guest blog – Stanfords Blog

Guest post: Tom Chesshyre takes us all aboard for a midlife ride… to Istanbul and back

-by Tom Chesshyre.

You don’t have to be a backpacker on a gap year setting out to ‘find yourself’ to enjoy an Interrailing adventure in Europe. You’re still allowed a bit of self-discovery along the tracks later in life. Nothing wrong with that. Just hop on board and follow the classic route of the inaugural Orient Express in 1883 from Paris to Istanbul along the tracks taken by the great and the good during train travel’s golden age

THIS book began on a park bench in London’s Soho, not far from Stanfords’ excellent Covent Garden shop – in the company of an old university pal.

We were drinking Red Stripe lagers and discussing this and that: the state of the world (not so great), Britain (ditto), modern life in general and how we were faring with it (at the beck and call of emails and various other little electronic messages).

We had both just passed 50. We both felt the urge to ‘break free’ for a while. Circumstances (and tolerant people around us) would allow us to do this. We both enjoyed trains. We both loved Europe. And there they were: Europe’s train tracks, lying across the Channel waiting to be explored; cheaply, thanks to an Interrail promotion.

Tips for Successful Family Adventures

Family Adventures is a practical guide to involving babies and children in all sorts of adventures, whether it be cycling, camping, paddling, hiking, swimming or outdoor holidays.

As soon as Bex Band, founder of the UK’s largest women’s adventure community, Love Her Wild, announced she was pregnant with her first child, the sympathy began. ‘Enjoy your adventures while you can’, ‘It’s going to be a big shock not being able to travel as much’, and ‘Aren’t you going to miss adventuring?’It seemed as though having children was a death sentence when you’re an outdoor adventurer.

But it really doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, it’s a scary prospect – how do you keep them safe? Where do they sleep? What equipment do you need? – but it’s totally doable.

This guide is full of useful information (such as what to pack when camping with an infant or how to keep children safe in open water), invaluable tips (family games you can play around a campfire or how to keep morale up in bad weather) and plenty of honesty around things going wrong (poo-explosion on a wild camp, anyone?). Experiences from adventuring families also provide a plethora of insights so that you’re well equipped to make your family adventuring dreams a reality.

Here, Bex Band offers some tips for successful family adventures:

Adventuring with children is very different from when you are managing a trip with just adults. Packing, logistics, managing distances and food intake – it’s all different. It took us a while to get the balance right and to realise where the struggles would come from and what to let go of.

6 things you probably didn’t know about the extreme north of Greenland

In December of 2013, Alex Hibbert led an international quartet of polar travellers to the extreme north of Arctic Greenland. After a huge storm destroyed their intended route to the North Pole in the darkness of winter, instead of retreating, they decided to explore the beautiful but unforgiving region of Avanerriaq, the home of the Polar Eskimos. What followed was six months of harsh education, gripping adventure and… twenty unruly sled dogs. We asked the author of Polar Eskimo to tell us about Northern Greenland: Continue reading 6 things you probably didn’t know about the extreme north of Greenland

Robin A. Crawford’s guide to mapping the peatlands

In his book Into The Peatlands, Robin A. Crawford explores the peatlands of the Outer Hebrides over the course of the year, explaining how they have come to be and examining how peat has been used from the Bronze Age onwards. In describing the seasonal processes of cutting, drying, stacking, storing and burning he reveals one of the key rhythms of island life, but his study goes well beyond this to include many other aspects, including the wildlife and folklore associated with these lonely, watery places. Continue reading Robin A. Crawford’s guide to mapping the peatlands