By Alastair Humphreys
My Personal Takeaways →Microadventures makes the case that adventure does not require a sabbatical, an expensive expedition, or even a weekend. Humphreys — who has walked across continents — argues that the spirit of adventure is available on a Tuesday night within five miles of your front door. The book is a permission slip to stop waiting for the ideal moment and start experiencing small, wild, memorable things now.
The practical framework is simple: sleep outside, explore a local river, walk through the night, see a sunrise from somewhere unfamiliar. Implement it by choosing one micro-adventure per month and putting it on the calendar before you can talk yourself out of it. The deeper point is about mindset: novelty, presence, and discomfort are available anywhere — and pursuing them regularly makes you more alive, more grateful, and more interesting.
By Alastair Humphreys
My adventures have taught me so much about the world and about myself. They have given me more focus, purpose and perspective than I used to have.
And the benefits and enjoyment I derive from adventure felt too important to me to not try to share with as many people as possible.
So I realised that what I wanted to do was to break down the barriers to adventure. And thus the microadventure was born.
It is vital not to consider a microadventure as a diluted, inferior version of an adventure. It is not. A microadventure is an adventure. Adventure is a loose word that means different things to different people. It is a state of mind, a spirit of trying something new and leaving your comfort zone. Adventure is about enthusiasm, ambition, open-mindedness and curiosity. If this is true, then ‘adventure’ is not only crossing deserts and climbing mountains; adventure can be found everywhere, every day, and it is up to us to seek it out. You probably can’t go on huge adventures all the time (we all have to pragmatically juggle the commitments and constraints of our ‘real lives’), but you can have a microadventure. Because you do not need to fly to the other side of the planet to find wilderness and beauty. Adventure is stretching yourself, mentally, physically or culturally. It is about doing something you do not normally do, pushing yourself hard and doing it to the best of your ability. You do not need to be an elite athlete, expertly trained, or rich to have an adventure. So a microadventure is an adventure that is close to home: cheap, simple, short, and yet very effective. It still captures the essence of big adventures, the challenge, the fun, the escapism, the learning experiences and the excitement. All these things remain. A microadventure has the spirit (and therefore the benefits) of a big adventure; it’s just all condensed into a weekend away, or even a midweek escape from the office. Even people living in big cities are not very far away from small pockets of wilderness. Adventure is all around us, at all times, even during hard financial times such as these; times when getting out into the wild is more invigorating and important than ever.
Permission to regain a childlike enjoyment of wild places.
I’ve spent well over a thousand nights sleeping outdoors. Probably only about ten of those have been in a ‘proper’ campsite.
Climb a hill, jump in a river, sleep under the stars. Try it. What’s the worst that could happen?
Microadventure: a refresh button for busy lives.
The excuses vary occasionally, but the essence remains the same: ‘One day I want adventure in my life, but, unfortunately, it can’t be right now’. Waiting for all your stars to align is a guaranteed way to ensure that the adventure you crave will never happen. Waiting until you somehow, suddenly and simultaneously, have both loads of money and plenty of time is daft
Something I suggest is too difficult, do an easier version. If something is too easy, make it harder. Mould it and adapt it to your own situation. Just make sure you do something.
If you travel slowly and with a smile on your face then you will meet different people, have interesting conversations and learn something new about the world and about yourself.
Cycle to the biggest cathedral or sports stadium in your county, or the newest restaurant or the oldest museum. Ride to a friend’s house and arrive unannounced
If you want to start incorporating microadventures into your life, the most important thing to do is change your perspective. Begin seeking out wildness and adventure close to home, in seemingly familiar and humdrum places. The more you look, the more you will find. One way to help this mind shift is by going somewhere you know very well, but at night.
Microadventures are about looking at familiar places in fresh ways.
Run home from a party. When I was training for a marathon I used to run home from all my evenings out. I loved running through the streets of London after a night out or dinner at a friend’s house. At times I was a little too full or tipsy for optimum athletic endeavor, but I always enjoyed the adventure of seeing my city in a different way and discovering new parts of it.
Visit your parents’ birthplaces.
If you add up all your weekends, statutory leave and Bank Holidays, you’ll discover you have about 130 free days each year. The trouble, of course, is the fragmented nature of these 130 days, so the adventurous soul with a proper job has to be determined to make the most of their weekends rather than frittering them away at IKEA or watching The X Factor.
Here is the secret: Get up early and you’ll have time to get up high. Not stupid early, if you can’t bear that, but for every sacrificed hour of sleep you receive, in exchange, one glorious hour somewhere beautiful. It’s a fair swap.
There are many different ways of enjoying the countryside by bike. The purpose-built trails at a mountain bike trail centre are a good way to test yourself and improve your skills. Search online for a local one.
Coasteering is an exciting, challenging and fun way of exploring the rocky coastline of Britain.
Find a taster weekend course in something you’ve never done before. Search online and you can find all sorts of weekends away, from climbing, kayaking or sailing, to photography, bird watching or mushroom foraging.
But suddenly I decided to do something different, to escape, if only briefly, from my boring hamster wheel. So I fetched my sleeping bag and a head torch, grabbed a pillow and a book, and walked into the garden to sleep outside.
Yet the novelty alone was refreshing and amusing. I tried to read my book but the night was full of distractions. It was noisier than I expected, even without hearing a nightingale or an owl. A gentle breeze rustled through the tree above me. I counted stars and satellites.
I woke as the sun rose and grinned as I realised that I had slept in my garden. I hadn’t done that since I was a little boy. I felt more relaxed and cheerful than I normally do first thing in the morning, so I lay for a few minutes just absorbing the sights and sounds of springtime.
One weekend morning, have your breakfast outdoors.
Eat your dinner in the garden, even on a cold winter night. Wrap up warm and enjoy the experience for how different it is.
Exercise in the park instead of the gym.
If you’ve got a hammock and know how to tie yourself safely to a tree, then sleeping up a tree is a lot of fun.
Many adventurous alter egos are restricted by 9 to 5 jobs. But what about the 5 to 9? What about those 16 glorious hours of freedom between leaving work in the evening and returning the next day?
Get the 9 to 5 out of the way and then cram the rest with as much activity as possible. This book is about making the most of all your free time. I know life is more complicated than this – that you may work longer hours, have evening commitments and so on – but please at least consider it theoretically. What adventure could you squeeze in between 5pm and 9am, if only just once?
Sleeping on a hilltop is a cheap and straightforward microadventure. I can’t think of many easier ways of getting a quick fix of re-focusing, re-prioritising and contentment. It seems that a sleeping bag and a Scotch egg on top of a hill are all I need to make me happy… Strolling into work you might look a bit crumpled, especially if you used your bundled-up suit as a hilltop pillow, but it’s a small price to pay.
The very best hill is the one close to where you live. That makes it more likely that you will actually go and climb it. If you have difficulty climbing a hill then sleep in a field, a cave, a snow hole, a cemetery, or even your garden. Just do something to squeeze an adventure into your ‘5 to 9’.
And, if you learn that you actually are happiest just staying at home, then congratulations! That’s a nice thing to realise.
‘In a busy city it is easy to forget that somewhere out there are fields and rivers and peace.’
The very epitome of seeking out fragments of beauty in built-up places.
Someone a mile or two to the west had even decided to celebrate my little microadventure by laying on a firework display for me.
It felt good now to be off the roads, following fields and footpaths. The air was filled with the distinctive aroma of summer evenings – of cut grass, willowherb and cow parsley.
So I chose not to let the rain annoy me or get me down for ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’, as Shakespeare so rightly said. If you are able to persuade yourself to enjoy rain (sometimes easier said than done), then it can feel sublime, especially in summertime.
One way is by pitting your wits and skills against that wild world by trying to catch a fish.
There is something deeply relaxing about spending a couple of hour beside a river.
To do something difficult that will serve as a stepping stone towards other, bigger adventures.
Events that are already organised are the simplest to commit to, and as committing is by far the hardest part of any adventure, entering a race is a simple way of starting off.
But we persisted. And that is the key to doing almost anything interesting in life. You’ve just got to get out there and do it.
We were so happy to be out there, making the very most of Now.
Chatter bubbled amongst us about the strange and unusual experience of sleeping under the stars without a tent. It’s a powerful experience the first time you try it, it really is. Add an espresso and a bacon sandwich, a swim in the sea and a fast bike ride to work and you have a happy start to a working day.
When I head into the hills I feel, very distinctly, a lightness in my step and a release of pressure all over my body. I breathe more easily. I believe several factors contribute to this: being somewhere new away from places I associate with stress or boredom, being unable to address (and therefore less inclined to worry about) all the busy, annoying stuff life demands, a slowing down in my pace of thought, and the simple pleasures of fresh air, natural scenery and physical exercise.
And that’s it. That’s the way to look at this – not as a big, complicated hassle of an adventure, but as something you can do on a normal, commuting weekday. Because in no time at all we were back at the station, then back into the city and swallowed up by the busy world once more.
By all means dream of big adventures and begin planning to make them happen. But why not concoct the smallest possible distillation of your big idea and begin with that? If you want to cycle round the world, first try cycling across England. If you want to climb K2, begin with some local hills. If you want to walk to the North Pole, see if you can hack walking across your county.
Just a couple of hours’ ride or walk from any city will take you to somewhere new, to somewhere wild, to somewhere beautiful.
So, when the alternative would have been to do nothing, I felt pretty happy with more or less making it from coast to coast in the short chunk of spare time I had available.
Popular also for many years has been the idea of credit card cycle touring. For people who like the idea of a cycle tour but prefer the idea of a hotel to a bike laden with a tent, this is a very pleasant way to travel.
It was just an ordinary day out on my bike, but because I was following the route of the Tour de France I viewed everything through different eyes. As I hunched down low to pick up speed on the downhills, I found myself daydreaming like a child.
Bivvying in rural spots is even easier than finding a B&B for the night – it is the simplest, most relaxing accommodation there is. The views and atmosphere trump a 5-star hotel, although I will admit that the bed is a little less comfortable and the mini bar is BYO.
I was travelling as lightly as I could manage for this trip. This meant absolutely no spare clothes and a bin bag for a raincoat. A disadvantage of travelling this light is having nothing to use as a pillow. So I stripped naked (another benefit of being alone on a hilltop), bundled my clothes up for a pillow, and climbed into my sleeping bag.
Here are various routes of great races which would be fun to tackle at a more modest microadventure pace. Your local marathon route. Even if you are not a runner you could hike the route over a day, or cycle it in a couple of hours. Take on the 18th- and 19th-century challenges of ‘walking wagers’ or pedestrianism. Try to become a ‘Centurion’ by walking 100 miles in 24 hours. Or match Captain Barclay who walked 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours at Newmarket in 1809. The cycling route from the 2012 London Olympics. Alexander Vinoukorov covered the 155 miles in 5 hours 45 minutes, including nine laps of Box Hill. The Bob Graham Round is a cult classic, a challenge to cover 42 Lakeland fells in under 24 hours. Mere mortals would enjoy it as a fabulous 2-day hike.
My friends and I hadn’t really planned much. There isn’t a lot to report. We just stopped in a supermarket, loaded a basket with food and a bottle or two of cheap red wine and then headed out of town.
It is so easy to escape (from a town, from a computer, from a routine) if only you take the difficult step of making it happen.
We were not on our way to anywhere particularly beautiful or to do anything exciting: we just wanted to get away (or give ourselves the illusion of getting away) for a night. Sleeping in a wood is a perfect way of doing this.
Rivers are a superb starting point for hatching microadventure plans.
Because when you have a frog’s-eye view the world suddenly becomes wild, wherever you may be. The perspective from which you look at the world dictates how it reflects back at you.
Step away and slide down into the water. Be surprised. Swim a river.
A full moon swim is a magical thing.
Even when the water is cold, you never regret going for a bracing wild swim, you just perhaps dread it a little in advance. In this sense wild swimming is a cheesy-but-true metaphor for making yourself attempt difficult stuff in life: daunting in anticipation, tricky / nippy at first, not nearly as bad as you’d expected once you get going, and delightful, rewarding and uplifting once you have accomplished it. So tip-toe in and surprise yourself. Try to include a wild swim in every microadventure you do.
‘This was a holloway, a sunken path worn down over time by millions of feet like mine. It’s an impressive visual reminder of all of the footsteps, all of the stories, that I was following along behind.’
For the next few days I would move no faster than my feet could carry me.
Generating an illusion of remoteness and distance is almost as refreshing as the real thing.
‘I unrolled my sleeping bag on the soft sand and fell asleep looking up at the stars and listening to the waves rolling onto our private, secret beach.’
I suppose for normal people, like you and me, the realistic alternative for this microadventure would be to pack a frugal amount of food, a few tea bags and a box of matches. Leave the smartphone behind. Head out alone into the woods for a while and attempt to still your racing mind.
Food tastes better when you’ve earned it.
‘We decided to spend a few days in the woods together, living as simply as we could manage, and attempt to live solely off the land.’
The stuff you encounter, the things you see, the thoughts you think along the way: these will probably be more interesting than the random point on the map. But without having that destination to aim for in the first place, you are unlikely to do the hardest part of any adventure: begin.
Rolling a dice to decide your plans: 1= bike, 2= walk, 3= run, 4= swim, 5= canoe, 6= you decide.
A regular theme of this book is conjuring up arbitrary journeys simply to create a reason for heading out the front door.
You could ride from your primary school to senior school to university or visit your great-grandparents’ graves.
The point is simply to think of a journey that has meaning to you, and then go and do it.
Follow any river, any river on Earth, from its source down to the sea and you will find an interesting journey.
I liked how simple it was out here and how that allowed me to switch off from my thoughts and worries.
This is why busy people need microadventures, to prevent the benefits of adventure from being squeezed out by the very busyness which makes it all the more vital. I feel really strongly that adventure must not become a peripheral part of my life. It should not become a fun but occasional thing, like a game of tennis or a trip to a circus. No. Adventure is more important to me than that.
Midweek microadventures are so invigorating, so good for the soul that I am convinced you’ll more than make up for those lost hours with better quality work once you return.
This book hopes to emphasise that even the illusion of wildness, those tiny forgotten pockets of it squeezed behind your town, can refresh the soul, but there is still something extra special about the proper wild places.
I seem to have spent much of my life ploughing stubbornly forwards in the hope of one day gaining some sort of retrospective pleasure. It’s known as Type 2 fun. All misery is acceptable – the theory goes – in the hope that, at some indeterminate point in an indeterminate future, I will look back at this moment and be glad I persevered.
Up a mountain, down a beer.
One of the best I’ve received was from Kevin in Glasgow. He invited me to help him build a wild hut from natural materials and then to sleep in it.
A lot of the microadventures I have done have felt as though I was just playing. It took me some time to not worry about this, not to feel defensive or fear that I was wasting my time. Children play because it is fun and escapism, but also because they are learning and developing.
The plan was to construct four separate single beds with a three-sided pyramid roof above. We cut the branches to the right length and then tied them together with flimsy garden twine. This biodegradable twine was the only man made material used in the structure.
Whether we had a warm, comfortable night would depend completely upon our own hard work and skills. I liked that.
I visited somewhere new. I met interesting people. I did something I’ve never done before. I learned new skills. And it was fun.
Other things to try to build: A pizza oven. A writing shed. A treehouse. A birchbark canoe.
There is a good rule for travel that the slower your journey, the richer the experience will be.
‘It’s exciting to head into the unknown: all the greatest adventures are marinated with the spice of uncertainty. The same applies on a quiet Wednesday afternoon on a gentle river in a small town in Wales.’
The inner tubes transmogrified magically from fabulous water craft to fabulous armchairs. There was merriment and amusement all round. We dug out four enamel mugs, opened a bottle of wine (brought along for cookery reasons, of course) and toasted an epic river journey.
In other words, when I am in the city it seems as though escaping ought to be more difficult than jumping on the 5:15pm train, meeting your mates for a quick pint, and then sauntering up a grassy slope in the same clothes I’d worn in meetings all day. I had enjoyed those meetings all the more knowing that shortly I’d be getting out of town.
I liked the minutes of small talk at the end when someone asks, ‘Got any plans for tonight?’ and the mixed looks of amusement, astonishment, envy and – occasionally – whatever the opposite of envy is when I reply, ‘Oh, I’m just meeting a few friends for a meal. On top of a hill.’ These looks confirm to me that the hint of gentle madness and subversiveness is one of the bits I like best about microadventures.
Normally food is quite my priorities for a night away. Depending on the circumstances, I either take basic camping food, eat something before I leave, or make do with sandwiches and a squashed pork pie. But tonight it was all about the food. And the fire. And the hilltop. And the beer. And the wine.
And I like the smell when it lingers on my clothes into the next morning. The sweet vagabond’s perfume of freedom mingling with the commuters’ aftershave and polystyrene coffees on the train back into town.
Einstein said that ‘creativity is the residue of time wasted’, and you can certainly do worse with an evening than sitting around a fire with your friends.
If it is you, why not try this sometime soon? Persuade your friends that the next time you all meet up you should do it on a hilltop. It’s nothing particularly different – you’ll spend time together, eat good food, drink and laugh together, and be back on your normal train into work the next morning. It’s nothing particularly different, but it is so different that I bet you’ll still be talking about it a year from now.
The plan was to travel from the highest point of the county to the lowest point.
Ingenious beer-can camping stove, a masterpiece of frugal, manly minimalism.
In fact, let’s begin a very simple campaign. From now on, don’t just leave no litter in the countryside, take on the challenge of actively taking home a little bit of extra litter and help improve the countryside for everyone.
The idea of taking a generic challenge and applying it to your own county, province, state or country opens up lots of possibilities.
The highest three peaks of your county.
Create a mountain bike challenge for your county, linking popular off-road biking spots by bridleways or small roads. A good circular route could become established as a challenge in your county.
This is an adventure to stir the soul. Set sail from your home, head out across the dark sea and sail until you reach land.
Why not travel a lap of something closer to home. It could be a lake or a loch. It may be your county, or a small island. It could even be a ring road. Don’t plan too much – just go.
I wanted to just enjoy the now. I removed my watch. I challenged myself to not care about the time, about where I was or where I was going, but only to enjoy this: where I was, right now. I wanted to relax, to be spontaneous, to slow down, to take detours. This holds true for my life in general, as well as for this microadventure.
‘Go with the sea on your left, or on your right. Keep going, following that coastline, into whatever experiences and landscapes it throws up. Let the journey unfurl like the road before you.’
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world’
One of the easiest, yet most enjoyable and interesting ways of hatching a plan for a microadventure is to simply recreate somebody else’s journey. This can be done in many different ways, but two themes that lend themselves easily to replication are historical journeys or journeys made in books.
In the process of completing the microadventures for this book I have been struck again and again by how childlike many of them feel. I mean childlike in a good way, and certainly not ‘childish’. The afternoon we spent building the raft in the sunshine reminded me of my own childhood, playing beside a river in the Yorkshire Dales.
Tom and I would have enjoyed our rafting journey regardless of Millican Dalton’s influence. However, we enjoyed it even more knowing that, 100 years ago, another mildly eccentric man in his 30s had chosen to escape the rat race and seek solitude and wilderness out here on the exact same stretch of river. The views that the three of us enjoyed are identical even a century apart, as was our enjoyment of paddling very slowly through the countryside.
Alex’s idea had appealed immediately: to mountain bike cross-country to the sea, paddle over the sea to the mountains, and then attempt the formidable Cuillin Ridge. A triathlon of challenging microadventures through some of the finest landscapes in Britain? I’m on my way, I replied.
The triathlon microadventure challenge had been such a good one. I was disappointed to have let Alex down but I was also quite impressed to have failed. Britain is not a particularly rugged place. You don’t tend to get beaten by the landscapes, so I gained a twisted satisfaction at being humbled by these ancient, awesome mountains. I had underestimated them. Mountains do not care how you fare on their slopes and summits. They were around for millions of years before your petty quests began, and they’ll still be standing, beautiful yet uncaring, when our grandchildren’s grandchildren feel the same restless, timeless urge to test themselves. Sure, go and pit your wits, your skills, your guts, your luck against them. You might win, you might lose, but they don’t care either way. Maybe that’s part of their appeal. It’s certainly a good metaphor for doing big stuff in life: do it for the doing, not for the praise of others.
For someone cursed with eternal ‘fernweh’ (a beautiful German word meaning ‘a craving for distant places’), microadventures have been an excellent tonic.
All you need is something challenging, somewhere new, and a bit of imagination.
To prove the point that microadventure is more about attitude and imagination than having access to great wilderness, I decided to seek adventure in the most boring place I could think of. And so we set out together to walk a lap of the M25 motorway.
‘We were getting back into the mindset and rhythm of life in the outdoors. Modern life is played out in permanent sterility. We live in the light until we choose some hours of darkness.’
We had scratched our curiosity and proved that if you step just a fraction away from the main road, away from the conventional route that everyone else is taking and the road you have always taken, then you can see things differently. You can challenge yourself and have novel, interesting experiences.
Create a calendar of microadventures that you can have throughout the year.
BASIC KIT LIST: 1. Rucksack – as a rough guide, a 30-litre pack is probably big enough for your first venture. Line it with a bin bag to keep all your gear waterproof. 2. Sleeping bag – don’t buy anything special. If you worry that your sleeping bag might not keep you warm enough then just pack as many extra jumpers as necessary. 3. Orange survival bag – to use as a bivvy bag to protect you from wet weather. Buy these online or at any camping shop for a few pounds and put your sleeping bag inside. 4. Foam sleeping mat – essential for getting a half-decent sleep. Put it outside your sleeping bag and inside the orange survival bag. 5. Torch (make sure you check the batteries). 6. Rain coat (even in summer). 7. Woolly hat (even in summer). 8. Warm clothes for night time (use a spare jumper as your pillow). 9. Food that doesn’t need cooking. Or eat before you go. Have breakfast when you get back home. 10. Water – 2 litres should be plenty. 11. Toothbrush with toothpaste already applied and wrapped in cling film. Use it in the morning. 12. Matches to light a campfire, if appropriate. 13. Loo roll – although you may want to follow your mum’s old advice and ‘go’ before you set off. 14. Notebook and pen – even if you never write a diary this is a really good chance to jot down a few observations, thoughts and resolutions. 15. Camera – for smug self-portraits and the beautiful sunrise. Wrap it in a plastic bag in case of torrential non-stop rain misery.
You might be able to borrow some bits from a friend, and those things you do have to invest in can be bought cheaply or second-hand.
NEXT STEP UP: TAKE ALL THE ABOVE PLUS…Camping stove and lighter. Swiss Army knife or Leatherman multi-tool. Pan – take one that you already have at home, unless you are cooking on an open fire, which destroys pans. Simple food such as instant noodles or pasta and tuna or pesto. Tea and coffee. Porridge. Cup. Spoon. Proper bivvy bag (instead of the sweaty orange survival bag). A tarpaulin to shelter you in case of rain.
THE GLORIOUS BIVVY BAG: The bivvy bag goes on the outside of your sleeping bag. I have actually been asked this before! If you are organised it is best to do this before leaving home rather than doing it later in the dark and pouring rain. Pull the bivvy bag all the way up over your head and pull the draw cord as tight as you wish, then manoeuvre your head into the hood of your sleeping bag. It requires a bit of wiggling and fidgeting, but try to leave a small gap to the open air to breathe out of in order to minimise the build-up of condensation. You’ll soon get over the sense of claustrophobia!
SOME ADVICE ON BICYCLES: Panniers are the best way for carrying your kit on a cycling adventure, but you’ll have to fit racks to your bike (on the back and perhaps on the front too), as well as getting hold of some panniers.
THE MOBILE MICROADVENTURE KITCHEN: Vargo Titanium Hex Stove. A stove that will appeal to both the Lightweight gear community and Bushcraft types too, even if a carefully-positioned trio of stones achieves more or less the same job as this fold-out titanium twig burning stove. It is very eco-friendly too, compared to using disposable gas canisters.
As a general rule, only light fires in places where nobody is likely to come by until all trace of it has grown out. If possible, dig a hole before lighting a fire. This will help keep it out of the wind and contain the fire. Replacing the earth and turf in the morning (once the fire is absolutely extinguished) also helps prevent ugly scorch marks and minimises the visual impact of the fire.
Never use soft, hollow or wet rocks as they could explode.
Begin with a small pile of tinder (dry grass, leaves or paper). Build a pyramid of kindling on top of it (very thin dry twigs). Make sure you have more kindling close to hand, as well as larger sticks a couple of centimetres in diameter and a few larger branches. It’s vital that all the wood you use at first is dry; once the fire is roaring you can get away with damper stuff. The best is dead wood found hanging in trees rather than lying on the ground where it can absorb moisture. Once you have gathered and assembled your wood it is time to light the fire.
If you are cooking on an open fire you’ll need to make a pan-sized tripod of rocks in the fire to position the pan on. This allows air to circulate and stops the fire going out.
Buy the cobs still wrapped in the green leaves of their husks. Then just place them on the hot embers and turn occasionally. I’m pretty confident they will be the highlight of the whole meal and certainly the best corn on the cob you’ve ever eaten, particularly if you’ve bothered to bring butter and salt along with you.
I really enjoy photographing and filming the trips that I go on. Personally, I find that it helps me pay more attention to the places I am in, and the way they make me feel.
‘So the major caveat when considering the gadgetry to take on your microadventure is to ensure that it adds to your experience rather than distracts from it.’
Clove Hitch: Not only is it a great knot for tying up your horse, the clove hitch is also extremely easy to tie and is useful for beginning the lashing together of a raft (learn Square Lashing for raft building too). Double Sheet Bend: A more versatile and stylish alternative to the old right-over-left-left-over-right Reef Knot for tying two pieces of rope together. Bowline: A bowline creates a loop at the end of your rope. It is simple to tie and easy to undo, even after being subjected to great pressure. You might remember this knot as the one about the ‘rabbit coming out of the hole and round the tree’. Figure of Eight: A very simple knot to tie. It is handy for preventing ropes slipping through eyelets, cleats and harnesses.
DOCUMENTING AND SHARING YOUR MICROADVENTURE: Trade Tweets for birdsong. Take time away from your camera to sit still for a while and really look, to listen to the silence, to feel the winter air nip your nose and ears, and to spend quality time either with yourself (cheesy, but important) or with your fellow microadventurers (fun and important).
CLOUD SPOTTING: Whether it is recognising birdsong, picking out stars, or knowing that Cirrostratus clouds suggest you’ll not get rained on tonight, the more knowledge you have about different aspects of the natural world you are immersed in, the more satisfying your microadventures will be.