If it was easy it wouldn’t be a challenge, with these words lodged in my mind I continued riding along the F208 in Iceland’s interior. The surface of volcanic ash combined with ruts in the trail created by other traffic make it sometimes hard to keep my bike on one side of the trail. I’m amazed about the buses that drive on this trail, they look like touring cars that weren’t made to be working in these conditions yet are barrelling down the road. Icelandic Interior It was my fifth day on the

Losing sight of land ought to have had more of an effect on me than it did – two days before we started rowing unsupported and alone for 45 days across 3,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean, our captain and the most experienced member of our group had left in less than ideal circumstances. We were advised to go without her – her emotional strength called into question – so we did. It meant leaving two days after the official race began to allow us  time to adjust to being five, and to redistribut

At full gallop the world streams past as a blur of stone, sand and sky, stretching away from under my horse into the miles of empty steppe all around us two. The wind whips Kafka’s mane wildly across my stiffened hands – numb from the chill Mongolian air – as I try to keep control of the racing animal, excited senseless by our immanent return to camp. Then suddenly, and with a deepening sense of dread, I watch as my steed stumbles on a rock, throwing me forward and then violently backward, th

For me the story started in 2010, when Richard Robinson – a colleague of mine who works for an advertising company – began researching the Olympic Games for one of his clients. He’s a very good family friend and one day I got an unexpected telephone call from him: ’What do you know about thirteen Olympic Gold Medals that were awarded in Chamonix by Barron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic games, to the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition? Despite forging a career as an

I wake up to the cool wind in my face from the air conditioning and feeling the soft pillow under my head and clean white sheets.  Air conditioning?  Soft pillow?  Clean white sheets?  Am I dreaming?  I try to sit up and an agonizing pain shoots through my chest and I remember… Ten Days Earlier Ever since arriving in South Africa I’d been looking for the chance to test myself, a way to push myself to my limits physically and mentally, to live the ultimate adventure.  To cycle through the Sout

A small solitary figure stood staring into the embers, his pale white dishdasha hanging loosely around him lending a ghostly appearance in the pre-dawn light. Slowly and melodically his voice carried across the dunes on the cool North wind, calling the others to prayer. The sun is still a dull glow beneath the horizon, and the fine sand that makes up this remarkable landscape remains cold to the touch. We are in the Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter, and never has a name seemed to so aptly des

It was excruciatingly hot for most of the day, until the last 15k when we were treated to a wonderful shower of rain… and hail. We sought shelter underneath a hanging rock and enjoyed the relief from the heat. We finally arrived, soaked and covered in dirt, at the refuge at La Cathédrale. The owner asked us where we had come from. “Anergui”, I told him. “Anergui?” he exclaimed, “But there are no tracks there anymore.” The confused owner was right, there’s no road anymore, not even for 4 x 4’

The PATAGONIAN EXPEDITION RACE is described by its organisers as “a true expedition, taking teams of four through lands previously unknown to the human eye.” It is probably the wildest, most remote race on the planet, exploring some of the most isolated and breathtaking landscapes known to exist. It was created by geologist Stjepan Pavicic in 2002 when he shared a dream with an international team of specialists who had both the expedition and project management experience to create something

Deep in the jungles of South America, Kevin Casey explores a wild and untouched river isolated from human intrusion by thundering waterfalls, guarded by huge black piranhas and inhabited by some of the strangest and rarest creatures on earth. When I first see the black piranhas that inhabit Guyana’s pristine Rewa River, I am impressed. They are as long as my forearm. When I notice the bizarre, squishy white parasites that live in their mouths, I am intrigued. They are truly gross, like a

An expedition to climb in the mountains of Iraq is a rare opportunity and one that I figured would not come around too often. It was the Easter before my University finals but I certainly knew which to put first. Attempting Iraq’s highest peak, Cheekah Dar in the Zagros mountains of Kurdistan, certainly had priority over my degree at Newcastle University – it was only 10 days without revision! The expedition was run by Secret Compass, an expedition provider I had been working for part time d

I sat quietly by Loch Dionard watching Red Deer on the opposite shore. The light was fading, but during May in the far North of Scotland that means the hour is already late. I made no more sound or movement than the mighty bulk of Creag Urbhard behind me and the evening was utterly silent other than for the sound of a nearby burn fed by the last of the melting snow high on the slopes of the mountain above. It was only two weeks since I had set off on my journey. I’d felt like I was tied in a

As the one o’clock gun cracked it’s report over Cape Town, it echoed off Table Mountain and we started running; we ran towards Lion Mountain and the field began to spread out; I felt good and sat in the middle of the pack. As the incline increased the heat began to work it’s magic and coming from the frozen East coast of the US the previous week it began to take it’s toll. The ground steepened, the run became a walk and the heat built … We had just started the second stage of the Landrover G4

How did I get here? It all started with an idea. A crazy idea that, after trips abroad of no more than a month or so, I was ready to take a leap. Just Hong Kong to Istanbul, over land. Simple. After a boastful and blurry night in a pub, the realisation that I need to follow through on my ambitious aims hit me. A few months later, in the Pakistan consulate in London I felt apprehensive. Ask yourself this: What comes to mind when you think of Pakistan? In the enclave of madness I was warned b

The depths of a Highland Winter may seem an ill-advised time to embark on exploring the submerged passages of Uamh nan-Claigg ionn, The Cave of Skulls, Scotland’s deepest cave.  But I had a lull in my diary and, besides, after dragging my kit down five vertical drops and numerous constricted crawls, I’d be convincingly ‘out of the wind’. Cave diving in the Scotland is like most of the UK, specialising in tight, serpentine crawls, long abseils and muddy water (or watery mud)… and the sites are

I awake with heavy eyes during the cool morning, my various aches and pains nudging me off the sleeping mat and out into the bright sunshine; onward again through the valleys of Tajikistan. Last night I stayed in a house with three women and numerous children approximately 300 kilometres from Dushanbe. I hadn’t slept well. The dogs barking throughout the night kept alerting me off my sleeping mat and – careful not to disturb one woman and her small child – over to the window to check on my bi

I was about to start my fourth trip to Svalbard. I really wanted to traverse its southern regions and, in particular, the huge Spitzbergen South National Park. The wild south provides a much more unstable climate, more broken glaciers and more polar bears than the island’s northern lands. In addition, skidoos are forbidden – even for residents, except for extraordinary cases and under a special permission. This journey was not about speed, not about distance. It was about endurance, about mer

A decade-long desire to visit Greenland and the allure of journeying by boat into virgin territory to attempt unclimbed peaks, two or more days away from civilisation, is what inspired us to set our sights on Timmiarmiut, an area of fjords, granite walls, peaks and spires 300km south of Tasiilaq, East Greenland. Throughout the planning we were lucky enough to be in correspondence with Hans Christian Florian, a Tasiilaq-based doctor and joint author of The Unknown Mountains Of East Greenland.

I am here, at the end of it all, where landmass just runs out. Six months have delivered me to this spot. I’ve crossed deserts, summited snowy peaks, pushed my body to near breaking point and seen the inside of more police stations than is healthy. Three thousand miles across China, ten million footsteps and an amount of blisters that cannot be quantified. I never know what to expect at the end of a long journey, and now I recall why. There’s an overwhelming sense of calm, of relief. And alwa

The standing waves on the river made my kayak bounce up and down; a real life roller coaster, I was loving it. We were on the Colorado, not a big section but it was moving water and there were waves, and it was fun. However in his boat, my team mate, Franck wasn’t having such a good time. He was a hardened adventure racer but not a white water paddler and he looked very uncomfortable, in fact terrified. We shot down over a steep shale bank rapid into a train of waves and I whooped, this I c