407 Keith Foskett ~ Through Hiking Long-Distance Trails in the USA and Spain

Transcript

Holly:  Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 407. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another exciting guest. Today I am talking with Keith Foskett, also known as Fozzie (that’s his trail name). I have read two and a half of his hiking books (I am in the middle of one right now). One of the things that helped me to get through this last lockdown, it was kind of like having an armchair adventure, when I couldn’t get out and travel and hike around the country, or other countries. So if you have wondered a bit about hiking the Camino de Santiago, the Pacific Crest Trail, the Appalachian Trail, or the Continental Divide Trail, this episode is for you. Even if you are not interested in hiking those trails, you will get a feel of what it is like to do them in today’s episode. We talk about the differences between the trails; what kind of preparation you need to do; and how hiking these long-distance trails can change your life.

So who is Keith Foskett? Keith has hiked over 12,000 miles in recent years and has written four books about his adventures. He also contributes to various outdoor publications.

What are you going to learn in this episode? We talk about how Keith managed to create a lifestyle that gives him the time and money to travel for extended periods of time. We discuss what it’s like to thru-hike long-distance trails in the United States as someone who doesn’t live there. We also talk about the skills and training people need to learn before they go (and it is probably a lot less than you think). We discuss the best trail for someone who has never hiked in the US before. We talk about how hiking and getting outdoors has helped Keith’s mental health and depression. And finally we talk a little bit about Keith’s process for writing his hiking books. Keith is the author of four books on thru-hiking: The Journey in Between (thru-hiking the Camino Santiago), The Last Englishman (thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail), Balancing on Blue (thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail) and High and Low (hiking away from depression) and that one is about Scotland, I have yet to read that one and I am really looking forward to it: I have so many dreams of doing more hikes in Scotland.

So, without further ado, let’s get into this week’s episode. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Holly: Hello Fozzie, how are you today?

Keith: Hi Holly, I’m good, thank you.

Holly: I am really looking forward to this because I have read two-and-a-half of your books (I am half-way through one of them) and I am really enjoying your adventures, so I am very excited to finally talk to you about this.

Keith: Well, thanks for reading them. I’m sorry to say I have not read yours yet, but it is on the list.

Holly: That’s okay! {laughing} I have been kind of binge reading yours: I bought a couple of yours last year and then didn’t get around to reading them and then this year I have read the Camino one and then I was like, ah I need more; and then I read the PCT one and now I am reading the Appalachian Trail one, it is very exciting. I had this need, during lockdown, to kind of get my walking fix in some way even though I couldn’t really travel very far from home, so it is kind of been satisfying my need to get out there.

Keith: Normally, I would read two or three or four books a year, but, last year, I think lockdown especially, I started reading a lot more and I am definitely reading a lot more this year and enjoying it too, which is something I always wanted to do and never had time for and I think there is a lot of people in a similar sort of situation, I think a lot of people have delved into their reading in the past few months. 

Holly: Absolutely. So we are here to talk about your exciting adventures around the world, walking long-distance trails.

Keith: We are!

Holly: You have managed to create a lifestyle that gives you both the time and the money to travel for extended periods of time and I am super-impressed with this. So how did you manage to do this? Did you know early on in your life that you wanted to have this kind of freedom, how did you manage this?

Keith: I didn’t know from early on in my life that I was going to make a career out of hiking or indeed writing, I kind of knew from, maybe my late teens, early 20s, that I would probably end up self-employed from doing something, what that would be I didn’t know: I went self-employed in 2004 as a decorator, which I did for about twelve years. And then, I think I think it was 2015/16, maybe something like that, decorating had run its course and I got to the point where I absolutely detested it and I was just screaming to get out and do something different. And at that point I had written one book I think, maybe two and that was the only other thing that I could think of to make an income from. And I guess it all boiled down to, it sounds a bit cliched, but following dreams. I kind of listen to what my head tells me but I always find that my head will throw the logical stuff at me whereas it is how you feel, whether its your heart, or the pit of your stomach, I think generally you just kind of know if something is going to work, or if you should do it. So, I decided to stop doing decorating, because it was just making me miserable, and I just dived into [writing] the books, and I did kind of a lot of marketing courses in the first three or four months, and I think about four months my income was better than it was as a decorator.

Holly: Wow, that’s excellent!

Keith: From writing, so it was a decision that was a good one. So obviously I got to do my big love of going away for hiking for several months and the books got to the point where they were kind of supporting me as I was going, as you probably know, to a certain extent, your books kind of take care of themselves, people buy them, it is not as if you have got to…obviously there is a lot of work writing them, and that sort of thing, but generally they do their own thing, you have to look after them a bit, but they will kind of sell if you have done the right things, so, they were basically funding my hikes as I was out there doing the hikes.

Holly: That’s fantastic! So how did you get started hiking long-distance trails?

Keith: I did a little bit of kind of hiking when I was younger, my mum and my dad were not hugely outdoorsy but they certainly encouraged me and my sister to sort of get out; so I did my first longish distance walk, which you are familiar with, the South Downs Way, when I think I was fifteen or sixteen and got to about half way with a friend and we got absolutely annihilated by an overnight storm and had to kind of abandon ship (literally). I completed the following year with another friend. I got into cycling for a few years, which I am still into now and I still went out for walks, but then my first one on the Camino, which I think was 2001, I just kind of stumbled on that after talking to a guy in a bar, in Greece of all places: I was kind of heading back to England, it was August, I had a couple of months of summer left which I didn’t want to waste and I thought: I really want to do a long walk. And this guy, we just got talking, he said he knew a friend who had just come back from Spain from a pilgrim’s route called the Camino Santiago and I did a bit of research when I got back home and I think the Frances route, which is basically from the French/Spanish border to the finish in Santiago, was 500 miles. And I followed the route back, it kind of splits into a lot of variants once you get into France and I kind of followed it to a place called Le Puy-en-Velay which was another 500 miles, so 1000 miles total, and I did it and I was just hooked. I just loved it: I loved the freedom, the people I was meeting, just the lack of complications, the simplicity: you know you just get up and you walk, and then you stop and you sleep, and you repeat the following day. And then, I didn’t do anything for about eight years, I was still hiking, but nothing long-distance, and then I did the Pacific Crest Trail, mainly because I was in as position to do it, because I was self-employed then, and kind of doing okay, so it was just a huge dream, that was the one that ticked all the boxes, that was the epic trail of all trails. I did the Appalachian Trail in 2012, had an attempt at the Continental Divide Trail in 2014, I think it was, did about 500 miles and had to forfeit it due to medical issues. And then I think I have done the Camino another two times, once was strictly kind of for work and the other one was just because I wanted to do it a second time, I always said I would like to go back and do it, so I did.

Holly: So did you do the whole 1000 miles the second time?

Keith: Yeah, I did the same route. The second time I went back I did the same route, the same 1000 miles and then I got contacted by an American company the following year who wanted to produce an app on it and for them to produce that app they needed someone to hike it to get the route down on GPS and also take photos (they had visual reminders on the app). So I went back the following year and did just the the Frances route, not the whole 1000 miles. So yeah I have clocked up 2500 miles on the Camino which is the same I guess as a long-distance hike in the States.

Holly: So what was it like to thru-hike those trails in the States, as someone who doesn’t live in the US, because the logistics must be a lot different?

Keith: The logistics weren’t too bad. It was different in terms of the climate. So, the first one, the PCT, I think it is about the first 700 miles they refer to it as desert, it was typical desert climate, it was very hot, it was very dry, there wasn’t much water about. I dealt with that okay, I don’t like humidity but if it is a dry heat I can take it as hot as it goes, I don’t want to say it doesn’t bother me but I can hike all day and it doesn’t bother me: a lot of people they will start at five in the morning and stop at 10, see out the heat of the day and then start again in the evening, but I just kind of went straight through, because I seemed to deal with it okay. I was terrified of bears, I was terrified of rattle snakes before I went out, in fact I very nearly didn’t go out just because of this insane fear of bears and what would happen if I met one.

Holly: And you did!

Keith: I wouldn’t say met them, as in sat down and shook their hands and asked if you would like a cup of coffee, but, yeah, I saw a few and strangely enough it was the same thing as with the snakes, after you have seen maybe two, three or four and you kind of figure out their behaviour, I kind of got used to them. It was more, as opposed to a scary thing, it was just a wonderful thing to see, because obviously being English we don’t have bears over here, I think we have a few in Europe but the chances of seeing them over there are slim. So I wasn’t kind of scared, once I had learned how they react to us and snakes as well, I sort of got used to them. Once I got up, I was quite late on the Pacific Crest Trail, so I was up in Washington the last dates in October, which was way behind everyone else, so then the snow hit so I had about two or three weeks in relatively not serious snow, but I think I remember the last day it was kind of up to my hips but that was a rare one, that was the worst day. The Appalachian Trail was almost, I wouldn’t say the opposite, I was a bit hesitant about the trail because it has got a reputation for being wet, high rainfall, but I think I just hiked it in a good year and there was just a handful of days when it rained on me, so I was quite lucky. And the Appalachian Trail was kind of like England, it was a lot greener, the terrain is remarkably similar to Scotland in places, especially up in Maine: you have just got fast tracks of forests and these huge lakes. And it kind of follows because Scotland was attached, I think, before the Atlantic appeared and the continents drifted apart, Scotland and Maine, or that sort of area, were one and the same thing and you can see now, I have been to Scotland and it is just like being in Maine, and vice versa.

Holly: And what was the Continental Divide Trail like? I know you did a portion of it but that’s the big scary one that everyone says is the most challenging, the most remote, what was that like?

Keith: In order of remoteness, and where you sort of resupply, the Appalachian Trail is actually relatively easy, there are so many places you pass near, or through, that the logistics are quite easy. The Pacific Crest Trail I’d say would fall in between the Appalachian Trail and the Continental Divide Trail, so the Pacific Crest Trail generally you had five/six/seven/eight days between town stops, where you can get a shower, get cleaned up, get something to eat. The CDT was kind of the remotest and we did have pretty long [stretches between] resupplies: I think even from day one, the first one most people do it in a week, so seven days; and then after that it pretty much followed suit, a week was generally considered about average between stops. When they laid that trail, if that was kind of something they planned, I don’t know. I mean I was doing I think about 25-mile-days so your distance between sections was about 100-150 miles, but you know, if you are a super-hero, and you are pulling in 40 maybe even 45-50 mile days, which people are doing now, they kick that distance off in three days, so… I was doing about 25s at the beginning, so it would have been about right for me to do seven days. But yeah, the CDT was definitely the remotest of those three big hikes out there.

Holly: And which of the three was your favourite?

Keith: I would say, a lot of people say they can’t decide, it seems to be a stock answer, but it was definitely the Pacific Crest Trail: I liked the remoteness, I love solitude, so that didn’t bother me at all, and it was kind of nice to meet people as well and I did hike with a lot of people so there is that social side. I liked the variety of terrain, so you get this long desert section which seems to go on for ages and then you go up into the Sierra Nevada which is absolutely jaw-dropping, I have never seen anything like it in my life: really, really, stunning and that went on for, I think it was about 200 miles. And then you get to the end of California and you hit Oregon which is very much this volcanic, kind of rocky, landscape, interspersed with forests. And you finish off in Washington with these vast tracks of forest, so you are almost walking through forest all the time, so the variety on the PCT was, for me, fantastic. The climate ticked a lot of boxes as well, you will at some point get wet on the PCT but it is probably likely that you wouldn’t get rained on until you get into Oregon or Washington; and if you are finishing your hike by the end of August, you could perceivably not get rained upon at all, so that ticked a lot of boxes. But the Appalachian Trail was top for the social side, thousands of people do that every year, so, even if you went out there as a solo hiker, it is highly likely that you will latch onto a few people you will click with: you might hike with them for a couple of days, you might hike with them for a couple of months. And the CDT probably scored highest for just the sheer remoteness of it, the sort of feeling where you think: if I get in trouble here, I am really in trouble and it is kind of a scary thing, but that is why a lot of people do it, it gets the adrenalin going. But if I had to nail it down I would say the PCT and if I had to do one of those three again, it would be the PCT, without thinking about it.

Holly: And which one would you recommend to someone who has never done a long-distance trail in the United States?

Keith: I would say the Appalachian, the Appalachian Trail is the most popular of the three and I think it is because that is where most aspiring long-distance hikers go to cut their teeth, because a) the amount of people doing it, so they kind of feel safe in numbers and b) the opportunities to resupply: so instead of being faced with seven-to-ten day sections between towns, which is pretty daunting to a lot of people, especially when you have got to carry seven days worth of food, the Appalachian Trail, it is just littered with towns, villages and cities where you can reach a road, stick a thumb out and ten minutes to an hour later be nice and showered and fed and snoozing on a motel bed. I mean it is certainly it is not easy – in fact I found the Appalachian Trail harder physically than I did the Pacific Crest Trail – but in terms of the ease of amenities it scores highly. So that is generally, if you are going to crack or have a go at one of the big three in the States, most people will start with the Appalachian.

Holly: And what about preparation? I have read so many books on these trails and people always say: you get fit on the trail, you can start at whatever level, but, really, you are carrying a big pack with all your food, all your supplies, it is not just a day hike with a little day pack, you have got to have a certain level of fitness. So what kind of preparation did you do, or do you recommend people do before they attempt something like this?

Keith: It is not a difficult thing to grasp, it is the same as any sort of activity or sport where you are pushing yourself. So, for example, if you want to swim a mile you wouldn’t be inactive for three months and jump in a pool and expect to go and swim a mile! I mean some people probably do it, but you do have to train for it. I just kind of mimic what I would be doing out on the trail and the easy way to do that is to go out and hike, so even if you have not done any hiking before one of these long-distance trails, just start where you are comfortable: if you are comfortable going out for ten minutes every day, just go and do ten minutes and then gradually increase that distance and then maybe after four weeks, when you are doing a couple of miles, get a rucksack and put a two litre water bottle in it to simulate some weight. And gradually, build that weight up until you get to the weight that you expect your pack to be, which could be…it will be something around five to ten or eleven kilos, something like that. And build up your distances until you can go out for the day with a full rucksack and do 20 miles, is a good target and most people would think that is just impossible, but it is not. Long distance hiking, I wouldn’t say it is easy, but most people can do it, if they just do this training and build themselves up slowly: your feet will get used to the distances you are walking, your feet will get used to 8 kilos in your rucksack, pushing down on them, so your chances of getting blisters when you are out on the trail should be drastically reduced; your hips, your skin around your hips, will get used to the fact that you have been carrying a rucksack with 10 kilos in it, your shoulders will get used to it. You just have to build your body up slowly and say: look, this is what I need you to do and it will react. Like I say, it is the same as getting into a swimming pool, if you swim 100m days for a few months and gradually build it up, you would be able to do a mile at some point.

Holly: Yeah, I think a lot of people kind of envision that distance from where they are to doing something like that, so I think it really helps to have some milestones like: oh carry your full pack for 20 miles before you go, that kind of thing.  

Keith: Yes, you have literally got to mimic what you are going to end up doing and your body, it will just adapt and most people should be able to do it, it is not a hugely difficult thing to do.

Holly: So what kind of budget does someone need for something like this, because this is more than just a normal holiday – you are gone for months and months on end. What do people need to think about in terms of budget?

Keith: It does vary from trail to trail. The Camino at the moment, you could probably do the Camino on 20 euros a day, that’s about maybe 30 US dollars. I know that you can get most of the route in Spain is dotted with refuges, which most people take advantage of, and it is basically a bed for the night and sometimes you might get breakfast, that will be 10 euros. And normally there is some sort of restaurant or bar nearby which is doing, they call it a ‘Pilgrim’s Menu’, which is usually cheap for them to produce and your get some bread and you might get a bottle of wine and three courses and that will set you back about 10 Euros. So 20 euros, and then maybe another 5/10 for your food during the day, that sort of thing. I can’t remember what I spent on the Pacific Crest Trail, I know when I got back I nearly had a heart attack looking at my bank balance, it was a few thousand pounds, the Appalachian was as well. If somebody said, what budget do I need to go and walk the Pacific Crest Trail? I would say anything between £5,000-10,000, something like that. The Appalachian would be maybe slightly cheaper because it is quicker to hike. That is everything in: your flight, your insurance, your food when you are out there. It does vary person to person, some people are happy with a smaller budget and subsist on eating nothing but pizza and some people want a bit more luxury, that sort of thing. At an absolute minimum, £4,000, if you are super, super, careful.

Holly: So how far in advance do you plan? You need to get the permit, you need to presumably get a visa to stay in the United States longer than what 90 days we get?

Keith: Yes, it has been a while since I have done the PCT, but when I did it us English had to get a B2 visa. If we just fly in I think we get three months but you have to put forward a case to the immigration, in theory we can get up to three months but that’s not a dead certainty, you have to explain to immigration why you want to be in the US for three months and it is all down to, basically, what mood the immigration guy is in, at the desk, US immigration is another story completely especially when you are a thru-hiker. Um what was the question, I’ve forgotten…?

Holly: I think you have to apply for a permit to hike the trail as well, don’t you?

Keith: Yes the permit. So, I’m not sure about the AT, but I know the PCT, when I did it, but this was 2010, we had a permit for the Pacific Crest Trail Organisation which covered the entire trail, so you have got a lot of national parks and regions you go through on the PCT and each particular region and park had a separate permit, so to save a hiker banging their head against a brick wall and trying to get in touch with all these different places, the PCT just has a permit for the whole route. When I did it, as long as you weren’t some sort of idiot, you got it, you had to answer a few basic questions and they sent you a permit. Now, it is tightened up an awful lot and there is a limited number that they give out every year, I think it is one of these scenarios where they open, they will give you a date where you can apply for your permit and it is sold out within two days.

Holly: Oh wow!

Keith: It is hugely popular now, I am not too sure about the Appalachian. It has got popular, because thru hiking in general in the last ten years has just gone through the roof and I think books like Wild by Cheryl Strayed and A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, all these books and the movies as well, people have just kind of dived into it and decided that’s what they want to do, so numbers have gone through the roof. I think when I did the Pacific Crest Trail, in 2010, I think there was about 225 of us registered and, the last time I checked, which might have been two or three years ago, I think it was 2,000/2,500 that registered.

Holly: Oh wow!

Keith: So it has become really, really, popular.

Holly: And what kind of skills do you need to learn? For someone who is new to this, do they need to learn, I don’t know, to build a campfire? What kinds of things do they need? I have done lots of bushcraft training and that kind of thing so I feel like I know a lot of these things, but I think a lot of people might be stopped from going to do this because they don’t know what to do, like how to set up camp, where to set up camp. How do you learn these things?

Keith: Well this is another thing, as well as building your fitness and getting used to the gear, this is something that you need to practice before you go. So I mean obviously start with an overnight camping trip somewhere, whether it is in the open woods, or whatever, and just take the equipment that you intend using. So at some point you have got to get a tent, you have got to get some sort of sleeping pad or air mattress, you have got to get a sleeping bag, you have got to get a stove, you have got to get water filtration. And then all the other gear that goes with it: so your warm jacket for the evening, maybe some camp shoes, that sort of thing. But read up on what people use; research your gear; and then just go out and use it. It is not really rocket science, a tent isn’t difficult to put up, your air mattress you have just got to sort of blow up and put in the tent; your sleeping bag, check the temperature rating and also obviously the temperatures where you are going, it is not use buying a bag that is good to 5 degrees centigrade if you are going to a place where it is going to be minus 10 degrees centigrade! It is all kind of logical stuff! It is scary to some people but learning how to use a stove and put a tent up, it is not difficult. I can imagine that it might be a little bit daunting to start with, a lot of people just pitch it in the back garden: that’s what I did before my trip, I put the tent up in the back garden and took a can of baked beans and cooked those and had a cup of tea and got in my sleeping bag and got up in the morning and I thought: yeah, I can do that on the Downs or wherever, so…

Holly: Yeah, the first time I bought camping gear and my bigger backpack and everything I just packed it all up and I went hiking to this camp ground that is, I don’t know, it is 10 miles away from my house and I hiked there and I camped and I hiked back home the next day. I was close enough to home that I could kind of bail out if I needed to if something didn’t work, but it kind of gave me that feeling of hiking with all my gear, using the gear, and then hiking back.

Keith: Yeah, and a camp site is the perfect spot, because, for a lot of people, it kind of feels a little bit more like home and not quite so scary: maybe there is a pub next door and you can go and get a meal in the evening, or, I don’t know a breakfast in the morning and there are people sort of milling about. So yeah that’s a good way of doing it, literally practice what you need to do before you go.

Holly: Yeah. So you talked about the simplicity of being on the trail and that is one of the things that I absolutely love as well. What else do you get out of hiking long distance trails?

Keith: I love the solitude, I am not the sort of person who craves company, I remember there was one stage on the PCT when I think I was hiking for three days and I didn’t see another person.

Holly: Ah, would love that!

Keith: Which for some people would kind of drive them nuts, but I am not a hugely social person, I mean I like going out as well as the next person, but I remember thinking when I was planning it, that was another tick box for the PCT, because I knew, perceivably, that I could go a day, maybe two days, or even longer, without seeing anyone and delving into the solitude thing, which did happen. I sort of describe long distance trails as life-organisers, because you get a lot of time to just sort of get into your own head and think, so if you imagine your normal everyday lives: you get up in the morning, I don’t know you have got to get the kids to school, you go to work and you have something to eat, you watch some tv… and you don’t get any thinking time, people think they do, but my thinking time, when I am working and I am busy, is kind of limited to 10-15 minutes when you are falling asleep. And you don’t really get a chance to dive into it, and think about the things you want to think about. So, all of a sudden, you get out on these long-distance trails and you think: I have got five months hiking this trail and all you have to do, for eight hours during the day, is just watch where you are putting your feet, that’s all you need to do, your legs are on autopilot. So, all of a sudden, you have got eight hours to think, and some people can’t deal with it, they think: I need more stimulation than this and they sort of back out. I had all this thinking time and I kind of looked back at my life back in the UK and you suddenly see the things that are making you unhappy; you see the things that are making you happy; you look at your relationships with other people; you look at your job; you look at your career; you look at where you live. And a lot of people, by the end of the trail, they come out with a mental list of: I don’t want to do that anymore, I want to do this; I hate my job, I don’t want to do my job, I want to do this. And a lot of the time they actually follow through with it, they make these drastic life changes when they get back, because they have had so much time to figure out what they actually want to do and that was a big plus for me. I didn’t realise it before I went out there, for example before the Camino, this is something that I didn’t realise until I was out there; and the Camino especially, a lot of people come back completely changed and it totally turned their life around. That was a big plus.

Holly: And the Camino, since you mention this, I really relish the solitude that you can get on the South Downs Way, or the Ridgeway. The Camino I have always wanted to walk, ever since I first heard about it in 1996. I haven’t done it yet and one of the things that I am afraid of is that it feels like it is a super social trail and I don’t necessarily want that, what are your thoughts?

Keith: I mean it is super social, I think the last time I checked the figures, I think it was something like 240,000 people walked it and that would have been something like April through to October. I wouldn’t ever class it as crowded, or certainly not when you are out walking; when you get into towns and the refuges, sometimes you will struggle to get into places. You can get your moments of solitude, I wouldn’t, if you want a hike with a lot of solitude it would probably be the last on the list: a lot of people go and do it because they like that social aspect, they like safety in numbers, and it is their perfect hike because there are a lot of people doing it.

Holly: Yeah and that probably is a good first trail for a lot of people because of that social aspect.

Keith: Yeah, exactly. One of the common questions you see on hiking forums is: I am a solo hiker, I am single, and I am really hesitant to go out and do the Camino or the Appalachian trail. They have kind of asked a few friends and it is obviously not easy to take a few months out to go and do these hikes, so they are faced with the prospect of going out there alone, especially on the Camino, and their question is: will I be okay? And you know, I read so many of them, you know within probably a day of landing and getting to Saint Jean Pied de Port, which is the start of the Camino, I know that those people within a day will probably have two, three, four or five friends and by the time they finish it they will have lost count of the friends they have made. So being a solo hiker going out is probably the perfect position. So a lot of people do it with friends and it sometimes strains the closest of friendships, so often it is a good idea just to go out there on your own and make friends.  

Holly: That’s exactly what I have heard. I have read so many stories about people going with friends, partners, or family, and it has not gone how they expected.

Keith: Yeah, sometimes it is not a good idea. Can you imagine that on a six month hike in the States?

Holly: Yes, that would put stress on any relationship!

Keith: Whereas, if you have gone out there on your own, I would hate to say that you can pick and choose your friends, I wouldn’t go that far, but you get to pick pretty quickly the people you click with, the people you think, yeah I am not sure about them and you kind of sort of blend into different sort of friendships and it works well.

Holly: Some day… soon, hopefully! So you have written a book called High and Low: Hiking Away From Depression, can you tell us a little bit about how hiking has helped your mental health?

Keith: It is not hiking in itself, it is kind of that there are a lot of associated factors along with the hiking. I know for a fact that physical exercise helps my depression, which is why I hike; I know fresh air helps my depression, which I am experiencing when I am hiking; sunlight helps my depression and a little bit of solitude helps my depression – a lot of people might be surprised about solitude being good, but for me it does help. Meditation helps with depression and I don’t sort of sit down and watch a burning candle for half-an-hour when I meditate, but I do it when I am hiking. It is just a lot of collective things rolled into one that hiking kind of encompasses, four/five reasons and they all help.

Holly: Yeah, I have been talking a little bit more about mental health lately just because I found this last lockdown here in England to be really challenging and, thankfully, I was able to get out and do my walks and my trail runs and that kind of thing and I think that really, really, helped, but there were some difficult times during this last lockdown, so I am wanting to have this conversation with people more and more about how they use outdoor adventures to manage their mental health.

Keith: It has been a difficult time for a lot of people, I think a lot of people have got depression and they don’t realise it, I didn’t realise I had depression. And when I first realised, even as recently as 2015, there was still a huge stigma around depression, and some people just didn’t admit it because they thought there was something wrong with them. And obviously the fact that people haven’t been able to get out during most of last year, 2020, and most of this year already, 2021, it is bound to effect people’s mental health: being cooped up all day and not being able to see friends or family; not being able to go out and socialise; being restricted on where you can go and what you can do. It was bound to create havoc with a lot of people and unfortunately it did, hopefully now we are coming out of it on a permanent basis, it kind of remains to be seen, but it is not one of those things that I thought about at the beginning of lockdown and a lot of other people thought about, that mental health would be the factor that it was. But when you think about it, the situation that we have been put in, it is bound to effect a lot of people and unfortunately it has.  

Holly: It has thrown people out of their rhythms and habits and everything that they were used to. Maybe they had this system that was functioning and keeping them together, but all that was thrown out the window so they no longer had their coping mechanisms, or support, or all the normal things, so I think it just really rattled a lot of people.

Keith: Yes, yes, like I say, hopefully we are on the upward track and we are coming out of it.

Holly: Fingers crossed. So how else has hiking long-distance trails changed your life?

Keith: It helped, when I got back from the Camino, going back to these thought processes and all this time to think, that was a life-changer, because I got back with all these ideas of what I wanted to do, writing was one of them. So that was kind of bubbling away in the background but when I got back from the Camino, all those decisions had been made, it was not something that I wanted to mess around with anymore, I just went out and did it and that’s when I wrote the first book. So essentially that changed my career, the first hike, and especially the Camino, out of all the trails, that’s the one that does seem to change people. So it gave me, it sounds a bit of a cliché I suppose, but it just gave me the strength to follow those plans and those dreams that I wanted to do and up until doing that hike, and thinking about it, I didn’t feel I had the strength to follow them through, because it is a scary thing to do.

Holly: So can we talk a little bit about how you write your books? Because some of my listeners are also working on their own books about walking and hiking adventures, so, do you keep a journal along the way and then use that for the books, or… what’s your process?

Keith: For me, it was all memory joggers. So you come back with six months of memories: you can’t remember everything, and some things are more vivid than others; and some things you have completely forgotten. For me, I knew when I went to do the Camino for the first time that I thought I could possibly write a book when I got back and I knew that, to do that, I would need a lot of visuals and a lot of notes. So I just wrote a diary every day, sometimes that diary was half a page of A4, sometimes it was two lines, sometimes it was five pages. To do that I had a dictaphone with me at the time, this was before smartphones, so I just had a little tape recorder and as I walked, during the day, if something or a though came into my mind which I thought would go down well in the book then I just dictated it. At the end of the day I had all these dictated notes which I just wrote up in the diary, so I came back with pages and pages and pages of my Camino in words. And I took photos as well, so I had visual memory joggers. And instead of getting back and trying to remember it all, you have got all these pages of notes and all the memories sort of come flooding back and the notes lead on to other areas I decided to write about. That was the first book, I never trained as a writer, a lot of people would probably argue that that’s um {laughing} a fair point.  

Holly: It’s an excellent book, it tells your story, it brings the reader to the trail. I loved it – it doesn’t have to be fancy literature to be a good book.

Keith: You are very sweet thank you. I just wanted to write something that wasn’t complicated, that wasn’t deep, wasn’t mysterious, just something that anyone from say ten years old up to 90 could kind of read and, luckily, it has done well. I didn’t know how it would do, something said: write a book and there was just kind of a feeling that it was something I should do and it was a good decision. I am just pleased people buy it and I am pleased people enjoy it.

Holly: And how did you manage to build kind of a following on your books? What has worked for you in terms of marketing and getting people to buy your books?

Keith: The few marketing courses I took, a lot of them were at the time, and even still now, were pushing a subscriber list like a mailing list. So, let’s say a lot of people might write a short book and give it away for free in exchange for an email address and someone’s name. And you, every week, just sort of send out an email to these people; obviously you have got to make it fun, you have got to make it interesting, you have got to make it funny, make it exciting, so people enjoy reading it. And, once you build this list up, a few writers I know it goes into 10/20/30,000 readers and the theory behind it is that when you write a new book, or bring a new book out, you have got this big, possible, customer base already there, because they subscribe, they are interested in what you are doing, so if you release a new book you should sell a few. It is successful for a lot of people, I do have a subscriber list, I don’t do an awful lot to sort of increase it because, for me, I remember when I did release subsequent books I didn’t really get an awful lot of sales from them, so that wasn’t a huge thing for me, but it does work for a lot of people. That’s one thing you can do. A decent website is obviously a must. A blog is obviously a must. Podcasts like you have been doing, the last year and a half, especially with lockdown, that’s proved popular as well. Active social media, active Twitter, active Facebook.   

Holly: And Instagram which is very visual, obviously, so you can show your adventures.

Keith: Yeah, you can.

Holly: So what are the next adventures that you have got planned? Or what are your kind of dream trails, what’s on your list?

Keith: I kind of, I say kind of, well I have made my mind up, I made the decision to quit thru-hiking in 2019. I went out to do a Camino route from Seville, in South Spain, up to Santiago, I think it is about 600 miles and I got about 250 miles in and as your head does, it just started firing questions as to whether this was something that I wanted to do anymore. I kind of thought about it for a bit and I came home after about 250 miles because I decided it was simply that I didn’t want to thru-hike anymore, it was something I had done, I loved it, but it just wasn’t sparking the imagination anymore. I wasn’t having a bad time, you know, it wasn’t like the trip from hell or anything, I was having a nice time: I was walking in sunshine all day, I was drinking Spanish wine and I was having a nice time but it had kind of gotten to the point where I thought: do you really want to do this any more? Are you really getting excited about it? And I just answered honestly and I wasn’t. So, since 2019, I haven’t really any planned obviously any more long-distance hikes, because it is not something I want to do, but I change my mind like the weather, Holly, so we could be talking in two weeks time and I am making plans to go and do another attempt on the Continental Divide Trail, I don’t know. I am more into my bikes at the moment, I have ridden since, I don’t know I had my first bike when I was five or six and I have done some cycle touring in the past, I did a five week trip round France and Switzerland last year, in between lockdowns, which I loved. So, possibly some long-distance hikes, I have got a friend and we are planning to do the Silk Road, which is, for those who haven’t heard of the Silk Road, or the Silk Route, it is an old trading route between China and Istanbul, in Turkey. I am not too sure of the distance, I know it is several months and I know that my friend then posed the question that if we arrived into China from Istanbul, we might as well arrive in Istanbul, back to England. I think this one is about eight years away, it is kind of like an early retirement thing, not that I am that old or anything! So, I am kind of into my cycling but I am still hiking, I am just waiting for a decent break in the weather and I will go and do my annual South Downs Way hike which I have done, except for last year because of lockdown, I have done for eight or nine years or something like that. I do it every year, you know the first sign of relatively warm/dry weather and I have just got a week out hiking doing something I love, so I still do the shorter hikes, just not the longer ones.

Holly: And how do you do the South Downs Way, do you wild camp? What do you do?

Keith: I normally wild camp it. I treat myself to a hotel, either at the start or at the finish, and I used to get the train back from Eastbourne or Winchester or wherever I finished back home, because I used to live in Sussex (I live down in the New Forest now, but I used to live in Sussex). Now I tend to leave the car at one end, so I will probably leave the car in Eastbourne and then get the train back to Winchester so that the car is at the end. I always found it was easier getting into a car and knowing you have got the simplicity of driving back home as opposed to getting a train back, which is going to take four hours, which is the last thing you want to do when you have just done 100 miles. I normally, if I pick the weather right, I normally don’t even bother putting the tent up, I will pick a secluded spot in a wood, just put a ground mat down and sleep in the open air which is something that I love doing.

Holly: Mm, see, I have always wanted to do that, but I am so afraid of getting asked to move on since wild camping is technically not legal in England, have you ever had problems getting asked to move?

Keith: Not on the South Downs Way, the laws…they are pretty clear in England, you have to basically ask the landowners permission which is a crazy rule because you don’t know who owns the land! And nobody is going to stop at seven in the evening and think: I will camp here and then go off walking to the nearby farm and say, ‘do you by chance happen to know or own that bit of land up there and if you do, can I camp there?’. It just doesn’t happen and this is why people wild camp and, obviously, as long as you follow the basic rules and the number one is always leave no trace: you leave that camping spot as you found it. Years ago, I would sometimes have had a fire but that is not something I do now, there are just too many…it is kind of becoming frowned upon, it is acceptable in the States, but in this country it is generally frowned upon. And I advise going off trail, so I would normally do it in woodland, I prefer woodland, because if you get a damp night you tend to stay dry, if you are out in a field you just get soaked, whereas in a wood it kind of settles on the tree so you don’t get so damp. And just get away from the trail and don’t make it obvious: don’t, you know, take your bright red tent and pitch it ten feet from the trail and have a blazing bonfire with your boom box rattling out at two o’ clock in the morning, you have go to be somewhere on the trail whereas if someone walked past you they would have no idea that you were there.

Holly: Yeah, that’s a good way of looking at it.

Keith: Yeah.

Holly: Good, good well, I will have to take the risk! {laughing}

Keith: Yeah, a lot of people do it, a lot of people do. It is strictly speaking illegal but it is one of those areas that you know as long as you are sensible it is fine, it is acceptable.

Holly: All right well that may be one of my adventures for this year. So, Fozzy, where can people find you online and learn more about your books and what you do?

Keith: My website is probably the easiest bet, which is just my name: KeithFoskett.com. I am on Twitter, I am KeithFoskett; I am on Facebook, I am Keith Foskett. And my books currently are all exclusive on Amazon. There are five books, they are all on ebooks, all on paperback and most of them are in hardback and they are all in audiobook as well. So it is all exclusive on Amazon and Audible. I am hoping I might change later in the year and I want to get them out on other platforms such as Kobo and these places where people go that isn’t Amazon, so iBooks and all the other places, hopefully later on in the year, but, for the moment, it is Amazon.

Holly: Sounds like a good plan. Well thank you so much for joining us today.

Keith: That’s all right, thank you for asking, I had a good time, thank you.

Holly: Great!

Holly: So drop me a line and let me know what you thought about this week’s episode, you can email me at: [email protected] or you can find me online and get in touch there. People seem to be messaging me on Instagram a lot lately, so I am getting better at checking the messages there (I used to be terrible about it), so feel free to message me wherever you find me online. My contact page on my website was not working for a while, it is working again now, so if that wasn’t working for you, you can message me there.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast, if you enjoyed this episode, if you enjoy the podcast in general, please take a couple of minutes to leave a quick review on Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, it would mean the world to me.

And remember to visit: HollyWorton.com/407 for the show notes on this episode.

One thing I forgot to mention before I sign off: Keith and I and some other writers are going to be doing another promotion of our hiking books, like we did last year, so we are going to be doing probably a free promotion of all of our hiking books towards the end of the month in May. So stay tuned for that, I will hopefully have more of those authors in the upcoming weeks on the podcast, that’s the plan, we have still got to get it in the calendar. So stay tuned for free hiking books at the end of the month, I will be sure to promote that on social media and the podcast and all the places I hang out online. So finally I am done, have a fantastic week and happy trails to you and enjoy the outdoors.