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In the final episode of series two, Gabby meets author and National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Alastair Humphreys. Among stories from his many outdoor escapades, he tells Gabby how he has become a self-confessed money geek after years of ignoring his finances and how he funded a four-year trip around the world with just £7,000.
Join Gabby Logan every week as she speaks to some familiar faces about their relationship with money, the financial lessons they've learned on the road to professional success, and how they're investing for their family's future.
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Gabby Logan: Hi, I'm Gabby Logan, and this is The ii Family Money Show. In each episode, I speak to a familiar face about the role money has played in their family life and professional success. And in this episode, I'm joined by adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys. A National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Alastair’s many outdoor escapades includes cycling around the world, rowing the Atlantic, and walking across India. But he's also won acclaimed for his pioneering work on the concept of cheaper, simpler, closer to home micro adventures. He spends his time encouraging people to live more adventurously, but is his enterprising and often daring spirit reflected in his approach to money matters?
Alastair confesses to being a bit hopeless on that front, so it helps he's married to an accountant with whom he has two children. His latest book, Ask an Adventurer, largely focuses on how to go about making a living from these travels and how he's managed to do so.
In our interview, Alastair to tells me how he funded a four year trip around the world with just £7,000, how he's recently become a self-confessed money geek after years of ignoring his finances, and about the time he had a pizza delivered in Alaska.
Gabby: You are a very interesting man, and you've obviously done some incredible things and pushed yourself in many different ways. But where I want to kind of go is right back to the beginning and find out the kind of childhood you had that made you want to do all of these things, or at least gave you the freedom, mentally and emotionally, to be able to do all of these things. Were you the kind of kid that was kind of camping outside when you seven years old and hiding in trees for days on end?
Alastair Humphreys: No, not really. I was lucky in that I grew up in the countryside in Yorkshire, so I had what, I guess, is now an old-fashioned childhood of spending a lot of time playing outside, running around the fields, playing in the river, climbing trees, that sort of stuff, but no more or less than any other kid my sort of age around there.
And all through my childhood and school, I was definitely not one of the crazy adventurous kids, I was more of the weedy nerdy kind of end of the spectrum really. And what really changed for me was when I started discovering expedition books, travel books, of crazy men and women going off around the world doing all sorts of stupid stuff.
And because I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my own life, and I kind of felt this urge to prove myself and try and do something big and difficult with my life, but I wasn't very successful at sports or anything like that, so suddenly adventures and expeditions seemed like a way to go and really push myself hard, and then perhaps, on the way, figure out what to do when I eventually grew up. But I haven't quite worked out that last bit yet.
Gabby: Well, it's turned out to be quite a lucrative and, well, I'm not going to delve into your personal finances, but you're obviously earning enough money from your books and your podcasts and everything else, you could keep on doing this which is fantastic because you've managed to kind of monetise it as well and turn it into a career.
Because that's the other thing, there's an entrepreneur in you, because when you started out it wasn't a job, was it? This was something that you wanted to prove to yourself. So, how did you have the financial security to step off and go and do that? Because a lot of people, that would be the thing that would hold people back thinking, “Well, I've got my mortgage, I've got my kids.” You know, when you first went, how much were you thinking about the finances?
Alastair: Well, when I first started to do big adventures, I never had any thought that it would actually become a job. I had a vague unrealistic, perhaps, daydream that I'd love to write a book about it, but I was under no illusion that writing a travel book would make me rich. So, I really just wanted to do a big adventure it because I wanted to do it, and then I assumed that afterwards I would get a real job.
So, I decided to cycle around the world because that was something that was suitably cheap that I could afford. I was 24 when I set off, so it wasn't an expensive expedition relatively speaking, so it was sort of doable. And I assumed I'd get a job afterwards, and to specifically answer your question, the really, really important thing is that I had the safety net behind me of I trained to be a teacher. So, I knew that if everything went wrong with the journey or even after the journey, I could come home and get a decent job.
And I think quite often when people are talking about adventures and expeditions, there’s a temptation to say, “Go and live your dreams, do this stuff, it’s brilliant. Anyone can do what I did.” But I think it's really important that I acknowledge that I did have that safety net of a decent education, meaning that when I got home I'd be able to pay the bills somehow.
Also, I was young, and that's good because you’re quite stupid and willing to daft stuff, and also I didn't then have commitments of mortgage, wife, family, et cetera. So, it's just me, the savings I'd managed to accrue through five years of odd jobs at university, and then just living cheap on a bike with no regard whatsoever for anything to do with money beyond seeing how far I could cycle with the money I had available.
Gabby: And tell us how many days it took, in the end, that first challenge.
Alastair: Well, it took me four years and three months to cycle around the world. I rode through 60 countries and five continents. Yeah, four years on the road, and the whole thing cost me less than £7,000, so – which is doable if you’re willing to pay all your transport costs by just peddling around the world, crossing the oceans on boats rather than aeroplanes, and then being willing to live like a hobo, just sleeping wild and eating banana sandwiches and instant noodles for four years. So, yeah, £7,000 I now see as a spectacularly good investment of my total life savings at the time.
Gabby: That’s an incredible amount of time and it's a very, very small amount of money to fund that. You know, to spend that amount of time on the road and that freedom that you must have had as well to kind of – you know, every day you're just living your best life, aren’t you, going where you want to go, doing what you want to do.
Was there a point where you thought “I'm not sure I could ever see myself fitting back into “normal” society?”
Alastair: Well, I think I'm still feeling that in some ways. I mean I see that it was an incredible experience and a real privilege, but I also see it as a bit of a curse really. I mean all the years, it's quite a lot of years now since I finished that first expedition and, yeah, real – I've struggled a bit with accepting real life after those days, for sure, so – but I think it was a worthwhile trade off.
Gabby: And when you were away and you're experiencing all these different cultures, and you're doing, you know, kind of things you've never done before, you might never see these places again, knowing that you're going to write about it when you get back or while you're on the road, how does that process work, because you'd never written a travel book before.
Alastair: No, I'd never written anything before. I thought English was boring at school, so I quit after GCSEs. So, I wrote a diary every day, partly because I wanted to write a book, partly though because I was on my own around the world and I had no friends, so it was this cathartic thing to do and just it was something to do. And I wrote a blog, so every – and this was a decision I – I wanted to try and share my journey, so I wrote a blog about it.
And I was doodling away in my diaries knowing that when I came home I wanted to write. And I really wanted to write just as a personal challenge, again, not because I actually thought that would be a viable job.
Gabby: And going back even before this, so you’ve trained to be a teacher, so you know that’s a good solid career you can come back to, which is a great kind of safety net, as you say, in the back of your mind. Before that, lets go back to your family, kind of your upbringing in terms of where money featured there. Because it strikes me, you are not somebody that was always focused on money as being the end game. You know, you wanted to be a teacher, you wanted to do adventure. So, what was the family kind of financial situation growing up? Did you feel very secure? Was money ever an issue?
Alastair: I grew up, I had a very lovely family life. My mum and dad worked really hard, they were really – and are still really – obsessed with working hard and saving money. It’s a good old-fashioned Yorkshire, Lancashire values of just save, save, save, save, save. So, we were really conscious that money was there to be saved more than to be spent, and that was really drummed into us, so, “Don't waste your money.” “Don't waste money.” “Don’t waste money.”
But money wasn’t an issue in my childhood. We weren’t driving Ferraris, but it was certainly not an issue. It was, I suppose, a regular focus just because my parents were really keen on hard work and saving though.
Gabby: So, would you say they were frugal?
Alastair: I certainly would say they were frugal, yeah, and they would see that as a very, very good compliment and in no way an insult. So, yeah, and that has passed on to me. So, I've been always quite frugal, and then spending four years when I only had £7,000 to spend made me so conscious of money. Now I could either buy a bottle of champagne or I could keep cycling for two more months where, you know, those sort of decisions are crazy.
I went four years never buying chocolate, never buying beer, because I was just focused on save the money and you can get through this journey. So, I suppose, yeah, the frugality certainly helped extend my journey. And I've gone on to do – so when I came home, I then started doing other expeditions and I still didn't have much cash, but I was really always conscious that you can either live cheap and travel for a long time or do it the other way around.
So, for example, I walked across Southern India. I followed a holy river right away through Southern India from – I went from coast to coast, six weeks of hiking through India, and that whole journey cost me £500 including the airfare.
Gabby: Wow.
Alastair: So, once you're willing to sleep outdoors and travel yourself, then suddenly adventure does become accessible without needing loads of money as you would for going up Mount Everest or to the North Pole. So, there are different ways of having expedition and adventure and travel experiences without having to lay out loads of cash.
Gabby: Oh gosh, Alastair, there's so much to unpick there, and ask you, that has just made my mind kind of blow a little bit. How you're doing it on those kind of budgets, and eating well, and not being ill. I mean say you’d become sick somewhere.
Alastair: Well, not eating well is part of it.
Gabby: Well, I was going to say, eating enough to not become ill though. You know, you had to keep your energy levels up, so you had to get some nutrition from somewhere. First of all, obviously the choice between champagne and two months of travel, I can see which one you’re going to choose. Did anybody ever give you a beer? Did anybody ever just say, “Oh wow, what you're doing is amazing,” and give you a treat on the way? Did you get that bar of chocolate from somebody? I would've given you it if I'd bumped into you for sure.
Alastair: Oh, definitely. I mean, people often say with travelling, the kindness of strangers was an extraordinary thing, and that holds true in rich parts of the world and probably more so actually in poor parts of the world. The generosity and kindness of people was incredible, and I had to really wrestle with trying to be – taking the kindness but without feeling I'm just taking, taking, taking, and trying to give back, I suppose, in terms of interesting conversations.
But, yeah, so to cut it short, people were very kind to me. One example, cycling through Alaska, a car on a dirt road in middle of nowhere, a car went past me – vroom – on a gravel road, a cloud of dust. A couple of hours later – vroom – they zoomed past me the other way. I didn't think anything of it at the time until they slammed on the brakes and the lady wound down her window, and on the passenger sheet she had a big stack of takeaway pizzas.
She'd had to drive a couple of hours to get a takeaway out there, and she handed me a pizza. She said, “You know, I think my family have got enough here, have takeaway pizza.” And she drove off and just left me, literally in the dust, in the middle of Alaska holding this takeaway pizza, and I just burst into tears. I mean, that's kindness, and that is really how to enjoy a pizza as well.
Gabby: Oh, absolutely. It must have tasted divine.
Alastair: It did.
Gabby: And when people do things like that as well, I guess it also restores – you know, and all of our faith in human nature at times in the last – well, certainly this year – is being tested, isn’t it, and what we’re seeing obviously around the world at the moment. So, on those trips, every day are you reminded about the goodness in humanity? Are you seeing things all the time that just kind of restore your faith?
Alastair: Yeah, absolutely. And the news is showing us now the not-so-good side of human aspects, of human nature. And before I started cycling around the world, I was worried about the dangerous parts of the world, and you read the press and some parts of the world seem dangerous. But my experiences of cycling through these so-called dangerous countries and different cultures, different religions, poor places, was just incredible generosity and kindness.
I've cycled through quite a lot of countries that have featured in wars on TV, and I just think of the incredibly lovely, kind, decent people that I met every single day. And my fears from before the adventure were about the dangers of humans out in the world, but once you actually start travelling slowly and simply in remote parts of the world, those sort of fears generally dissipate.
You have to be careful, of course, and there are a few idiots everywhere, but by and large I just was overwhelmed by the kindness of people out in the world.
Gabby: So, if people turned out to be OK, what were the biggest dangers to your wellbeing on your travels?
Alastair: Well, I suppose it depends on the trip. So, cycling around the world, the biggest danger was idiots sitting in a ton of metal hammering along at 70 miles hour and paying no attention to the cars that they were driving. On expeditions there's a difference between perceived risk and actual danger, you know, the things that you are in control of. So, for example, if you are rowing across an ocean you need to keep yourself clipped onto the boat with a safety lead at all times. If you do that, you're not going to drown. Versus the things that are out of your control like idiots driving cars, and that's just down to luck sadly.
Gabby: When you rowed, it was the Atlantic, wasn't it, you rowed, you were in a team there weren't you? You didn't row that solo. And obviously some of your expeditions have been very much on your own, four years cycling around the world. You went to Spain.
Alastair: So, in Spain, I was following the route of a book by Laurie Lee, a guy – you might have read Cider with Rosie at school. His sequel, he walked through Spain playing his violin, and that was one of the books that really inspired me to want to travel, to travel simply, and to be a writer. And he played the violin walking through Spain, and I'd always dreamt of doing that, but I can't play the violin and I have zero musical talent.
But a few years ago, I decided I just needed to toughen up and dare myself to do it, so relevant to money I suppose, I turned up in Spain with no money, no credit card, only my violin which I'd been learning for seven months, and I just had to stand there with the open violin case and busk. [Makes screechy violin noise]
Gabby: So, just at this moment, Alastair, would you say Grade One, Two level of violin? Was it that kind of – we’re talking, or maybe …
Alastair: Well, I turned up in Spain, I played for a whole month, I came home, I kept practicing for about another month, and then I did my Grade One exam. I turned up at the place and the invigilators were all, “Where is your small child?” I was like “No, it is … I’m doing the exam.” So, yeah, so it’s worse than Grade One, I had no money, and again, I just had to play. And it’s about being willing to be vulnerable, putting yourself on the line to look like a total fool, and to trust again in the decency of people.
But I lived. Like in a month, I earned €120 as I walked 500 miles through Spain. And no man needs €120 in a month. I lived like an absolute king; it was a wonderful experience.
Gabby: So where do sleep then on these kinds of trips?
Alastair: Key to pretty much all of these financial planning things is that you sleep outside, and you wash by jumping into rivers, and you eat whatever's cheap in the market that day. So, that's generally my premise. But those things, I guess for some people, would sound like hardships, but I love sleeping outdoors and jumping in rivers. And once you've walked for 20 miles, then a loaf of bread and two bananas taste absolutely delicious. So, that side of things I quite enjoy. And for me, the adventure on that experience was about daring myself to get out of my comfort zone and play the violin extremely badly.
Gabby: That's what I like about your expeditions and your adventures that you aren't necessarily doing something. You know, it's not about climbing Everest or doing something that actually lots of people are doing. You're doing things that put you in an uncomfortable position in different ways, and obviously they take you away from home as well, and that’s …
And now you are married, and you have children, does that change the danger levels that you’re willing to put yourself in front of? Or does it change the amount of time that you want to spend away from home?
Alastair: Yeah, it's very much changed both of those things. Now before I was married and had kids, I was pretty cavalier with stuff. I didn't want to die because I really loved being alive, but I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing, and up for the sort of glory things of going down in a blaze of glory, “Oh, he died doing what he loved.” I used to love that sort of stuff.
But now I feel very differently; my life has a responsibility to others, so really – and also I now no longer want to be away for years or months on end, so that's completely changed my adventuring. I've been in recent years doing something which I started to call micro adventures, which was my attempt to try and find all the stuff I loved about wilderness and solitude and adventure and nature, all that big stuff, could I find that in short, local, simple, cheap, close to home, achievable micro adventures that I, and therefore anyone else, could do in a weekend or just overnight after work. So, my big adventure days have really moved onto micro adventures now.
Gabby: And I heard you talking about the challenge of becoming a father and how that was really difficult for you to kind of work out how you were going to do these adventures and keep the essence of you, which I think a lot of people will recognise that as being inherent with that new experience. Whether you're working in a bank, or you are wandering around the world for a few years, it's what makes you tick, isn't it? And so, especially when you're doing the kind of job that you did. Do you call it a job still, let’s say when you’re living the life that you do, because it seems weird calling it a job?
Alastair: I think I call it a job with little quote marks up in the air I think.
Gabby: Yeah. And I really love that honesty, because I think that would have really resonated actually, with a lot of new fathers and mothers, what you said.
Alastair: Yeah, so I found it really hard becoming a parent, and I loved it of course, but I found it really hard trying to, one, go away and do these big adventures because I loved them and it was very much part of my identity, but also it had by that point become my full-time job. It was my sole source of income was the stuff that I did from these adventures, and to not be able to do that fully, I really struggled with the loss of identity of myself as a – just me, a guy, but also me, my work. I thought my work was going to plummet, and yeah, I really struggled with those sort of things.
And I was also at the same time by trying to – essentially I'd make my – earn my living by showing off about myself on the internet, and telling stories, and writing books and things, and to – I had this online life as well as my home life, and so trying to juggle all these things in a new direction I didn’t deal with very well. And if I could go back in time …
Essentially, when I was in my early 20s and dreaming of adventure, I read books by crazy people line Ranulph Feinnes, and I defined the rules of my life from reading these sort of crazy books of “this is the life I want to live,” and I just went at it full pelt. And I loved doing all of that, but I didn't allow any flexibility into it. I didn't allow myself to say, “Oh, I'm now 30,” “Oh, I'm now 40,” “Oh, I've now got kids, how is my life going to evolve.”
And the Spain trip was a really big process for that in terms of me asking myself, what does adventure mean now. Is adventure sleeping outside and walking hundreds of miles? No, it isn't because I've been doing that for 20 years, that's easy for me. The adventure therefore now is do something different, dare yourself to play the violin and try and get your curiosity and excitement from life in that sort of way. And then can I get these sort of things even smaller and locally, close to home, by doing micro adventures. So, yeah, gradually, and belatedly allowed myself to evolve, thank goodness.
Gabby: There is a luxury though, I think, in being a man when it comes to this profession, because whenever I've heard Ranulph Fiennes talk, my practical side is going “But where are your kids and your family? You mean you’re away from your wife for a year,” you know. So, I think it is skewed, I think, towards men because women are just so practical about how we kind of look after the family.
So, let’s talk about your wife, because you must have struck a deal, did you, at the beginning, and say, “Look, this is who I am and I’m going to continue to do this.” You know, how does she feel about the continuing adventures of Alastair Humphreys?
Alastair: Well, probably like a lot of would-be parents. We didn't have all of these sensible discussions that would've been sensible to have had in advance of this bundle of chaos arriving in our lives. So, it's a slightly dishevelled and disorientated and exhausted series of figuring things out which all parents will be familiar with. So, for a while, I tried to just crack on with my life as normal, and to just go and do stuff in the chunks when my wife was at home for maternity leave, for example.
And of course, that was exhausting for her, and not ideal, and not ideal for me either going away, and it was just all quite stressful and more argumentative than I would've liked. So, I then changed really. I stop doing the big adventures, I've become much more now the stay-at-home dad and, yeah, it's just not possible to both be a stay-at-home caring dad and to be a go off into the world gung-ho explorer.
And I have absolutely no doubt that the sort of questions that women like Allison Hargreaves the climber get grilled for leaving their kids at home in a way that dads don’t. But I am now hopefully trying to redress the balance. I'm now the chief stay-at-home dad. I've got my eye on the clock now because I’ve got to go pick up the kids after our chat here, and my wife still works full-time with a very sensible and normal job as an accountant.
Gabby: Yeah, tell us what she does, because I do – I do think – yeah, she’s an accountant which I think is ironic actually. That’s such a steady, sensible job.
Alastair: Well, we met and got together long before I considered myself an adventurer and long before she considered herself an accountant, when we both just considered ourselves carefree and happy students.
Gabby: Right. OK.
Alastair: And then life, it’s funny, the very different directions life had gone.
Gabby: Right.
Alastair: But, yeah, I’m pretty sure that if we met today we would have very little to talk about, but marriage is a funny old thing, and we get along very well.
Gabby: Oh, that's just as well, but I think that’s brilliant actually that you did start almost before all of this, because she saw you evolving, you saw her evolving, and she knows what makes you tick. But I’m wondering if she enjoys going on holiday for £3 a day. How do family holidays work?
Alastair: Family holidays work like normal family holidays should. I definitely don't recommend my tips and tricks for living cheap for a nice family holiday. So, no, I very much separate my adventure life from my real life and holidays.
Gabby: And she is an accountant, so am I jumping to the gun in assuming that she looks after the family finances?
Alastair: Well, she did for a long time. So, for a long time, whenever I had any spare money from my work, I would just give it all to her and she would pay off some of our mortgage. Or at least I think she paid off our mortgage. And that was all that I would do, I'd just give her the money, and I had zero interest. And I also pretty much took a wilful childish disdain of anything to do with money.
I’ve always been quite frugal, I don’t spend much, but whenever I have any spare I had no interest in anything, so for a long time she did. I’ve finally had a bit of an epiphany, but she's definitely the brains of the operation. And the looks as well.
Gabby: So, does she decide? You decide together then if you're going to pay off some mortgage? Or if you’re going to invest in something, would that be a collaboration between the two of you?
Alastair: We actually work fairly separately, really, in I have my business and I earn the money that I manage to make, and I do what I want with it, and she has her job and does what she wants to do with her money, and then between us we pay the bills along the way. But, no, we are very happy together but fairly independent within those. And in terms of the things, we do with our money, we just make our own choices with it, and each are quite happy for the others – each – to do as whatever they want to do.
Gabby: From my experience, that's quite unusual –
Alastair: Oh, OK.
Gabby: – to be that independent of each other in a family. Yeah. So, if you were to, say, be investing in, say, an ISA or something like that, would you do that? Just go on and do it yourself?
Alastair: So, when I tell my wife I've been on this podcast later, she will kill herself laughing. So, until really quite recently, as I said, I just gave her all my money and she paid off some mortgage and I'm guessing did an ISA or stuff like that, I’m not too sure.
Then a few years ago I did a talk for a financial planning company, and everyone in the audience was horrified that I didn’t have a pension, and they sort of shamed me into it, so I signed up to a company and got a pension. And then this nice man would come and tell me what to do once a year, luckily with my wife sitting next to me, and she would answer all his questions, and I would make him tea and then completely glaze over. I have no interest or no knowledge, which is really good for the Family Money Show. But recently, about six months –
Gabby: No, but this is brilliant, Alastair, because I think a lot of people will totally relate to that, you know, especially the kind of glazing over of the eyes going “Well, yeah, if you say it works.”
Alastair: So, I knew that money was important, and I knew – well I think especially with my career as an adventurer, it’s kind of a young man’s game, so I’m aware that I need to, say, squirrel away some money for later in my life. I’m aware of that, I just find it incredibly boring.
But then about six months ago I was out for lunch with a friend of mine, and I was doing one of my childish rants about how boring money is, and she said to me “You’re being a complete idiot, you’re a perfectly intelligent guy, it’s really not very complicated, read these few books and come back to me.” So, I've become a bit of a money geek within only the last six months, so perhaps that might be interesting for your show to go from a total luddite to a new but admittedly naive enthusiastic. And my wife looks at me with a sort of endearing, slightly patronising look on her face after she's been an accountant for 20 odd years, and I'm suddenly newly enthusiastic.
Gabby: So, tell me in these last six months then what have you learnt that’s amazed you the most or has given you food for thought. Oh, he’s rubbing his hands together now.
Alastair: I’m rubbing my hands, I’m excited now, because finally I can unleash my massive expertise after reading about 10 books. So, what I've really learned is, in a nutshell, I really, really wish I’d started saving many, many years ago. I’ve learnt what compound interest is, and I’ve got really addicted to compound interest calculators on the internet which just tell you – blow your mind about how much your money grows if you save it early.
There's also an amazing website called The Latte Factor, which you put in – if you buy a latte every day, it tells you how much that would have made by the time you were 60 if you’d put it – saved it away, and that also blows my mind. I’ve realised that some of these investment companies, the fees, they’re only whatever percentage fees, actually kills you over time, and that really none of this is very hard at all, and now I just have taken it all back and I do everything myself.
I’ve spent a few months very much enthusiastically reading various books, including there's a movement in America called FIRE, Financial Independent Retire Early, of whom one of the main protagonists has the ridiculous sounding name of Mr Money Moustache, but he’s a very helpful guy.
And if you google, he's got a blog post called The Simple Maths Behind Early Retirement, and reading this blog post just blew my mind. And from hating money to finding it boring, to finding it incredibly complicated, I now find it really quite interesting, but also really refreshingly simple, which is nice. I feel good that I finally got there.
Gabby: You said it's not an old man's game, Ranulph Fiennes might beg to differ, I guess, on that front. I mean he’s kept it going for a bit of a time, hasn’t he? But you maybe have to adapt what you do, and you're doing that; you're diversifying in terms of podcasts and obviously your books are for different age ranges, and you've really got, as you say, into micro adventures. So, what's next? What’s coming up for you?
Alastair: Well, having gone and started my adventures huge, they seem to just be getting increasingly small as more and more I’m just realising that micro adventures to me don’t feel like a compromise. I'm seeing the potential of so much good stuff from having short local environmentally-friendly adventures so much so that I've spent the last year exploring the single ordinance survey map that I live on. You know, those big fold-out hiking maps you get that are about 15 miles across. And I decided to spend a whole year just on this one map that I live on.
And I was quite worried having spent a lot of time in a lot of countries that I’d find this very boring, but I’ve just become fascinated by how many footpaths right on my doorstep I've never hiked or run down in my life, and I'm loving it. So, I'm currently exploring the single map that I live on and writing a book about that, and that's going to keep me busy for a while.
Gabby: Are you quite disciplined with your writing?
Alastair: Oh …
Gabby: Do you say, “It's three hours, that's it,” or …?
Alastair: I think you have to be. I don’t really like writing. I like having written – it’s a bit like exercise, you sort of dread it and then afterwards you’re glad you’ve done it. So, I can only write through discipline. So, I come to my shed in the morning and at nine o'clock I have to write a thousand words, that's my challenge to myself. And some days you can bosh that out in no time, sometimes it's an agony. Some days there's a podcast scheduled in my calendar which is brilliant because it means I can have a nice chat for an hour rather than actually doing any work. But I find it quite hard to write, but I like having written afterwards.
Gabby: How did the pandemic – obviously it would've affected your adventures because everybody's adventures were curtailed, and at the beginning when we could have an hour outside, well that's nothing for a man like you, Alastair, so was that as – I mean I suppose it would be mentally – it would affect everybody in different ways, but with the kind of thing that you do, how did you even get your head round how you were going to make a living and what you were going to do in life if this was going to go on indefinitely?
Alastair: Well, I absolutely hated the entire experience. Home-school and Joe Wickes pretty much killed me. I did all the home-schooling, and the Joe Wickes – I was often the only person in our family doing Joe Wickes when the rest of my family had refused. It was awful.
Gabby: Eating Coco-pops on the sofa, watching you.
Alastair: Exactly. But equally there’s the crucial disclaimer that my wife was busy in her full-time job, earning money. We we've got a garden. my kids are fine in school, life was better than 99 percent of the world. And I was continually reminding myself that as I went out to do my hour’s evening exercise.
And what got me the idea of exploring my map was that time when we were only allowed out for an hour, I set myself a mission to try and run every single street where I live, and then map it on Strava like a geek. And I realised that really close to my home, within my running distance, there were streets I'd never been down. And I call myself an explorer and think of myself as a curious person, and here on my doorstep were things I’d never seen before. So, I really just tried to make myself see the opportunities for adventure rather than getting frustrated by all the constraints that were put on us.
It really changed my perspective on adventure. I mean, for quite a few years I've been getting increasingly concerned about the connection between climate change and travel. We love travelling, but those of us who travel we trash the world we love by doing it. And I'm becoming increasingly uneasy about that, and suddenly not being able to travel just forced me to just move on my thinking a little bit and just think, “Well, I don't need to, I can find adventure close to home.”
And importantly, in terms of the work I do, I don't think her need now to be saying to people, “You should definitely go to the North Pole. You should go and climb Everest,” when actually that's just encouraging a problem. And I think really my adventuring and my work now needs to be about encouraging people to find nature close to home, to immerse themselves in it, to care for it, and to get all the benefits from it without doing any damage. So, yeah, it's really changed my approach to adventure, and I'm not quite sure what happens from here.
Gabby: Alastair, I guess there's going to be some people listening who think, “Well, it's all right you saying that because you've done the cycle around the world,” you know, “and you've done these really exciting trips through countries that people can never even dream of,” so I guess there are always going to – there’s going to be a young person maybe listening who thinks, “Well, I still want to do those things.” And it is a dilemma, isn't it, because we know that travel is one of the biggest contributors to the changing – the planet’s – you know, kind of negative effects of travel that happen on the planet.
Alastair: Yeah. I'm very, very conscious. I've now eaten all of my cake and I'm now telling everyone else they can't have any cake. But what I would say is that if you want to go on a really big adventure, then go and do it. And if that involves flying somewhere, then go and do it, just spend a big chunk of time there. What we don't need to do is fly to Prague for a stag weekend, that's a ridiculous use of flight.
Gabby: Yeah.
Alastair: What we don't need to do is fly to somewhere to go and give a talk when we can do it via Zoom, or even just say no to the talk, “I’m not going to fly to talk.” So, I think it’s not putting flight shame onto people, it's just getting people to think about it. And then best option of all, get on your bicycle outside your front door, pedal off, keep going for four years, and eventually you'll get all the way back to your front door without using an aeroplane. So, there’s plenty of ways of having adventure without trashing the planet.
Gabby: Yeah, although somebody's setting off now, without wanting to be a party pooper, is going to find the world slightly different, and there are still countries where they won't be very welcome until they – with COVID.
Alastair: Yes.
Gabby: So, you were lucky, weren’t you –
Alastair: Yes.
Gabby: – to do – the timing of what you did?
Alastair: Absolutely, yeah. I mean the thinking of what I’ve done now, when I used to just turn up in villages and sleep on people's floors, or knock on someone's door and they'd invite me in for dinner, I look back on all of that with incredible gratitude.
Gabby: So, what do your children think about their dad's job?
Alastair: They think I'm a bit of a boring loser like most kids I think. What they do like is that I’m now here to pick them up from school every day, they like that. I think they find it – they really have not very much interest is my honest answer.
Gabby: Do you think your ability to not – you know, to do something you really wanted to do, to pursue a dream, to not be driven to choose a profession because of what you were going to be paid for it, do you think you've managed to kind of pass that on though in any small way to them, even though they're maybe not that interested in the actual journeys?
Alastair: Yeah, I hope so. I think I really don't care whether they become adventurers or not, but I really deeply care that they choose their job. And they're lucky, they're bright kids, they'll do fine at school. And that then means they can choose. They don't need to just follow the roots that everyone in their class is doing, or what so-and-so thinks they should be doing. They really have a choice which is such a privilege
And nowadays there's so many jobs. Most of the jobs that will be available for them probably haven't been invented yet, by the time that – you know, the things they’ll be doing when they reach the working market, so there’s so much opportunity. So, what I just try and encourage them is to be really broadminded about what they do, and to choose something that they really enjoy and that's hopefully useful for the world.
And then my new addition will be start a pension and an ISA the moment you get your first job, and watch that compound interest rack up. That's the new addition to my boring dad speech.
Gabby: Yeah, and your wife going, “What? Who is this man? Where’s he come from?
Alastair: Yes, exactly.
Gabby: Thank you so much for listening. If you have time, please like and follow the ii Family Money Show, and leave us a review or rating in your podcast app. So, you can find loads of ideas on how to plan for you and your family’s financial future at ii.co.uk. I'll see you next time.