About this item
Adventure - something that's new and exhilarating, outside your comfort zone. Adventures change you and how you see the world, and all you need is an open mind, bags of enthusiasm and boundless curiosity.So what's a GRAND ADVENTURE - it is the most life-changing, career-enhancing, personality-forging, fun adventure of your life.Following on from his popular Microadventures, in Grand Adventures Alastair Humphreys shines a spotlight on the real-life things that get in the way: stuff like time, money or your other commitments. Grand Adventures is also crammed with hard-won wisdom from people who have actually been there and done that: by boat and boot, car and kayak, bicycle and motorbike. People who had one epic trip then returned to normal life, or who got bitten so badly by the bug that they devoted their life to the pursuit of adventure. Young people, old people. Men, women. Mates, couples, families. Extraordinary, inspiring people. People like you.Saving your pennies, overcoming inertia, generating momentum, getting out the front door: if you want it enough, you can do it.Tiny steps to a grand adventure.Are you in?
About the Author
Alastair Humphreys FRGS
Aged 8, Alastair completed the 26 mile Yorkshire 3 Peaks challenge. At 13 he did the National 3 Peaks in 24 hours. At 14 he cycled off-road across England. After leaving school Alastair taught for a year in South Africa and travelled round the region.
Whilst at Edinburgh and Oxford Universities he undertook several expeditions, cycling from Pakistan to China (Karakoram Highway) , Land's End to John O'Groats, Turkey to Italy, Mexico to Panama and across South America. Alastair ran a charity project in the Philippines and the London marathon dressed as a rhino.
After Oxford Alastair cycled round the world for 4 years.
He has raced a yacht across the Atlantic Ocean and canoed 500 miles down the Yukon River as well as walking the length of the holy Kaveri river in India.
Alastair ran the Marathon des Sables, finishing as one of the ten fastest Brits despite breaking his foot during the race. He has rowed to France with Major Phil Packer, a soldier paralysed in Iraq.
To fight off the wanderlust back home Alastair managed a sub-3-hour marathon, had a miserable time during the Original Mountain Marathon, the Devizes to Westminster 120-mile canoe marathon and another one during Tough Guy. Travelling round the World Cup in a camper van was much more fun.
Alastair has published three books, with one more due by the end of 2009. (He has also written chapters for Lonely Planet's 'Flightless' anthology, the Adventure Cycling Handbook, Stanorama and The Traveller's Handbook) .
After spending a year teaching 10-year-old boys in a school's Special Needs department, Alastair is now training for the Bob Graham Round and preparing for SOUTH, the first unsupported return journey to the South Pole and the longest unsupported polar journey in history.
Alastair pays the bills through public speaking, fulfilling a long ambition in 2008 by speaking to a full house at the Royal Geographical Society.
