The violin was out of tune. Alastair Humphreys had learned five beginner tunes — badly — and now he was standing in a Spanish plaza about to play them for strangers. His stomach gripped harder than it ever had in a desert. Harder than when he’d rowed the Atlantic with three people he’d just met. The fear, he realised, wasn’t about the notes. It was about being seen failing at something small.
That’s the thing about Alastair. He’s cycled around the world. He’s crossed oceans. But what he talks about now — with the same reverence he once reserved for Patagonia — is a grid square near his house. One Ordnance Survey map. Fifty-two weeks. No GPS. Just boots and curiosity and the unsettling discovery that the wild he thought he knew was disappearing.
The violin trip came from a book. Laurie Lee‘s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning — the story of a man who walked across Spain in the 1930s, busking his way through villages. Alastair loved the romance of it. So he taught himself five tunes, badly, and set off to walk five hundred miles. Not because it was hard in the physical sense. Because it was terrifying in the human sense.
The idea of playing the violin in public terrified me more than rowing the Atlantic. That’s why I did it.
— Alastair Humphreys
Before the violin, before the microadventures, before the concept of “local” became a framework for rethinking what adventure even means, there was a 24-year-old teacher with a paper map and a one-way ticket out of London. Alastair cycled around the world from age twenty-four to twenty-nine. Sixty countries. No phone. No GPS. No laptop. Just internet cafés full of teenage gamers and the occasional email home.
He thought it would be a physical challenge. Legs and lungs and long roads. What he found instead was loneliness — the kind that sits heavy when there’s no one to share a sunset with, no familiar face for months. The mental toll, he says, was harder than any mountain. But it forged something. A quiet resilience. The kind you can’t fake.
What stayed with him most wasn’t the landscapes. It was the kindness. Meals shared by strangers. Doors opened in places he’d been taught to fear. Generosity that didn’t need a reason. It’s a thread that runs through everything he’s done since — this belief that people, given the chance, tend towards good.
Then came the Atlantic. Not planned. A last-minute invitation to row with three strangers. No sharks. That’s what he remembers. Not the waves or the blisters or the fear — but the absence. An entire ocean crossing without a single shark. A stark, silent reminder that the wild we think is infinite is not.
Years later, with two kids and a life that didn’t fit four-year expeditions anymore, Alastair turned his gaze inward. Not inward like therapy. Inward like: what’s within a mile of my house? What’s on this map? He calls the project Local. One year. One Ordnance Survey map covering his home. Fifty-two grid squares, one per week. Out of four hundred total.
He thought it would be boring. He was wrong. What he found was wildness hiding in plain sight — and a jarring absence of wildlife. Wastegrounds that held more life than manicured parks. Beauty in decay. But also loss. The realization that the landscapes he’d taken for granted were quieter, emptier, more fragile than they should be.
I found it quite depressing at times. But I also found wonder I didn’t expect.
— Alastair Humphreys
The Local project wasn’t just about mapping terrain. It was about mapping mindset. Adventure, Alastair argues, doesn’t have to mean distant. It doesn’t require a flight or a visa or a year off work. If it feels like an adventure to you — if it requires intention, curiosity, a willingness to be uncomfortable — then it is one. That’s the philosophy behind microadventures: sleeping on a hill after work, kayaking in Scotland, walking across India, or just exploring the seven closest trig points on a website called Trig Bagging.
It’s radical, in a way. Not because it’s extreme. Because it includes home. Because it says: you don’t need to leave to find something worth seeking. And in a world where we’re told adventure is somewhere else, that’s a quiet rebellion.
In this conversation.
We hear about the loneliness of solo cycling — months without a familiar face, and how that forged a resilience Alastair didn’t know he needed. He talks about the terror of busking badly in Spain, why playing five beginner tunes in a plaza felt more vulnerable than rowing an ocean, and what Laurie Lee’s book taught him about creative fear. The conversation moves into the Local project: how exploring fifty-two grid squares on a single map revealed both hidden wildness and troubling absence, and why Alastair now believes our local landscapes are more urgent than any summit. We go into environmental responsibility, the ethics of adventure in a climate crisis, and why “Leave a Positive Trace” might be more honest than “Leave No Trace.” There’s also the Atlantic row, the absence of sharks, the early days of recording his Living Adventurously podcast on a cycling trip through Yorkshire, and the philosophy behind microadventures — which wasn’t marketing, but survival for a life that didn’t fit long expeditions anymore.
Call to adventure.
Find your local Seven Summits. Go to the Trig Bagging website and search the seven trig points closest to where you live. Then go tag them. If you live in Norfolk and your hills are tiny — even better. What a fascinating place to explore. Share your route with the hashtag #Local7Summit. Adventure isn’t out there. It’s right here, waiting for you to say yes.
Pay it forward.
Support the Right to Roam campaign in England and Wales — access to wild spaces shouldn’t be a privilege. Adopt the “Leave a Positive Trace” ethic with Trash Free Trails: clean as you go, not just for yourself but for the land. And explore Take the Jump — six lifestyle shifts designed to reduce your footprint and live with more joy, not less.
About Alastair.
Alastair Humphreys is the author of Microadventures and Local, and the architect of a movement that redefined adventure as something you don’t need a visa for. He’s cycled around the world, rowed the Atlantic, walked across India, and busked badly across Spain. Now he explores grid squares near his shed with the same intensity he once reserved for Patagonia. He believes kindness is universal, that fear is worth facing, and that the wild we need to protect is closer than we think.
The violin is still out of tune. But Alastair played it anyway. That’s the lesson. Not that you need to be good. Just that you need to begin.
