433 Robert Twigger ~ How Adventure Satisfies Our Need for Childlike Play

Transcript

Holly:  Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 433. This is your host Holly Worton, and I am back with another exciting guest. Today I am talking with Robert Twigger. Now I have known Rob for several years now and I am a huge fan of his books. He has gone on some big wild adventures in his life, and he has written books about most of them. So in this episode we discuss how adventure satisfies our need to do childish or childlike things. We also talk about how adventure can be an antidote to anxiety. I think you will find this episode both fascinating and inspiring and I hope it gets you thinking about your next adventures.

So who is Robert Twigger? Robert Twigger is an award-winning writer who has published 12 books mainly about adventurous travel. His website is roberttwigger.com and he produces a quarterly comic about memoir and adventure called This Simple Life and I will link to that in the show notes.

So what are you going to learn on this week’s episode?

We talk about how adventure satisfies our need to do “childish” things; how adventure can be an antidote to anxiety; Rob’s recent adventure in visiting all 36 islands in the Lake District; the core skills and mindsets that can help us to get the most out of our adventures; and how people can start to have their own micro-adventures.

We talk about climbing, we talk about hiking, we talk about canoeing across Canada, we talk about big snake hunting, we talk about how to get started with inflatable canoes and we talk about Rob’s most recent book, which was Walking the Great North Line: From Stonehenge to Lindisfarne, and many more things. So I hope you find this episode interesting and useful, as always, and enjoy!

Holly: Hey Rob, how are you doing today?

Rob: Pretty good.

Holly: Good! I am really looking forward to talking about adventure.

Rob: Me too, in fact today as I was doing my daily adventurous bike ride, I thought, oh yeah! I actually… this is something I do know something about, or at least a little bit.

Holly: So tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Rob: Okay, I am non-fiction author, I have been a professional writer since 1995 and I really started by doing martial arts and writing about martial arts. And then I kind of graduated to doing all kinds of strange adventures including hunting for giant snakes and paddling across Canada in a birchbark canoe and looking for lost oases in the desert. I kind of really took the adventure idea and used it to write books. So I wasn’t sure, was I really adventuring and writing books to earn money to do adventures, or was I really writing books…? Sometimes the books have been in the forefront and sometimes the adventures have.

Holly: So what does adventure mean to you?

Rob: To me, I always think the best definition of adventure is one given by the climber Reinhold Messner and he said: it is when you leave home and you don’t know where you are going to sleep that night.

Holly: Ooh I like that!

Rob: And it’s kind of cool because if you think about things like hitchhiking which are kind of tame in a way, I mean you are just standing by the road, that’s a real adventure, because you don’t know where you are going to end up and you speak to lots of different people. So it is kind of important because I always think thrills like going bungee jumping or going to a section of the river and just run the rapids, people call it an adventure, but I don’t know whether that is, because you kind of know where you are going.

Holly: Yeah, you do. You don’t know what the actual experience is going to be like… so there is an element of the unknown, but you definitely (probably) know where you are going to be sleeping that night.

Rob: Yeah, you do, and I guess the first time you run those rapids, or the first time you do the bungee jump, yes that counts as adventure but when you have done it several times…I think repeating the same thing means that it is not really an adventure.

Holly: Even though it is kind of different every time?

Rob: Well then you are not repeating it…

Holly: True!

Rob: I mean in general terms, and I don’t want to sort or outlaw what people are doing, but, I know for myself, it is really good the first time you do something and you are just not sure whether it will work or not and you kind of have a lot of faith and luck and all of those things which sort of fade into the background a bit once you kind of know what you are doing.

Holly: It is a very different experience. I think it is interesting that you use things like bungee jumping as an example because I did that back in 1996 and I did it and really enjoyed it and I was glad that I did it but I never really felt the need to do it again.

Rob: I think it is a bit like skydiving, some people just get hooked to it, I think some people just get hooked to it, but I think it is a thrill and that is slightly different from an adventure, because I think an adventure is a learning experience as well.

Holly: Absolutely. So how does adventure satisfy our need to do childish things?

Rob: Well, it’s good you brought that up. I was thinking about that today when I was mountain biking. Today I passed someone on a horse, and I guess a mountain bike is more childish than a horse, and they are both more childish than a car! But I like that side to it! Because I think these machines dominate our lives and what we consider to be adult is actually just some kind of established dominance that may not be true or useful or anything and actually may be crushing our spirit. I think the thing about childish stuff, childish type adventures using childish kit – I have got a pack raft, it looks like a little toy, but it really pleases me to do that. I feel that in some way (I don’t know) I am just being free in the way that kids are free. I think that is something to do with that maybe all society has become a bit oppressive.  

Holly: Absolutely, especially in the last year and a half with lockdown and all these rules and regulations, you must wear a mask, you must do this, and you must not do this. I think we have got even more rules than we have ever had before, it sometimes feels that way.

Rob: Yeah, I didn’t really mind the mask wearing or any of it at all, because I am slightly introverted anyway, so I kind of didn’t mind it, but I realised that it really had a pernicious effect on people’s… it created fear, it created a kind of virus of fear and a lot of people had mental health issues exacerbated during lockdown. I think anxiety especially, anxiety is fear and I think if you sit indoors too long you get scared of going outside. {Holly: yeah, absolutely} Adventure is the anthesis of that. One of the great things about adventure – and I forced myself to do it actually a few weeks ago – get out in the rain and go up to the Lake District. I didn’t want to do it at all! But I knew I needed to do it and of course after a few days I just felt fantastic.

Holly: Yes, so you said that adventure is kind of an antidote to anxiety, and I absolutely agree with that. I never really struggled with anxiety until this last lockdown that we had in the winter, and it got to a point where it felt like I was barely hanging on and it was like, ‘I need to do something!’. And then once things started opening up and I was able to get out and go camping and spend time doing different things in the outdoors and get further away from home rather than just going back and forth on all my close-by trails, it really just made a big difference, a massive difference. So how do you think adventure effects us, whether that is neuro-physiologically or metabolically or in other ways that can help reduce anxiety, what is it about adventure that helps us with mental health and anxiety?

Rob: I think that when you get aroused (I don’t like the word aroused it sounds a bit weird), I think when you get surprised or shocked the flight or fight mechanism kicks in and you get enhanced adrenalin and so on and you can recalibrate, you can register that as something unpleasant, depending on the context, or you can register that as something exciting and interesting, by giving it a different context. And I think adventure, I always remember this case, I went to do this canoe trip, I arrived in Canada, and no one was at the airport to meet me because there had been a cock-up. So I am in Ottawa, and it is evening, and I don’t know what to do. I started talking to this guy outside, a construction worker, and he said, ‘hey but it is all part of the adventure, right?’, and it suddenly just threw a switch in my head, and I thought of course it is. He told me that you could crash in the multi-faith chapel (little known fact: if you are ever stuck in an airport crash in the multi faith chapel, no one will ever throw you out!) So, I did, and it was just cool. And in fact another guy also crashed there, and I had a bit of chat with him and that was part of the adventure. So it is like recalibrate… sometimes when I am driving and it is really raining and it is dark and it is horrible, and it is kind of nerve wracking in a funny way, and I switch a switch in my head and I go, ‘now this is an adventure’, and I look for the taillights to guide me and so everything, even the little things become important, and it just changes the whole experience, rather than being nightmarish or dangerous or whatever.

Holly: Yeah, and it is absolutely the same event but viewed through a different lens.

Rob: Yeah, it is just putting different googles on and so of course it connects to different parts of the brain. Once you allow anxiety to get a hold it starts connecting to different parts of the brain, the brain is a plastic organ we know, so all these new connections start being made and over time it grows and so the anxiety does become real, it occupies real estate in the brain. So what you need to do is you need to start rewiring the brain to associate adventure with lots of good things – the fight or flight or heightened sense of danger with lots of positive sensations. And this is why I was saying it is a learning experience because you are doing something new for the first time, you are laying down new connections, so you are stimulating your brain, this is probably moving into something else, but this is probably why it is a good thing for your brain, it is a learning experience.

Holly: Absolutely it gets you outside of your comfort zone, in a, mostly, probably safe environment without being kind of in the danger zone and that really does change your brain.  

Rob: You can control it don’t you? You control how much danger; it is really just whatever you choose. Today I [thought] I will do this cycle ride and it involves riding along this muddy track along the side of a ditch. Now the bike tyres haven’t got great grip, the front tyres are not proper mountain bike tyres, so I started to slide into the ditch, and I thought {laughing}, ‘wow if I fall into the ditch, it is going to be really unpleasant, I might even hurt myself!’, so I had to scale it back a bit. So even on a tiny little journey you can calibrate it, but what I love is an adventure is something where you take control of what level of danger you want. It is not crazy. This is why I think outside people who haven’t done adventure think, ‘oh it is just crazy, they are doing mountain climbing, they are doing white water rafting’, but all the people who do these things are very much in control of the level of danger that they want.

Holly: I was just talking the other day to a friend, we were messaging about, have you seen that documentary Free Solo?

Rob: I have yeah.

Holly: So we were talking about that, because she is a climber and I am not a climber and I loved that documentary, but it was just like, ‘I can’t believe someone would put themselves in that level of danger’, but he did, he survived, and clearly he knew what he was doing and he had trained for it and prepared for it. So I think someone who has trained for something and prepared for it is in a very different place compared to me, that doesn’t know anything about climbing.

Rob: Well it is quite interesting because also you may have seen these videos by this guy Danny MacAskill who is an incredible mountain biker and he does one where he mountain bikes from the top of Edinburgh Castle, huge jumps. And another one where he goes over the Cuillin Ridge, the Cuillin Ridge is actually a climbing route, it is a VD climbing route and he does it on a mountain bike, it is incredible. But Danny MacAskill always before he does stuff, he visualises it and sees what his feeling is about it, and he says that the few times where he has ignored the feeling, he has had bad accidents, he broke his back in one accident. And it is very similar with climbers, you have got to develop a feeling, which is an intuition, I mean this is why it is so interesting because you are really out at the edge where you are having to project and know how it is going to go. It becomes a very interesting, almost telepathic, exercise… usually when climbers have serious accidents, it is usually in high mountains where it is a total random an avalanche, high winds. But even there sometimes it can be intuition, I remember reading about some of the guys who survived for years and years, I remember Chris Bonington, I remember reading an account about him on some high peak in the Himalayas and at one point he says, ‘I think I am going to go back to the camp now’, he just turns back. All the others think ‘oh he is an oldster’, they push on and have a terrible accident, break legs and one of them dies. He had that intuition, so that’s another thing that intrigues me, people who have learnt to develop that as well.

Holly: Well I think once you have been on various adventures and outdoors things it is like your brain picks up on little clues that maybe your conscious mind doesn’t, but some part of your brain does, and it is like ‘danger, maybe head back home’.

Rob: You know that luck always goes in runs, so you know that on a day when various sort of small bad things happen you know you have got to be careful, you just know that. The second thing I am always looking out for is, accidents are always cumulative, almost always cumulative. It is like one thing leads to another thing, so you kind of lose something, the canoe gets a hole in it, something… these are all cumulative, so you have to put a stop to it, you can’t just hope that things will get better. And recognising those chains at the beginning I think is a key part of being on an adventure and also I am extremely conservative when I am out in the wilderness, I am probably way more conservative than a regular person would be, that’s what I am like.

Holly: Yeah. So can you give a couple of examples of some adventures that maybe helped you with your anxiety and mental health?

Rob: As I said, I went to the Lake District, I am doing this book about visiting islands in the Lake District, it is pretty easy, I mean they are islands in a lake. But it is getting a bit colder now and so I didn’t want to fall in the water, and so, some of them, the waves can get quite big, because it is windy and wet. I have got a tiny little pack raft, so kind of had to bite the bullet and do it. And the last thing I did was go to this small island, it is no more than 200 metres from the shore, very close, but I had to launch it, the pack raft, into a small river that was quite in spate, because it was just in pouring with rain (it has been pouring with rain recently). So I am completely saturated, I had been waiting an hour for the rain to stop, it hadn’t stopped, got in the boat and it was immediately pulled away by the river but, even in the small time I had been in the Lake District I had realised that when a river looks really fast, when you put a boat in it the boat never moves really that fast, so rivers always look faster than they are. So I kind of had more that more of a measure/sense of control and that had just come over the brief period that I had been visiting the Lake District and doing that and that feeling of more control. Anyway I did this trip, got to this island no problem and got back no problem. And every little piece of just doing that, every time you prove to yourself, you are in a situation where you think ooh, that’s dangerous and then you do it, each time you reduce your general levels of anxiety. I know that I was less anxious because when I start driving, I always drive much faster, I drive much, much faster and more causally – this is probably a terrible…my God, this is how it will end (no, hopefully touchwood it won’t) – but you know much more confident and much more relaxed. I always feel like that after a trip, if I have been in the wilderness for a long time I always feel so much more relaxed and things like driving, if you are on a crowded motorway it can get kind of stressful, there is no stress level, so it is the removal of the things that give rise to anxiety: stress, overthinking, internal thinking, looking inwards, all of those things are countered by an adventure: you look outwards, you slow down, and whatever you do seems to return control to you and so you feel like you are in control of your destiny.

Holly: I feel often it is like life gets simplified because you are just doing this one thing, you are just doing the hiking or the running or the rafting, or whatever, but you have got this one thing that you have to do rather than multitasking with all the other things that we do in life.

Rob: I think that is a really good point, I think it is about that, I love that simplification. All you have to do, you have to do your miles, your trip, whatever it is, make your food, you go to sleep. You don’t feel the need to have a drink or a tele programme, I used to like to read a book or something, but even if you don’t have that, it is enough, you have done your one thing – I think that is an important aspect, the simplification. And I like using all the gear, the sleeping bags and the same clothes, I don’t know it is easier, simpler.

Holly: Yes, yes. So tell us a little bit more about visiting all 36 islands in the Lake District.

Rob: Yes, so this is a new book I am doing and well I am writing it now so it will probably be out probably next year, yes it will be out this time next year. The idea came from I thought if the shit really hit the fan, you know if there is a sort of like meltdown of society (this was way before…like 20 years ago), where would I hideout? And I thought, okay, on an island in a lake but the lake probably ought to be like a reservoir or something that may be controlled by a utilities company with fencing – so you are not allowed to go on the lake so you would sneak in there. Anyway this idea had been kicking around for years and years and then, also as a kid I was very into the books of Arthur Ransome, these were children’s books set in the Lake District and the kids camp on an island. So these two twin sources of inspiration and finally I thought, ah, maybe I should check out what these islands are like, how many there are? And so I did and, official ones, there are about 36, there are a few more, but there are 36 sort of decent-sized islands in the Lake District. All the lakes in the Lake District were originally lakes, some have grown and become reservoirs, they have put dams in and raised the level and thus created islands where there weren’t them before, the rest are all natural islands. So I set out to visit all of them and just see how different they were. And it is really interesting, because every time you visit an island, however small, one of them was so small I could wade to it, there is always a sense of excitement because you know it will be different. Every single island is different: they have different eco systems, they have different birds and mushrooms and trees. Sometimes you come across some weird stuff, on one island I came across this overgrown grave, and it was a proper gravestone, to a dog called Crusoe! A New Foundland dog that had died in 1870 and its owner was like a local, well-off, member of the gentry and had paid to have him interred on an island, kind of really strange. I found lots of weird stuff like that and that also added to it.

Holly: And are these islands that are easy to visit? Or do you really have to work out how to get there?

Rob: It depends on the lake. Some of the lakes are real tourist hotspots: Windermere, Ullswater, they have tourist steamers go up and down them, paddle boarders and you could paddle-board to any of the islands on those lakes. You could swim to quite a few of them – I mean if you were a really good swimmer, you could probably swim to all of them. In fact I woke up one morning on one island and there was a guy swimming, he was one of those swimmers who expends vast amounts of energy kind of chopping at the water. I thought, my God, that guy if he really knew how to swim he would be able to go on forever, because he swam all around the island, he did a complete circuit of the island. You could visit the in any way you like but the advantage of using a canoe, which is what I used, or a pack raft, which I also used, is you can take all your kit with you so that you can camp on the island. Having said that you are not supposed to camp on, most of the islands you are not supposed to camp on them, but people do.

Holly: Like most wild camping in this country!

Rob: And to be honest there was only one island that I came across with loads of mess, with loads of bottles and crap in a fireplace, almost all of them no mess at all, nothing. There were fireplaces but nobody had actually damaged them. Ullswater is probably one of the most popular lakes and one of the islands there is really quite small and almost every stick had gone, everything.

Holly: So you wrote a book called Micromastery, do you think there are core skill sets, or mindsets, that can help us to get the most out of our adventures?

Rob: Ah! It certainly helps to be comfortable with being in the wilderness, that means lighting fires, not kicking over the cooking pot and putting the fire out. Putting up your tent, I have a really good friend, he is not like this now, but when he first started, he told me that he had a phobia of tents, because he had an experience in the Boy Scouts and I thought my God what does that mean? He didn’t like the pressure which I sort of get, everyone is putting the tent up and you don’t know how to do yours and it keeps falling down. So learn how to put your tent up, learn how to start a fire, learn how to get water so it is not going to kill you. Just those sort of outdoor skills so that you are confident about sleeping out. I think that, for me, adventures involve sleeping out. There are some adventures that I could conceive of, I have got one idea to go down a certain river, it is not a very long river, from the source right to the sea and I can do that in one day. So that doesn’t involve camping out but it does involve a sort of an appreciation of nature I think and how nature works, so all those things are probably quite useful.

Holly: What about mindsets? Is there a particular mindset that people can have, or could have or should have to help them get the most of out of their adventures?

Rob: Yeah, don’t look for rules. I always think there are people who [say]: you have got to have a life jacket, you have got to have this, you have got to do that. I belong to this Facebook group about canoeing and someone goes: oh they are holding their paddle wrong… [And I think] oh god give them a break it is only a photo! People are always trying to set rules for things, and I think the whole idea of adventure is that it is just totally up to you, you choose your level of comfort, your safety, your level of everything and it is entirely up to you. If you want to paddle-board stark naked down the Thames with no kit, that is entirely up to you, and I don’t think anyone should tell you what to do. I think it is like there are no rules, you have got to use your own nous to decide what to engage in, what level of adventure you are going to do, woollen clothes, or whether you are are going to wear a dry suit, whether you are going to go swimming with just your underpants on or whether you are going to wear a wetsuit as well…all that kind of stuff. So for mindset I think you have got to get rid of the rules-based mindset and go and experiment, put an experiment’s head on and test and experiment. And say, I am just thinking aloud here, but a lot of people have got their management head on, you know managing the situation, and in this situation, it is much better to have an experimental head (‘let’s see what happens’) and do it safely. For me when I went there, I didn’t have a dry suit and I thought: if I fall in there and I am half a mile out in the lake, I am probably going to get cold and maybe not even be able to swim back. So I got these chest waders and people do use them as substitute dry suits, put a belt around it and a bungee cord, so that no water can get into them, then I felt confident because I knew, okay if I fall in, I won’t get cold and also these will keep me on the surface because they are full of air. So that sort of mindset is an innovative and experimental head is the one that you one, I think.  

Holly: Absolutely and I think that goes along with being open and curious about your adventure, or your activity that you had chosen, rather than having expectation, ‘it must be like this, and it must be like that, and I want it to be this way…’, that is kind of planning too much and setting up your own rules for the activity.

Rob: I think you are so, right, a lot of people will read an account of something and think that they should replicate it but that’s not what it’s about, the best adventures is just when you have the bare bones of something and then you go out and experience it, you kind of know about some place but you don’t really need all the details.

Holly: I think that brings us back to what we were talking about earlier, about being childish with our adventures or adventure satisfying our need to do childish things because, when you are playing as a kid, you are playing house or pirate or whatever but it’s like there are no rules to it, you are just kind of doing this thing and it is fun and that is enough.

Rob: Yes, when I was kid, I used to cross the fields and I used to pretend to be an explorer, I had my notebook and I would write down the things I had seen and I had a compass, so I would follow the compass, so I was already kind of imitating what I thought was an adult activity. Now I know that it is always going to be a childlike activity! But now when I do these things, I try to do them, I have got slightly more professional about doing these things that felt at first a little bit childish when I was doing them: taking notes of things, photographing things, having my routines, doing all that stuff and I kind of think of it now, in a curious way, as a professionalisation of my childhood. But it still seems childish because ordinary people are out there, and they are kind of doing their regular stuff on a power boat or something. But to me, I mean it is just a way of looking at things, I just think of them as being in the adult world even though actually what they are doing is just pratting around and I am actually doing something maybe slightly serious: noting down all the different types of tree, on this island. But it still feels like I am engaged in some childish activity which is fine, I am very, very, happy with that. One of the good things about adventure is to feel happy with being weak, happy with being in a minority, you know, not needing to be part of a gang, or a big enterprise, because all of those things have brought nothing but misery to the world usually.

Holly: Well I think the word childish can have such negative connotations sometimes when, really, it is like having that lens of play, it is childish play, it can be a positive thing, rather than saying: that’s too childish, that’s not good enough, adults don’t do that.

Rob: Yeah, exactly, totally being able to play, that is really necessary.

Holly: Why do you think it is necessary to play and be childish in life?

Rob: Because as people get older they usually become grimmer and sadder and that just seems like a terrible way to go (laughing) and I have observed indigenous peoples, who I have travelled with in their 60s and 70s and they are often really childlike, they often have a really good sense of humour and they will prat around like they will suddenly run down a sand dune, I have been with Bedouins like that. I have been with indigenous people in the jungle, and they will suddenly do something really crazy like real comedians, and they are 70 or something, or they will suddenly start dancing or something – they don’t have any sort of inhibitions about that kind of thing. Because their culture is much more mature than ours in many ways and they have realised the necessity to maintain that open, playful, approach, because when you are being playful you are open to learning, you are open to new things. I think that people in the West tend to be rigid, and even when they start doing adventures like mountain biking, I have seen people round where I live, they have things like face masks and all the right gear, and they ride in this really serious way, and they are forcing other walkers off the path and they are not considerate and it is taken way too seriously. So what they have done is taken something that is a real fun activity and turned it into another kind of work. So I think of those indigenous people as being superior in this respect, anyway.

Holly: Yes, because it is like they know when to work and they know when to play and they allow themselves, they give themselves permission to play.

Rob: Exactly, they give themselves permission and they have a real laugh and really enjoy themselves. As you are getting older you have to learn some things and you should be able to learn how to have an even bette time! Because most people actually seem to have a worse time as they get older.

Holly: You have got to be more serious!

Rob: I’m told that all the time, but it is just a control thing. When people tell you to be more serious, they are just trying to control you.

Holly: More rules, more gatekeeping… so what are your top three adventures that you have done if you had to pick them?

Rob: Well it took three years, each year I went for about three months, and I crossed quite a large part of Canada, from Lake Athabasca, up the Peace River, over the Rocky Mountains and down to the Pacific in a birchbark canoe. I often think about that journey, it had loads of difficult things in it, different elements and the final part was a 350km walk across the inland plateau of British Columbia. So it had loads of variety so that is probably my favourite adventure that I did. I did quite a lot of stuff in the desert, and I have a very great fondness for travelling in the desert. Some of that was done in vehicles which was really good fun. I am generally opposed to vehicle adventures but in the dessert somehow a vehicle is quite…

Holly: It is allowed!

Rob: There are no roads, so it is good. It is quite funny actually to take someone into the desert in a vehicle and they go, I have never been off a road before in my life. And of course there you drive for 100s and 100s of kilometres.

Holly: And not even see a road.

Rob: And not even see a road. Those were the top two that I remember. The hunting for the big snake was really interesting but it was quite gruelling, it was all in the jungle. I kind of like the jungle but I don’t think I am a big forest person. If you spend two or three weeks and you don’t see the sun, you kind of get a bit gloomy. I am a river man, I really like the rivers, that’s my thing. I like mountains and deserts but I don’t think I am totally wedded to jungles and forests.

Holly: Interesting. So what would say is your most adventurous adventure, was that Canada or something else?

Rob: The thing about Canada it was pretty well planned. There were certain elements in it that were dangerous, but I was always with a group of people. It was pretty adventurous in the sense that no one had done this route, the exact route, that we were doing since 1793. Of course elements had all been done but no one had strung it all together since the first time it had been done. So in that sense it was an adventure. But of course I have contradicted my thing about being the first person to do it. I don’t know I just think of it is as a process, I’m not really too much thinking about looking back, I am thinking about new ones that I want to keep doing and what I would do. Sometimes I think, oh shit, if my knees go what will I do? I know, I’ll do kayaking because I don’t need to walk. And things like that.

Holly: And I think that’s a good thing to have variety of interests in terms of adventures. As you say if you get injured with one thing then you can do something else.

Rob: Yeah absolutely. I am thinking about the canoe trip where at the beginning we couldn’t go against the current so we had to toe the boat, so you are walking and toeing a boat and some of the time you could get a rest in the canoe. Actually it was fantastic because you never had to walk for hours and hours, so you never developed any kind of repetitive strain type injury, which you do if you are walking for eight hours a day, or cycling for eight hours a day, or even paddling for eight hours a day. I kind of like the cross-training effect of certain types of travel, so for example using this pack raft you hike and then when you get to a river or lake you blow up your pack raft and then you do a bit of paddling. Somehow that kind of variety I really like, I am not sure if I want to go back to mono-adventuring, I like the idea of combining lots of different types of transport.

Holly: So segueing into the future and talking about future adventures, can you talk about any adventures that you have planned for the future, whether they involve books or?

Rob: Most of my adventures, to justify them, this is where it ceases to be childish, I have to write a book about them, that’s what I tell myself. Or I have just started this quarterly comic, there are a couple of stories and each one of them will always be some kind of adventure and comics are a pretty good way of depicting adventures, you could spend a lot of time on words, describing something, but a picture could describe it much better. But anyway books justify it for me so that is the point of that… And what book do I have planned? Well one I have planned is to build a log boat and launch it at Bella Coola and then travel up the coast to Alaska, do you know what they call the inside passage, protected by lots of islands on the west protected by lots of islands from Vancouver northwards. So you are not facing the full might of the Pacific Ocean. And it is a journey that is done by quite a few people but there are lots of different ways to do that journey and I would like to do it in a log boat that I have built.

Holly: Nice!

Rob: That is something I have got possibly, not next year, but maybe the year after, we will see.

Holly: And what adventure would you most like to have?

Rob: I have always been keen on the idea of sailing in the south seas, going to lots of different islands in the south seas but I am actually a terrible sailor and probably it would be quite dangerous to do it. I have had a number of near misses with sailing as I have with rock climbing and I think sometimes you have got to take the evidence…this is not what I should be doing! If I could have a go on someone else’s boat, I think I would really like that, go and travel around the south sea islands.

Holly: That sounds lovely, especially with the weather we have been having lately.

Rob: Oh yeah!

Holly: So how can a person start to have micro-adventures in their own day-to-day life, if that person has been living a sedentary, rules-based life and they want to kind of break out and have something new, how can they have their own micro adventures?

Rob: Well I actually met a guy like this. I did this walk up [through] England a couple of years ago and I met a guy and he was sort of going a bit mad, he was an architect and of course when you are an architect you just need a computer, and he was mainly based at home and he said he was going crazy. And then he bought a tent, he just went to a campsite in the Lake District, he was in Derbyshire, and then he slept in the tent and went out for walks, and he thought that was great. Then he got a bicycle and he said that the big revelation for him was when he bought a bike with panniers and he could put the tent in the bike and then just ride out of his front door and this is his thing, not knowing where he is going to camp. Okay, he maybe knew where the campsites were, he hadn’t started wild camping but that was the next thing he was going to do. So there are plenty of just very nice ordinary campsites, not fancy or expense that you can just put your tent up in, and that’s like the start to doing something and getting out there under your own steam, get a bike, go hiking, or get a canoe or a boat or something.   

Holly: Yes, that gets you off the beaten track.

Rob: I think rivers, they are not really wilderness, but they are about as close to wilderness that you can get in England because they are a kind of no man’s land. If you belong to the British Canoe Union, you have the right to paddle on vast numbers of rivers and you can more or less get away with most of them, and it is not really like walking across a farmer’s fields, going through those same fields in a river seems much more adventurous and you can camp on islands, there are always small islands and rivers and things, so I really recommend people to get out on rivers because it does change your experience, it does seem more adventurous than simply walking.

Holly: And what’s the learning curve like for that? Do you need to take a canoeing course? What do you need to know to get started?

Rob: I would say get yourself an inflatable canoe, now there are two types, there are these high-pressure ones that are more like paddle boards, and they look really like canoes, and there are these others which kind of look a bit more like rafts, because they are low pressure, I would go for one of those because they are almost impossible to tip up. You can buy one that weighs about 12 kilos and so you can carry it in one of those little luggage trolleys that people use for carrying suitcases, you can transport it in that or even put it in a backpack. If you have got more money, you could buy a pack raft, but they are more expensive, inflatable canoes are not expensive, you can transport them anywhere and you are never going to fall in and if you do fall in it is a life raft, it will never sink, and you can just get straight back into it. In fact one of my favourite adventurers, is a woman called Audrey Sutherland, she is now in her eighties, maybe she is even ninety, and she started by swim adventuring around Hawaii, where she would swim from cove to cove and she started by throwing her gear in a Tahiti, a Sevylor Tahiti, which is the cheapest form of inflatable canoe you can get and then she started paddling it. Then she moved to Alaska, and she started going up the coast of Alaska and she said what she did, she loaded her canoe, and capsized it ten times in the surf and then got back into it to prove to herself that she was safe for travelling alone. An inflatable canoe is one of the safest forms of solo canoe travel because of that factor, you are always safer going with somebody else but, if you are going to go alone, an inflatable is a really good way to go. They are slower, but, what the hell, you are not in a rush and if you are in a rush, you are in the wrong game.

Holly: So, if you could recommend just one of your books for listeners, which would it be? What’s a good starting point for your work?

Rob: Well, my favourite right now is Voyageur, which is the one about a canoe trip, it is full on, but it is good value.

Holly: {laughing} You get lots of pages for your money!

Rob: Lots of pages for your money! That is a good one, I think, but my latest one is Walking the Great North Line, I think that is a good book.

Holly: Yes, I love that book, I really enjoyed it. So tell us a little bit more about that, so you basically invented this new route based on some of your personal observations.

Rob: Yes, it is, kind of like another form of adventure, I had been staring for a long time at a map of England and I realised that there were lots of ancient sites that seemed to congregate along a certain line and so I extrapolated that line, and it went from Stonehenge down to Christchurch in the South, and up to Lindisfarne island, and there were about 40 ancients sites on this line. I drew lines every 20 miles either side and none of them went through nearly as many sites. So I just thought, okay this has a significance, whether it is a metaphorical significance or whether it is a real significance, who knows?  I didn’t try to push that element of it, but it gave it an interest and another dimension. So that is another way you can jazz up an adventure, by giving some kind of quest element or some extra dimension. I didn’t just want to walk the Pennine Way even though I had walked a bit of the Pennine Way and I am not against…I love long-distance walking, I have done quite a few long-distance routes and enjoyed them fully, but for me, I wouldn’t mind doing it in a foreign country, but in England, I felt I have got to do something different, rather than the normal regular route.

Holly: It also gives you an excuse to stare for long hours at maps, which is kind of an obsession of mine!

Rob: For me that’s how the adventure starts, I put a map…for example, the Pyrenees I walked the GR10 and a combination of the GR10 and the high route, which is from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and that started, I wasn’t even sure I was going to do it, I put the map of the whole of the Pyrenees on my wall and it was there for days, weeks, maybe even a couple of months, and it gradually became a reality to me. So, for me, often that’s that start, the map. If you are interested in adventuring just pick a country and just put a map of that country on the wall and just get used to it and somehow the adventure will start growing in your head.

Holly: I like that! So do you have any final tips on how to have more childlike adventures or how to be more childlike?

Rob: I would say that reading other people’s accounts of what constitutes an adventure is a good starting point, because lots of people have good ideas. There are quite a few websites, there is this chap Alastair Humphreys, I know him he is a really nice bloke, and he has done this whole thing about micro adventures. Some of those – you wouldn’t necessarily want to slavishly copy, but they might give you an idea or a starting point. So those are the things. Get yourself some tools for adventure like, and this pack raft thing I have got, they are very strong, they are made from very strong material so they don’t puncture so they are kind of worth it, but they cost hundreds of pounds, or even up to a couple of thousand dollars for a big one, but there are cheaper kinds of inflatable boat, I think inflatable boats are just great fun, or you know a mountain bike with panniers, but actually all you really need is a pair of walking boots, proper walking boats.

Holly: I think that’s the thing, I think we get caught up in, we have to have all the stuff, and all the best stuff and this is better than that, and really if you just get started then you can always improve.

Rob: This inflatable canoe I have got is ten years old, one of the bladders inside it is leaking – it doesn’t have to leak tremendously I just have to blow it up every day or so. But this is a brilliant piece of equipment, I don’t need anything better, so there is a sense of that, make do with what you have got. Old, broken and rubbish stuff can be quite useful, buy it on eBay for next to nothing.

Holly: Absolutely, so as a segue to my final question, would you describe today’s social media, big data culture, as anti-adventure, pro-adventure, or neutral?

Rob: Well in some ways it makes the whole thing a lot easier. I just think you have got to use the internet and don’t let it use you. So you can use it to find out loads of information, you can use it to by kit, and in that sense the internet is useful. And, when you are on the trail, if you are having proper adventures, you are probably where there isn’t any internet, there is no phone coverage, and if you have got phone coverage you are in the wrong place! So that solves that problem in a way. And if you are obsessed with checking your stuff, you have got sat phone in your tent, well that does seem a bit silly, because I like carrying proper maps, I don’t like using a phones and having to be tied to charging points and all that sort of thing. So that is more to do with removing technology. I think life, if you take it as it is served up to people, you know you do a job, you spend all your time watching Netflix, I think that is a pretty crumby version of living. And therefore adventure is a huge kind of step away from that and it is one in which all those problems of the internet and social media tend to fade away. I do know people who are kind of show-off adventurers, they do it only to post stuff. But that, after a while… the sort of things they are doing are again these thrill-type adventures where there is a photo opportunity. If you are going to walk the Pennine Way, there aren’t any photo opportunities for that, you are just going to have to do it. So it kinds of solves its own… so in answer to your question, I think, take the advantages and, by going on an adventures, you will find that the disadvantages tend to fade away and become less oppressing.

Holly: Yes, perfect. So where can people find you online and find out more about what you do?

Rob: Well if you go to my website: http://RobertTwigger.com I have got thousands of pages of blog articles, some of which may be useful, I have got the books, which you can find on Amazon, I have an Instagram which is also Robert Twigger. If they are into the comic, there is information about that, and you can subscribe to the comic from the website.

Holly: Okay perfect, well excellent, thank you so much!

Rob: Thank you Holly it has been great talking to you, it has been really interesting, thanks a lot!

Holly: Great, thank you.