Hopefully this walk-through of the way I come up with ideas might get your own adventure cogs whirringβ¦. It is also the only one that I did not see through to completion. I knew that I did not have the credentials or the type of character needed to raise the enormous sponsorship sums required for a polar expedition.
Long story short: I partnered up with Ben, we spent 5 years futilely chasing sponsorship, I quit the team, Ben found the cash and a new partner and headed off down South. Look for where you have never been; perhaps even look where nobody has ever been. Look for where people have been and told their tales, then tweak their story to create your own. The idea of crossing Iceland came from a map: oh look, a conical-shaped country of manageable size.
What if I started at one shore, went up to the high land in the middle, then down to the other side? Beginning and finishing an adventure at the sea is always satisfying.
Therefore when I received an email out of the blue asking if I fancied joining an up-and-running expedition that was due to depart mere weeks from now, I knew this would be my only chance to row an ocean.
Inspired by Wilfred Thesiger , I had dreamed of this trip for years. But the logistics, faff, and expense of dealing with camels kept putting me off. So in the end I accepted my limitations and went for the dumb human-camel approach. But this time with zero compromise on the initial premise. This trip was seeking a different set of challenges to the usual adventures I went on.
