Walking Wales Expedition we will be using the Canon Eos 700D, and I don’t know if you’ve used it or recommend it or..?

The main thing is that your kit should not hinder you. The big things that mess people up in filmmaking is ability to use a camera, ability to plan and write a story, and audio. Whether or not you have good film will not depend on your camera.

Who was your inspiration when you grew up? Was there someone you looked up to?

I just watched the new Michael Palin documentary, Travels of a Lifetime, which is currently on BBC iPlayer. Palin’s documentaries were the first time that an audience followed someone through their journey, and when he started, he was the first one to do it. I like him because he’s so curious about everyone that he meets and is just such a nice, authentic, and funny guy. His humour comes from warmth and that ability to connect to people.

The other stuff that really inspired me was Star Trek, I loved the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and I think this tolerance and interest of other cultures and the fact it was all built and framed in a very warm approach again, drew me to it.

Can I ask what your dream project is?

I’m currently working on a couple of ideas in India, but I don’t like the idea of a dream project per-say, as I’ve been lucky enough to go to all of the places I wanted to go to. But I really want to go for a journey in India following the path of my dad’s side of the family and some history that intersects with British history. I’ve walked 3,000 miles with Lev and I’ve done all sorts of things. I think that with the dream project, you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘are you doing it for you or for success?’ Lev said he wanted to walk the Nile to write a book to finally break through into the travel writing world, but I don’t think that he had always dreamed of walking the Nile for nine months.

So I have one last question, and that is, what’s next?

Who knows? With Coronavirus right now it is really hard to plan anything. But I definitely want to spend some time in India, and it is such an interesting, diverse place. You have more diversity in India than you do in Europe, but you tend to think of them as more homogenous. The more likely next one is I want to do some journeys in Britain, I will probably wait till spring and do the east side of Britain, go through the Fens and Yorkshire rather than through Cumbria.

But mainly, I’m doing a podcast called The First Mile with my friend Pip Stewart. What underpinned it was the saying that ‘the hardest part of any journey is the first mile’, so we wanted to really delve into what is the first mile of everybody’s journey. Podcasts don’t really do travel narratives and telling the story in a creative way, so we wanted to do that, framed around the first mile of getting through a journey.

And so, that pretty much sums up the Wandering Everywhere interview with one of the coolest adventurers in the game. Do any of y’all follow Ash on his adventures, or plan on doing so now that you know who exactly he is? Let me know in the comments below!

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Some of Karl’s best work follows him on journeys to the furthest corners of the globe. He explores the concept of arranged marriages in India, he tries plastic surgery in Los Angeles, he saves a turtle from a restaurant in Japan and keeps it in his bathtub, he tries to feed a biscuit to a boa constrictor in the Amazon Basin – he truly does it all. In my favourite show of his, The Moaning of Life, he traverses the globe to try to undercover, well, the meaning of life. He seeks the answers for life’s big questions – and at the end of the day, aren’t we all a little curious about how other cultures view identity, time, death, and the best ways to live our lives?

I’ll be frank with you and say that he’s probably my favourite traveller. He’s incredibly unpretentious and down-to-earth, but most importantly, he is one of the most honest men on TV. He’s an absolute legend, and nothing short of a household name in the UK.

Karl’s a sick writer and all of his books make for great reads – and I can promise you that you’ve never read travel journals quite like them. They’re so full of personality and written with that classic Karl Pilkington voice that you just can’t help but be drawn in, and I think that we could all benefit from trying to understand the world around us and our place within it.

And so, without further ado, here is my interview with my friend Karl. Or at least, Mancunian guy that replies to me during his morning sh*t.

Firstly, what’s your favourite biscuit?

I’m forever changing. At the minute I’m enjoying Foxes Jam and cream.

You’ve tried to retire a couple of times now, but got bored and went back to creating content. How are you finding this quarantine, and what are you doing to stay busy?

I’m quite happy being at home. I saw a sign last week telling people to ‘stay at home unless you really need to go out’ due to the virus, but that’s the way I’ve always lived. I’m most happy in my own space. I’ve been busy gardening, done some little jobs about the house, I’ve done some short audio animation podcast type things that I’ve been bunging on Facebook and done quite a bit of doodling.

I think people have probably learn’t a lot about themselves during this lockdown. In a quiet moment last week, I counted how many teeth I had in my head. There’s always something to do.

In Sick of It, you highlight issues such as depression and isolation. What do you think of this show as a platform to raise awareness for these issues?

That was never my plan. The stories are based on some of my own little worries and insecurities that I think most people have at some point in their life.  Issues like feeling out of place and not being good enough. I got a few letters and messages from viewers saying they could relate to it so that was good.

You say you’re not that confident, and yet you’ve done all of these amazing things and done them well. How do you overcome this, and get on with producing entertaining content?

It’s normally at the point when I still have time to walk away that I’m not that confident. Once I’ve signed a contract that says I’ll have to deliver something, I’m that focused on getting it done that the worry goes away until I’ve finished.

They try and teach kids to be mega confident but too much of it isn’t a good thing. It’s healthy to keep doubting what you are doing and questioning yourself.

I’ve seen a lot of interviews where the audience laughs at every single comment you make, regardless of whether or not it’s actually funny. In one interview with Alan Carr, there’s this point where you talk about the first dead person you ever saw. It’s quite obviously a serious subject, and yet the audience and Jimmy are still absolutely killing themselves over it. Is it incredibly annoying to say what you’re honestly thinking just for people to laugh at you?

I just think the audience has just been primed to laugh. The idea is, if the live audience is laughing, the viewers at home will laugh. It’s a bit lazy. They do it the other way as well, they put sad music on stuff so people will cry. I hate all that. If something is sad and written well, you could put a track from the Crazy Frog over the scene and it should still work.   

Do you think the branding of your older shows, such as An Idiot Abroad, has labelled you as a ‘funnyman’ and stopped you from doing other things you might have wanted to do?

It’s quite hard to control how people see you, and you can’t control what people find funny so I try not to worry about it. I remember it being tough when I had to promote Sick of It though. It’s a totally different tone to the travel stuff which is difficult to get through to people. I’m not that arsed if people don’t like what I do but it would annoy me if someone didn’t enjoy it cos they were expecting it to be something else. A lot of critics were surprised by the look and tone of the series as it’s not what they were used to doing. I have never set out for anything I’ve filmed to be funny, I just hoped people would find something interesting in it.

I think I got labelled ‘funnyman’ because I did stuff with Ricky and Steve who are comedians, so it was easier for people to bundle me in with what they do. I don’t watch that much funny stuff, I prefer stories like Kes. Vic and Bob make me laugh but laughter isn’t something I need loads of in my life.

Did it get annoying to have no control of any of the travel plans in An Idiot Abroad?

I just found it very tiring being on edge all the time not knowing when or even what time someone was going to knock on my hotel room door and shove a camera in my face.  The filming was always easier than the anticipation of the the filming if that makes sense. If someone said they are going to kick you in the bollocks, it’s always worse than someone just kicking you in the bollocks without warning.

What’s the best thing that you’ve experienced whilst shooting one of your shows abroad?

The best bit wasn’t abroad. It was when we filmed a murmuration in Somerset for The Moaning of Life. It’s when thousands of starlings fly in mass. It was really good. Everyone should try and witness it if they can. I first saw one on telly when Bill Oddie did a show about it. Normally telly makes things look better than reality but it was even more amazing in real life. In fact, this goes back to what I was saying earlier about adding laughter or sad music to stuff. They’d put music over it on the Bill Oddie programme and it really wasn’t needed as the sound of the starlings as they whizz about through the air added to the chaos of it.

In what ways do you think travel has changed you?

I think it changed me but I don’t know if that would have happened anyway with age. We’re all changing all the time. Like I said at the start, Jam n cream biscuits are my current favs but last week it was ginger stem biscuits.

You once said that it’s good to do stuff you’re proud of, so that you can sit back and be like ‘wow I did that.’ What would you say is your proudest achievement?

Paying the mortgage off probably. I can remember feeling quite happy that we had managed to do that. Completing the books and Sick of it are up there as good moments. Both things that I never thought I’d never be able to do.

Why is Wales your favourite British travel spot?

I haven’t been for years but when I was a kid me mam and dad had a caravan there on a campsite that had a really good arcade. All school holidays were spent there, and time when I should have been at school as well. I didn’t go abroad until I was about 22 I think.

What would you say are your personal seven wonders of the world?

Mainly nature things. The murmuration I’ve mentioned. Octopus amaze me. Most stuff in the sea is mind blowing. I found out the other day that sharks have been around longer than trees. How mad is that.

Finally, you’ve said that you’re not a planner, and that you’re not the sort of person to knock about with a five-year plan. What sort of advice would you give to people that had it all planned out, and now because of the coronavirus have had to re-plan their entire lives?

I’m not a planner but that doesn’t mean you can’t have dreams. I just don’t understand why you’d put a time limit on something. Why five years? When I was a kid and wanted to work in radio I didn’t put a time on it. I just kept working towards achieving it. If you want something enough just keep going for it. I think I enjoyed the journey more than reaching the goal.

I think that moral of the story is to be open, honest, and curious with everything you do… and when times get a little tough, don’t be afraid to give it a good old moan.

A massive thanks to Karl for the in-depth answers! He once said in another (less cool) interview that he wouldn’t want to continue doing travel docs because he wouldn’t want to exhaust the genre, but no one goes ‘oh that Michael Palin’s off again, he’s starting to take the mick with all this travelling,’ do they? So Karl, if you get bored of trying to retire once again, we’ll be here waiting.

And so, why not go off and watch Sick of It, or re-watch his travel docs? Or whilst you’re at it, read one of his books?

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ALL IMAGES © SKY PLC

Darius is an archaeologist, professor, and documentary host, whose work has been seen on CBS, BBC Travel, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Huffington Post, and National Geographic, along with many others. He is the Executive Director of the American Institute for Roman Culture, a non-profit organisation that aims to promote and conserve Rome’s cultural heritage through educational programs, projects, public outreach, and social media.

He has been the face of many TV projects, such as Ancient Invisible Cities, Under Italy, and Ancient Rome Live, and is always creating new content for his social media channels. In summary, he’s a pretty cool guy, and I am very glad to be interviewing him for Wandering Everywhere.

You can follow Darius on his journeys via his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook under his handle @dariusaryadigs, and you can check out his Youtube channel here. To keep up to date with his ventures across the Eternal City, you should follow the Live, from Rome! Youtube channel over at We Dig Rome.

SO FIRST OF ALL, COULD YOU TELL ME A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT HOW YOU INITIALLY GOT INTO ARCHAEOLOGY?

For me, it was several factors. I think a lot of people fall in love with Classical Languages and ancient civilisations through language, but for a lot of people that I know growing up in States it was through stories. It was through art. It was down to the Greek mythology that I was fascinated with back in sixth grade, and museum trips and local bookstores. It was layer upon layer, such as going to the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC as a child, learning about ancient history which then accelerated into taking Latin in junior high and Latin-Greek in high school.

I continued these studies in college, where I had the opportunity to study abroad and that really opened up a lot of doors. I went on one trip to Europe with the school where we travelled with a Rail Pass, and when we’d made it to Rome it was incredible. Just wow. I mean, it just blew me away particularly see things like the Roman Forum the Colosseum and so things came together like that kind of organically. I didn’t want to be an academic, though, and wasn’t in love with with what I saw in University. It just felt for me kind of restrictive. So I just went off on my own direction, but you know, everyone has to find that happy medium.

FROM THERE, HOW DID YOU MAKE THE LEAP FROM BEING A LECTURER TO BEING THE FACE OF POPULAR SHOWS ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, AND PBS? 

So all of this work became about location, location, location. You know, I studied, I did that one trip back in Junior High, I studied a semester in Rome which was fantastic and inspiring, and then I just kept on coming back every summer since ’92. Then the transition of ‘how can I do this, how can it be there amidst all of this’ came about. I didn’t want to go down the route of being so distant from it all and only coming back occasionally, so I was trying to figure it out.

I created and co-founded a non-profit which has been around since 2002. We’re getting our own programs and excavations and so forth, and just as it got started people began reaching out to me, too. Saying ‘hey, we see that you’re there, your organisation seems interesting. Can you talk?’ I kind of got a sense of where this was heading, and it became successful just because people liked my vibe or my attitude or my delivery. And to be honest with you there really aren’t that many people from the US doing this sort of thing.

SO YOU NEVER REALLY EXPECTED THAT THIS IS WHERE YOU WOULD END UP?

Everyone wants to have a crack at it and to try it. There are different degrees of success, and every audience is different, you know, with very channels, different countries, different expectations. I had done some theatre and drama and things when I was a kid, but no I’d never really thought about doing it at all. 

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE THING THAT YOU’VE EXPERIENCED WITH ANCIENT INVISIBLE CITIES?

The great things about Ancient Invisible Cities was that we were able to work closely with this fantastic team, Scan Labs, and to work alongside these people was incredible. They were under a lot of pressure whilst we were working on our own narratives, and it was fun, it was intense, and it was another layer of documenting the past. There would be around 15 or 16 people working in different locations simultaneously working with the drones and the helicopters – and I always wanted to ride in one of the helicopters but never did. It was a lot of hard work but it was a lot of fun.

SO HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN ROME FOR NOW?

About 20 years. I’ve spent this time as an opportunity to do more research and practise my Italian, and it’s been good to engage people in stuff like this. The people have been very accommodating and with the language they just thought you know, here’s another person giving their take on the history, which is unlike that which I grew up with. You know, my kids are going to school in Italian schools. One of them is finishing up. They have so much exposure to all of this, and in some ways are a little spoiled because of it. But I needed to do this to truly be able to talk to the audience.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO LEARN ITALIAN? BECAUSE I WATCHED AN INTERVIEW WHERE YOU WERE SPEAKING IT FLUENTLY AND I HONESTLY HADN’T EXPECTED THAT

I’ve been trying to speak the language for as long as I could have, you know, I’m not just here in an English-speaking bubble. It’s not something that I’ve been able to grow up with, and everyone knows after the first two words that I say that I’m not a native, but it just happens.

SO I WAS GOING TO ASK WHY YOU’D CHOSEN TO LIVE IN ROME RATHER THAN ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD, BUT YOUR PASSION AND YOUR LOVE FOR ROME IS PRETTY OBVIOUS

Yeah, I mean when we spoke about this before you were like why Rome and not Athens, but really, it’s just a place that struck me. Ostensibly, you know, when I looking at study abroad programs and my Classics Department asked if I’d rather go to Rome or Athens, I was like, is this a trick question? 

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO PEOPLE THAT VISIT ROME BUT ONLY SEE THE TREVI FOUNTAIN OR THE COLISEUM – WHAT GEMS DO THEY MISS? 

It’s tough. I mean everyone have varying amounts of time here, with limited budgets. I think that there are a lot of variables, especially now with Covid-19, it’s going to be more difficult to even visit places like the Vatican or the Colosseum because they’re going to have to reduce their numbers. It’s going to be very difficult, but they’re re-opening all the museums tomorrow and I have a timed reservation for the Capitoline museums.

Now everything’s going to be with timed entrances, spacing everybody out, and so forth. But I think that the best thing you can do in the city is just to wander about, and you know, just take a look at 10, 20, 30 sites, and just see them because they’re there, all so close to one another. Just go and take them in and experience it. The light changes and the hours go past so you need to experience everything that you can, as slowly as you can.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE BEST PIZZA IN ROME?

Oh God. Classics you know? But ultimately, the best pizza in Rome is in Naples. But in Rome,  I’d say pizzas like Baffetto and the Monte Carlo.

WHAT’S A FUN FACT YOU KNOW ABOUT ANY ASPECT OF LESSER-KNOWN HISTORY? 

There’s actually a massive comprehensive plan around the entire area of what we call the Valley of the Coliseum. It’s currently undergoing a lot of cleaning and in five years time will be radically different. Let’s all hope it’s for the best. You’re going to have a third entrance line that’s going to be have a huge underground space and you’re going to have this new kind of Centre which culminates all of the information about the Coliseum, and there’s even a rotating exhibit space. That’s happening. But yeah, there’s just going to be a lot more going on with Coliseum. I think it’ll enhance people’s experience of the Coliseum for the future. It’s pretty cool.

WHAT’S YOUR DREAM PROJECT?

You know, we are currently working on our publications for previous excavations and that’s a dream to get done. It’s a huge responsibility and we are making a lot of progress right now. And then, with this kind of work that we are doing, I would like it to all make a greater reach and impact. I want it to be much more present as a resource, on a more sustainable level. It would be great if a lot of the institutions and academic associations would lend us more support, but we’re getting some great partnerships with Museum Week and so forth, which is fantastic. The end game is for a lot of people to discover and use our resources, because no one else is giving this stuff, you know, for free.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO PEOPLE THAT WANT TO PRODUCE THEIR OWN SHOWS, AND BE ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC? 

Good luck. It’s all very fickle business, and it’s hard to get acknowledged. It usually comes from a lucky break or by being a scientist or a biologist. You should be creative and voice what you believe in, and try to ignore the hate. Don’t be political, don’t insult anyone, be very careful. Stand up for what you believe in. So if you’re going out there to make a brand, decide what your values are and what you want to convey.

Also, make sure that you’re working on several platforms, not just Twitter or Instagram but also YouTube and anything else you can use. Try to be flexible and use this time to be experimental – but remember that once this stuff is out there, it’s out there forever. Be consistent and be honest.

SO, LAST THING, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO MENTION, SUCH AS A PARTICULAR YOUTUBE CHANNEL..?

For sure! So I direct the American Institute for Roman Culture, a non-profit organisation. We’ve been in Rome working away teaching University programs and we really focus on that online stuff. This is the main webpage with our weekly blog and so forth, and  the website where we now have a learning program is now ancientromelive.org.

You can also follow my weekly seminars from Rome, sometimes on location; Wednesday is geared for kids, Sundays for everyone, always 7pm Rome time. The YouTube channel is We Dig Rome.

Across all media channels, we are @saverome, because we are into saving and preserving this ongoing legacy of Rome. And then for me, I’m all @dariusaryadigs, Facebook, Twitter, and on the website. And then there’s my own YouTube at Darius Arya, it’s a lot of fun Rome content. So check it out. It’s a lot of fun and we are always up for collaboration and, you know, just getting the message out about history.

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And so, there it is! This interview was a lot of fun, and I hope that you guys enjoyed it just as much as I did.

Hopefully, you’ve learnt a little more about the Eternal City, Italian pizza, and the ups and downs of being an archaeologist and documentary host! If you have any more questions for Darius Arya, let me know in the comments below!

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One good thing that has come out of this is that we now have SO MUCH time to focus on ourselves and the things we love. I have spent so much time learning to paint, journalling, deepening my love for tea, and studying great explorers – and that’s just the beginning. Throughout this post I talk about some of my favourite items that have made me feel a lil’ happier during this time, in the hope that they may do the same to you.

And so, without further ado, here are my top things to spoil yourself with during the quarantine.

BEAUTIFUL LAVA BRACELETS

Last year, when I was living in Canada, I came across a type of bracelet that I had rarely seen elsewhere – bracelets made of lava beads. I immediately fell in love with the concept and have wanted one ever since – which is where Molavaco comes in.

Whilst scouring Etsy for some pre-quarantine self-gifts, I came across these beautiful surfer bracelets which are made with lava stone and natural gemstones. Jared, the owner of Molavaco, then set me a set of two bracelets – and honestly, I fell in love with them immediately. One is slightly bigger and comes with a Magnesite stone in the middle, which is said to instil peace in times of meditation. The stone ‘enhances visualisation, promotes new ideas, and brings a calming effect to emotions.’ Now, during a worldwide pandemic, what could be better?

The smaller one is made entirely from Tiger Eye and Lava Stone, with the former helping to focus the mind and resolve issues unclouded by emotions. It is said that it is particularly useful for healing illnesses and dispelling fear. The lava stones, which also make up the majority of the bigger bracelet, are solidified from molten lava and are said to help with grounding yourself and offering stability. These both came in a drawstring canvas bag, which drew the whole thing together nicely.

I have worn the magnesite bracelet everyday since receiving it, and have given the tiger eye bracelet to my girlfriend because her wrist was looking particularly empty. I have re-visited the Etsy shop approximately 400 times since receiving these bracelets, and am considering ordering a bunch more for both my flatmates and myself, so that they can understand what all the fuss is about, and I can stack more bracelets on my wrist in official surfer style.

Jared says on the website that they ‘hope [these bracelets] bring a little luck and zen to your life. Inspired by my daughter, every stacked bracelet is crafted to explore new boundaries and to live your own lifestyle. From the beach to the mountains, these bracelets can be worn anywhere life brings you.’ I for one plan on taking these bracelets with me everywhere I go, once quarantine is lifted.

This is quite possibly one of my favourite shops ever, as everything is made with so much love and passion. The bracelets are absolutely beautiful and the owner of the shop is the friendliest person ever and always ready to answer any questions. I cannot recommend them enough. Some of my other favourites from their Etsy store are their Tibetan agate bracelets and the cracked orange agate bracelets – perfect for brightening up a dark quarantine day, don’t you think?

BEAUTIFUL HANDMADE PENS

These absolutely breathtaking pens are easily some of the most beautiful items I have ever received. I was sent this set of three from Corby Bender, a talented Omaha artist who works with a variety of media including acrylics, resin, inks, and wood. He is such a cool guy and was super helpful in explaining to me his processes when I wanted to know more about them.

Basically, the gorgeous orange and red pen was made with a casting resin called Alumilite. Corby mixed this with a couple different colours from mica powder, which he then poured into a mould and let cure for a few days until it had formed a very hard chunk of resin. From there, he drilled out two pieces of it to fit the inner tubes for the pen parts, and then put the pieces on his lathe to use a carbine tool to turn the blanks at a high speed. He then finished it up with a wet polishing process, which makes the pen shiny and glass-like and wonderful.

The brown pen was made in a similar way to this, with the only difference being that this is a piece of solid walnut wood. To turn this one, he used a mixture of boiled linseed oil, shellac, and denatured alcohol which he applied before turning it at a high speed. This brings out the natural beauty and grain of the wood. Once that dried, he then applied several layers of CA, a superglue-like substance that adds a shiny and durable coating to the pen so it should not crack if accidentally dropped. He finished it up with the same nine-step wet sanding pad process used in the first pen to remove as many ‘wrinkles’ caused by applying the CA as possible. By the time it was finished, it had a beautiful and smooth, shiny, and hard finish.

Finally, the middle pen! This beauty is what’s called a ‘hybrid pen’, as the blank that makes up the body was cast using both resins (like the first pen) and wood (like the third). Oil was applied to the wood to help bring out the colours of the grain and once it had soaked in, Corby again used the nine-step polishing process. CA was applied for shininess and durability. This was paired up with pen parts that allow the two-piece system to work. The cap includes the clip portion and decorative centre band while the nib is a fountain pen nib. If you untwist the front from the body, you’ll find inside a plastic cartridge that ‘snaps’ into place to hold the ink. This cartridge is replaceable and universal in size so you should be able to find replacements almost anywhere that sells pens. This pen is different from the others as it is a two-part construction. You can screw the cap onto the back, or ‘post’ it when writing and when you’re done, you can screw the cap onto the front nib area to keep the writing nib protected and avoid the ink from drying out. It’s pretty cool.

These pens came in a gorgeous little pouch which Corby had applied oils to to soften it and add a little bit of an ‘old world’ feel. It all comes together to create a gorgeous set of pens which I am completely in love with, and I cannot recommend Corby Bender Art enough.

Perfect for writing letters to people during this global pandemic, eh?

ADORABLE LITTLE BEE NECKLACE

There’s actually a funny story behind this gorgeous little bee necklace, which I completely fell in love with after glimpsing it on Etsy. It was coming up to Christmas, and I wanted nothing more than to treat my girlfriend to a bag full of things that she would truly love. And so I chose some books and some spices – and then this beautiful little necklace to really top it all off.

In the build up to Christmas, my girlfriend made a throwaway comment about how much she loved big, bulky biker jewellery, and was planning on indulging in some new heavy-set rings. I felt my heart drop, because here I had wrapped up this delicate little necklace, hoping that she may love it just as much as I did. But I decided not to say anything, and instead just waited it out until the end of the season.

I then went away to Morocco for a bit to explore some of its cities, and when I returned, I found that she had bought a bee necklace for herself – but one that was nowhere near as delicate and beautiful as this one. Begrudgingly, I handed her the presents, and when she opened the one containing this necklace, she immediately took off her old necklace and replaced it with this one. All the waiting and over-thinking had paid off – she LOVED it.

The necklace is made with sterling silver, and the charm is about 14mm wide. It’s beautifully detailed, and is produced by Emma, the friendly and helpful owner behind the Dainty Toch Etsy store. For the past five months, I have been staring at the little bee necklace around my girlfriend’s neck, and I love how much she adores it. I genuinely think that it was one of the best gifts I have given – and think that it is the perfect little present to cheer someone up during this quarantine.

Looking back at Emma’s site, I’m seeing more and more necklaces that I want to purchase for people. There’s a gorgeous little dinosaur necklace, a beautiful little dragon necklace, an intricate circle. Honestly, I could easily spend the rest of the quarantine stalking her shop and going through everything. This necklace has certainly helped to spread a little Christmas cheer around this dreary time.

GREEN HAND-BOUND NOTEBOOK

This is easily one of the most beautiful notebooks I have in my collection, and I’ve been using it religiously to scribble down notes on teas as I venture into becoming a tea connoisseur (because what other passions is a travel-sick tea lover supposed to take up?). The cover is a gorgeous green woven cloth, with an exposed spine created by the ‘link stitch’ method, and it feels so good to be able to lay a book out flat without having to crack the spine or ruin the binding. The paper is both 100% recycled and also of a very high quality, and thick enough to stop even the most impertinent of ink from bleeding through.

I received this notebook from the Hello Florrie store on Etsy – one of my favourites for wonderful hand-stitched self-gifts. Each notebook is entirely unique and made with love, and have intriguing textures that you just love to fondle in public. I really like the rustic style of the repurposed fabric and contrasted linen for the spine – and can’t help but notice that the colours all come together to form the colour wheel basis of the Welsh flag!

If you want to take up a writing passion of your own during this quarantine, then I really think that this is a brilliant choice. The notebook is gorgeous, the creator is the nicest woman EVER, and the paper is perfect for writing down your desired tea-orientated career change notes. What else could you need?

EXPLORERS’ LEATHER SATCHEL

One thing that I have always, always wanted to own is a gorgeous leather satchel, just like the ones explorers wear in old adventure movies – and I’ve finally found one. Whilst I’m not filling mine with a rusty compass and an old Aztec knife, I still feel as though it helps me play the part of ‘inundated explorer lost during the quarantine.’

I received my satchel from Urban Duck, a gorgeous Etsy store that showcases the most divine bags, all made from 100% leather. They each have their own characteristics, with small natural marks or scars from animals who brushed a little to close to a fence, and I truly admire the fact that each bag has its own story to tell.

The bag arrived with a little note on how to take care of it so that it stays as high quality for as long as possible, and the team is always at the other end of a computer to talk and discuss ideas for your perfect bag. The quality of the satchel is amazing, and it manages to fit both my Macbook and several little notebooks, with the leather being strong enough to hold all of my psuedo-explorer gear wherever I go.

I genuinely think that this is one of the most beautiful things that I have ever owned, and I shall be sure to cherish it for as long as possible. The colour is a gorgeous rich British royal green, and I have received several compliments on it on my one-walk-a-day during the Welsh lockdown. I am in awe of it, and cannot recommend it enough.

BEAUTIFUL LIL’ TIN OF TEA

Anyone that knows me (or, you know, reads the blog) knows just how much I love my tea. I have spent such a big portion of my quarantine time reading up on tea, watching documentaries on tea, and attending online courses on tea, and honestly the more I learn the more interested I become.

In order to help fuel my new tea addiction, I started looking around Etsy to see what sort of tea-related products they had to offer – and came across this super cool tin of sample tea from Marvling Bros Ltd. The collection is full of my favourite types of teas – from senchas to Darjeelings, white teas to Lapsang Souchongs – along with offering teas that I had never tried before, such as Keemun black. This box features the most well-known teas from China and India, and is perfect for tea fanatics and sommeliers alike.

Inside of the tin is a guide for brewing the tea, with methods for brewing water at different temperatures when you don’t own a thermometer. It also comes with filters, which I was inexplicably about as it meant that I could blend my first ever teas. Can you imagine me, an amateur tea sommelier, BLENDING my VERY OWN TEA? I spent the first hour after receiving it making different cups of tea for everyone in my house, and it was pretty entertaining.

There are enough of each tea to make two or three cups, infusing several times before they lose flavour. All of the tea is sourced according to the Ethical Tea Partnership regulations, and the tea filters are all unbleached – and quite honestly, there’s not a single thing that I don’t like about the box.

If you’re looking for something that keeps you entertained whilst also being delicious, then this is it. Marvling Bros Ltd also sells a bunch of other goodies such as Welsh happy birthday matchboxes and cross stitch kits, and I honestly love every last kitsch thing that they offer.

WATERDROP WATER BOTTLE AND LITTLE FLAVOUR CUBES

I’m going to be honest with you – this absolutely massive water bottle is one of my new favourite things and I have taken it out on every single one-walk-a-day during quarantine, receiving endless compliments from it. It’s a gorgeous teal colour and, whilst heavy, is a pretty stylish way to drink the age-long beverage. The 1l stainless steel bottle is very good at insulating and can keep the drinks ice-cold for up to 24 hours – perfect for lounging about in the garden during the quarantine, if you ask me.

As for the little taster Microdrinks that I received from Waterdrop – they have been perfect for both drinking water absentmindedly, effortlessly increasing my daily water intake, and also for being a delicious mixer for alcohol. Several weeks ago, it was my flatmate’s birthday – but as we were all in isolation, we had to stay in with a few drinks to celebrate. I tried the ‘relax’ cube in some water and mixed it with my chosen alcohol, and honestly, it was delicious. Not only did it taste good, but as it was filled with vitamins and fruit extracts, I felt great the next day.

I have been going through the Microdrinks very quickly, and whilst it’s still a bit of a strange concept, I’m already pretty drawn to them. These little cubes are filled with fruit and plant extracts, and you simply add them to water to make the magic come alive. I love drinking water anyway, but this helps to make it a little more fun and exciting – along with adding things like açaí, vitamin c, riboflavin and biotin to my drink. It’s a lot of fun.

CUTE LIL’ COMPASS NECKLACE

I am starting this post off with one of my favourite items in the world ever – this beautiful little compass necklace. I received this sterling silver piece from Diamond Rose Jewellery, a lovely Etsy shop which features the most stunning pieces. They sell beautiful, intricate little travel items, and I fell in love with them all deeply. When looking through the shop to see which piece I would love to treat myself with, I first had to narrow it down to 20-items-I-cannot-live-without. Then, slowly but surely, I made it down to 15. From there, I had no clue.

Eventually, I settled upon this compass necklace, and have worn it every single day since receiving it – making sure to take it off when I bathe, avoid getting perfume near it, and overall just being very careful when taking care of it because I want it to last as long as possible. It’s the perfect size and I love glimpsing it in photographs or in the mirror – it’s great for taking my mind off the quarantine, instead allowing my mind to drift somewhere new and adventurous and warm.

One of my favourite memories from my childhood was going on a road trip with my parents, where on one occasion my father bought me a little plastic compass. I was still a pretty small child and had no idea as to how it even worked, but after trying it out on the way home, relished the responsibility and the olde-world allure. That tiny talisman began to spark a travel lust that would last for decades. Now, whenever I look at this necklace, I am reminded of where I came from and where I hope to eventually be – it makes me feel very optimistic.

Diamond Rose Jewellery has many variations of this particular necklace – some of them offer little gemstones, some have the initial engravings with tiny dates on them, some come with coordinates. There are also different greeting cards that fit inside the box, so that when you open it, you are welcomed with ADVENTURE AWAITS YOU or HAPPY BIRTHDAY or a piece about your birthstone.

I was super excited to receive this piece, and loved the little starry bag and box that it came in. I’m considering purchasing two others with slight variations so that I can give them to my two friends that I’m self-isolating with, as the gift bag is truly lovely and I genuinely believe that it would really brighten their day during this time. It’s a really thoughtful way to remind someone how much you appreciate them. Plus, if you use the code AMY15 at checkout, you’ll get an extra 15% off!

BOMBAY HAND-STITCHED NOTEBOOKS

Have you ever purchased a notebook that you were absolutely in love with, only to get home and find that you have severe writers block because nothing feels worthy of dirtying up the pages? Well, that’s exactly how I felt with these two notebooks. Initially, they felt a bit too beautiful for me to mess up with my right-handed scrawl, but once I got over it, I started to fill them with ideas for new adventures, novels, documentaries, parties – and now I think that they look even better for it.

They are exactly the sort of notebook that I would expect someone like Levison Wood or Reza Pakravan to carry around on their adventurers, and I love flashing them about in public. I received two notebooks – one larger one, with a blue gem in the middle of the leather, and a smaller one, with a gorgeous metal clasp.

I received my books from Brighton Bombay, a gorgeous little Etsy shop that is run from a multi-generational family in Rajasthan, India. These notebooks are fair trade and eco-friendly, tanned using natural dyes. You can see just how much love was put into these notebooks, as they are made with such perfection and skill, and an admirable attention to detail.

The pages in the notebooks are divine, made from recycled, unbleached cotton, as this is a by-product of the garment industry in Jaipur. The paper is chemical free and thick, making it perfect for writing and sketching without the ink bleeding onto the next page. The paper has a certain alluring texture to it, making it both look and feel beautiful.

Each journal is unique and made with so much love, and I know that I shall cherish mine for as long as possible. I plan on taking mine on my expeditions across the globe, and will absolutely relish every second of writing in them. Brighton Bombay also makes a truly stunning array of other items, such as photo albums, purses, cushions, and quilts – and it is no exaggeration to say that I love every one of their products. I plan on plotting more ideas for future trips in these notebooks, sat in the sun in my very tiny garden and drinking tea, pouring my words into these books for however long quarantine is set to last – and then for however long following.

A lot of people are seeing this time as a bad thing, as penance. I think that a lot of us don’t realise just how lucky we are to have this time to really get back in touch with ourselves and the things we love. Besides, we’re in a lockdown, why not treat yourself?

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Chris Bonington:

 

“Sounds a fantastic wonderful project and I am very happy to put out my support. The very best of good fortune and have a wonderful time.”

Starting from the 1st May, we will trek over mountains, clamber through caves, and wild swim in freezing waters, staying in any accommodation we can find. We plan on covering an average of 90 miles a week, resting at lighthouses, underground bunkers, caving huts, monk-run communes (yes they have them in Wales!), pig barns, gypsy caravans, stranger’s houses, and good ol’ fashioned cabins in the woods. We will record our journey across Wales with the production of a documentary – with Inés as our camera woman with chronic back pain (inconvenient when you hold a camera for 5+ hours a day), Trianna being our travel-sick crew member, and myself being the host. Along with Cragen, of course.

We have already planned the first three months of the journey, and let me tell you, I absolutely did not think that there would be this much work involved. When Levison Wood went on his expedition to walk the Nile, I assumed that he spent about a week looking at maps and then set off in the general direction of the river. Oh, how I was wrong. This expedition has taken us nearly three years of talking about it, finalising details, and planning every single day – and we still have a lot more to go. It’s exhausting, but it will be worth it.

Reza Pakravan:

 

“This is an epic adventure around one of the most incredible parts of the world. The girls are super brave and ambitious and I am giving them my full support.”

I will be interviewing locals, getting hands-on with activities such as beekeeping, bushcraft, and metalwork, and experiencing the best and worst things that Wales has to offer. I will enter the bog snorkelling championship, attend my first ever L Fest, and try my hand at taxidermy. It’s going to be one heck of a journey, but it’s absolutely going to be worth it. 

We will walk north to meet self-proclaimed wizards, druids, former satanist priests, blacksmiths, mushroom farmers, rugby players, and millionaires – just to name a few. The more research we have conducted, the more we have become convinced that Wales is absolutely one of the wackiest places around. It’s very exciting. We might try fishing such as the adventures offered by Fishing Trips PNG and will truly throw ourselves in the deep end with different challenges and activities.

Some of you may now be asking, why us? After all, we are untrained, a little naive, and can’t even navigate with Google Maps. Heck, we’ve never spent more than a week camping combined. But regardless of all of this, we are passionate, impulsive, and ready to get more than a little messy. Inés comes from the Celtic nation of Galicia, Trianna is a weeb for Welsh culture, and I myself am Welsh through-and-through (Swansea Abertawe boiiiis) – and we all want to dig deep into the heart of the country.

Our all-woman team is going to face unsurmountable highs and lows, and spending every hour of every day with one another is going to be the ultimate test of our friendship. Plus, we are going to see a lot of each other – and as someone with Crohn’s Disease who knows that she’s going to have to sh*t in the woods, it’s not going to be pretty. But what better way to spend the summer than sleeping on mountains infamous for making you awaken either a madman or a poet? Kicking back on islands where all of the inhabitants are convicts? Meeting the people loitering around abandoned insane asylums? It’s an expedition where really, nothing could go wrong.

Crohn’s Disease is something that I have talked about before on the blog, but have never really delved into the details of. It is an immobilising, merciless disease that no one actually wants to talk about. It seems that the general public still knows nothing about Crohn’s (and even a lot of gastroenterologists are clueless about how to treat it), and so I’m hoping that by undertaking this journey, I can bring light to a subject that is commonly avoided.

Ed Stafford:

 

“[These girls] are embarking on a fantastic adventure to capture Wales in all its gritty glory. I wish them well and give my full support to the project.”

 

I know that over the course of the journey, I will face the same stomach pain, weak joints, scarred skin, and malnutrition that I face on a daily basis at home – but man, I want to be an explorer, so it’s just something that I’m going to have to suck up. By the end of it all, you guys are going to be fluent in Crohn’s-related vocab, and the stereotypes relating to auto-immune diseases will be thoroughly challenged. It’s going to be a wild ride.

I will try to update you all on our expedition as it progresses – but the fact that we will spend days even without food means that I can’t guarantee a stable internet connection. I’m hoping that we will be able to find some sort of local accommodation most nights on the road when we haven’t planned anything, but understand that a goat will stop us from a lot of people letting us stay in their houses. But hear me out: to undertake this walk with a weird-looking dog in tow would be funny, and thus, worth it.

We have already received support from numerous explorers and celebrities, such as Ash Bhardwaj, Ed Stafford, Darius Arya, Chris Bonington, Benedict Allen, Reza Pakravan, Hayley Long, and Bill Bryson – all people I have spent my life looking up to. It’s as exciting as it is scary – but knowing that we have so much support from not only the people mentioned above, but radio stations, magazines, and local businesses, makes us feel as though this is a journey that really means something to people. And if they have faith in us after knowing how hopeless a team we are, well, I guess we have to do it.

To follow our journey, why not stalk our Twitter and Instagram?

If you would like to donate, please visit our gofundme.

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Reza is absolutely one of my favourite explorers, having pushed every single one of his limits and still carrying on his adventures.  In his journey from Nordkapp to Cape Town, he cycled through countries such as Dagestan and Egypt (despite endless warnings not to – I both adore and relate to that!), contracting food poisoning, malaria, and heat stroke, and yet still completing his journey – AND being able to raise over £70,000 for children in Madagascar. Oh, and he was also briefly kidnapped.

Primarily, I would first like to know if this is where your teenage self thought you’d end up?

Yes, for sure. One day my dad gave me a series of book called The Adventures of Tintin. As a kid, I explored the world with Tintin, to the moon and back, to the heart of the Congo, deep into  Arabia and China. Those books really sparked my imagination to the world of exploration. At that age, all I wanted was to travel the world and be like Tintin. But obviously being an explorer is not normally something you are advised to do when you meet your career advisor at school, and I really didn’t know how to make a living out of it. Then somehow life got in the way and my passion took a back seat. I went from being a professional basketball player to extreme skier and mountain biker, and I even made it in the corporate world. But you can’t skip what you’re made for. Those seeds that were planted in you when you were a kid cannot be underestimated.

What is your most memorable experience on the road?

This is such a difficult question. Perhaps arriving at the town of Djenne in Mali during the annual plastering of the mosque is something that I will never, ever forget. It was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life. Djenne is the mud capital of the world and in the centre of it is the grand mosque of Djenne – one of the sacred wonders of the world. People from all over Mali come to Djenne to give their mosque a new skin and prepare it for the rainy season ahead. The townsfolk took us into their homes, treated us like their families and shared this incredible experience with us. We partied for three days in Djenne in the muddy festival – an explosion of Malian music, dance, colours, movement and, of course, mud. It was like the Glastonbury festival in Mali.

What is the hardest aspect of cycling such great distances?

You need to keep yourself motivated because it can sometimes gets really daunting. Being a long-distance cyclist means you have to be a student of pain. You need to know how to manage pain and accumulated fatigue. You go through so many different emotions and you have some incredible times: like feeling the euphoria of finishing the day and seeing the gorgeous sunset from your bike having cycled 150 miles; and there are times that you feel terrible and constantly question why are you doing this. It’s like life, isn’t it?

How did you manage to secure the sponsors and exposure for your Kapp to Cape journey?

It took me a long while to build enough of a profile to enable me to get my first sponsorship. Before Kapp to Cape, I cycled the Annapurna Circuit and set the Guinness World Record for cycling the Sahara Desert. Both were done during my holidays using my savings. They certainly gave me credibility to ask for sponsorship. I always suggest not to approach sponsors unless you have something you can give in return. Sponsors don’t necessarily want to turn people down, they are just inundated by the number of people approaching them. They give money in return for exposure, which is fair. Save up, start small, build credibility and an audience, and then approach them.

The expedition was supported by the Scientific Exploration Society and Reza would like to thank sponsors Sun Chlorella, Craghoppers, Lestoff, Wildling, Tentsile, BodyMe and Eagle Creek.

Have you got any advice for someone looking to become a full-time explorer?

There is no set career path in becoming an explorer, however there is a common characteristic that explorers share and that is entrepreneurship. Explorers make connections. An explorer is a networker who brings together others who will join an expedition – teams, sponsors and audiences – for the work of the expedition. He or she is a persuader, fundraiser, networker, recruiter, leader and curator. Alternatively, you can develop an expertise in something so you can join a team, for example, you could be a photographer, filmmaker, diver, mountaineer, etc. Whichever path you decide to choose, dedication and hard work should be part of your existence because it’s not an easy path, though it is a very rewarding one.

Which experience would you say you have learnt the most from?

Failing. I was leading a team in the Amazon, making a TV series called Transamazonica. I had so much responsibility on my shoulders: I was a producer and co-presenter. We were filming in very difficult conditions for an extended period of time. The local team was extremely difficult to deal with and made our lives very complicated. Our cameraman, who was a very difficult person, was constantly arguing with them and sometimes the arguments got very heated. I constantly had to mediate. At some point things got a bit too much and I lost it. I feel I let everyone down and as a leader I should have handled the situation much better and not let it get to that stage.

What would your answer be to people that say that everywhere has already been explored?

They are right. At least on the surface of the Earth, people have been everywhere. But that is not the definition of a 21^st century explorer. According to the Cambridge dictionary, explorers are people who travel to places that no one has ever been to see what is there. This is so out of date and not relevant to today. Explorers are storytellers, but not just chest-beating, flag-planting adventurers. Explorers create stories which change others’ understanding of the world. That’s what it means to be a 21^st century explorer. It’s about documentation. Whether it is a feat of endurance or looking at certain areas of the world from a different angle, it’s about what you do with that piece of information and how you contribute to other people’s knowledge.

How likely is it that a woman could do what you do, cycling such great distances through questionable lands?

Very likely. Start small and build up from there. It’s all about gaining experience.

Who would you say your favourite travel writer is?

Tim Butcher and Paul Theroux. Hard to chose between them.

Lastly, would you be able to tell me a little about your next big adventure?

I have just finished a TV series called The World’s Most Dangerous Borders. This was the first season, which was based in Africa. I was offered to do the second season, which is happening in Asia. It’s about documenting the lives of people who live in conflicted border areas.

Reza Pakravan is one of my biggest influences – I have learnt so much about what it takes to become a modern-day adventurer from him, and I hope he has helped inspire you guys also.

Have you guys got any questions for him, or now feel ready to take on your own adventure? Let me know in the comments below!

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