Wow! Three massively exciting things happened on Wednesday...
Number 1
I completed my mini-book, How to Have a Microadventure. Woohoo! It’s an introduction into the brilliant life of wild camping and challenging life. It’s partly a persuasive argument that Microadventures are just what you need and partly a Rough Guide to Wild Camping.
And guess what? It’s absolutely FREE to you if you sign up to the Monthly Newsletter.
Number 2
I came back from a day out to find a wonderful box of goodies by my front door.
My books had been delivered. I’d ordered 20 copies of Microadventures and Sardines printed in case anyone at the talk I am giving NEXT WEDNESDAY fancies buying a copy.
I guess I’ll need in invest in a Sharpie for all those signatures I’m sure to be writing.
And if I don’t sell them all, I think we can all assume that we know what people’s Christmas presents are this year!
Number 3
And by far the most exciting. Kevin Merrey of Skyrise Productions, an adventure videographer who has worked with the likes of Sean Conway among others, invited me to spend the day with him doing some filming. So after dropping the sprog at nursery I made a mad dash down to the south coast where I met up with Kevin and his crew, the affable Josh and the enthusiastic Gael. We were there to film a short story of a famous adventurer that you may know…
Yes, that’s right. 3 and a half years after first reading his book I finally got a chance to meet the man, the legend, Alastair Humphreys properly rather than just a fleeting chat at the end of a talk or book signing.
They say you should never meet your idols but I can safely say that Al (I can call him Al now as we are officially best buds) is just a regular guy. Probably a little more reticent than I thought he' be but it’s to be expected when he meets a guy who wrote a book about him, pesters him on social media for wild camping advice and just happened to be wearing the same t-shirt as he was with the word Microadventures emblazoned across the front.
Maybe I came across a little stalkery. Oops!
The awkwardness was slightly set aside as I clambered into the estuary after him to film him doing some wild swimming with my GoPro, as you do.
I also managed to make a complete tit of myself. I put my drone together and discussed different exciting shot that I could do by buzzing the drone close to his bobbing head. He seemed genuinely impressed that I had the vision to come up with such dynamic shots and angles. The only problem was that I had deleted the DJI Go App off of my phone the other week when I was walking across Menorca (video coming soon) so that I could store more video. I had no way of flying my drone! The bloody App wouldn’t download either as I needed Wifi. After a manic sprint to a local tourist information office and a café, both of which failed to have any Wifi whatsoever, I walked back to the group dejected. I told them my predicament about having a wonderful sky camera and a vision of incredible shots but no way of flying the bastard thing.
‘Oh well,’ said Al magnanimously. ‘At least you won’t make that mistake again.’
‘Bollocks, sorry guys,’ I said dismantling the useless piece of expensive electronics and shoving it back in its bag disgruntledly.
Me, Josh and Kevin enjoying the heat of the midday sun.
We decamped to a local pub so Kevin could surreptitiously charge the battery on his own drone for some shots later in the afternoon. Kev ordered and a massive pizza and the rest of us plumped for sandwiches and soft drinks and Gael explained the complex differences between a producer, an executive producer, a line producer and a developmental producer and Josh described his upcoming Sri Lanka expedition. I also found out what a Gaffer, a Best Boy and a Grip are and no, it’s not some archaic cricket terminology.
- Gaffer = Head Electrician
- Best Boy = Second in charge
- Grip = Someone who attaches cameras to stuff (cars, cranes, trolleys, etc.)
Learn something new every day.
I used the pub Wifi do download the App, not that it was much good as I had to head back to home to pick up the sprog from nursery. As I did so, I noticed how my App picked up Kevin’s drone instead of mine. ‘Kevin, what App are you using to fly your drone?’
‘Only the DJI one,’ he replied scoffing his massive mushroom pizza.
‘That’s bloody annoying. I’ve just realised that you could have flown my drone with your app.’
He looked at me resignedly. ‘Never mind, there’s always next time,’ he smiled.
'I'll pay for lunch,' said Alastair. Could this man be any nicer?!
I shook hands with everyone outside, said goodbye and drove my car back north to get the sprog. The A27 was at a complete standstill and my Satnav informed me that I would be late to collect the little one and I was still over 2 hours’ drive from home and had the M25 and Dartford crossings to deal with. My wife was going to kill me if I was late to nursery, especially as I hadn’t told her I was disappearing to the south coast to gallivant around with a load of videographers and my hero, Al Humphreys.
A crazy stressful drive home found me screeching to a stop in front of the nursery bang on 6.30.
I’d made it! It had been a manic, crazy, fun, devastating and almost calamitous day but I made it back to get the rascal and home in time to cook dinner. Apart from the drone incident it had all gone swimmingly (pun intended).
That was until the wife got home and the first thing she asked was, ‘What did you get up to today?’
‘Well, do you really want to know?’
‘What have you done?’ she looked at me suspiciously.
‘Ah, well…’