We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.
-George Santayana

Can you think of a better beginning to a day than to emerge from a tent (after a hellish night of storms) to a world of clear sunshine and still silence? It was particularly welcome on the morning we climbed up onto the Hofsjokull glacier. I am no expert on glacier travelling, but I’m always eager to have a go at things. The difficulty with this mentality is steering the right line between stifling caution and rash recklessness. This morning’s rare clear skies helped tip the balance.

So I packed the tent quickly, eager to get up onto the ice while the weather was good. I knew that bad weather was bound to roll over us soon: this was Iceland, after all. But if we could get up there, get going, and feel that we were within our capabilities before the rain and sleet and mist returned then we would have more motivation to keep going. For I was anxious that we did not talk ourselves out of trying to cross the glacier before we even began it. I desperately wanted to head up and over it to the headwaters of the Þjórsá River. We could have skirted the ice and joined the river further down. But I wanted to do the job properly, despite my lack of glacial expertise. I really wanted to begin our river from its true headwaters, not halfway down at some easy and convenient spot. My motivation came, as ever, not so much from wanting the experience itself as from not wanting to not have the experience, the challenge, the lesson…

We hiked up the steep, rocky morraine to the ice. Rocks and gravel slipped and crunched beneath our feet. We slid one step backwards for each two or three climbed. It was tiring, but we made it to the cold ice at last. Strapping on crampons and digging our rope out from the bottom of the backpack I felt a blossoming of excitement in my gut about this next stage of the expedition. I crunched across the ice to peer over the rim of the first crevasse, and felt a squeeze of primordial fear at the black, fathomless maw gaping up at me.

The ice cap, Iceland’s third largest, was grey and grubby. Ash from Eyjafjallajökull’s eruption had smeared across the whole landscape, robbing us of the stunning blue colours you often associate with ice.

[ice on the Arctic Ocean]

[ice on the Hofsjokull ice cap]

But the murky grey ice fitted well with Iceland’s murky grey sky, heavy rain, and falling temperatures. But where rivulets of meltwater ran across the glacier’s surface small channels of bright blue had been carved out.

We were high above the plains of central Iceland and we looked out over hundreds of silent, empty miles flecked with occasional gleams of sunshine shards slicing through the cloud. Meshes of grey-brown glacial streams flowed out from beneath the ice in all directions. We studied our map to match it to the rivers, gleaning information to bring our map to life. We knew very little about what awaited us when we reached our river. Would it be deep enough to paddle? Would it be too fast or would it be flat and boring?

Chris and I continued across the silent expanse of cold, grubby ice, our crampons crunching with reassuring friction beneath our feet. This was such a different experience, and a different challenge, to climbing up from the green, moist lowlands or slogging across the bleak highlands. And the next phase, paddling Iceland’s longest glacial river, would be different yet again. The variety of this expedition was its greatest attraction.

Crossing to the snout of the Þjórsájökull glacier we saw the maze of small streams that would combine somewhere in the murky distance to form “our” river below us. We thought that the hardest part was now behind us. This is rarely a wise thought to think.

Down off the glacier we removed our crampons beside a narrow but fierce stream that was gushing from an ice cave at the foot of the glacier. It was impossible to know for certain if this was “our” river. Maps were of little use in that ever-shifting, homogenous landscape. The water was grey with silt and freezing cold. The rain continued to fall. But at least this racing water was heading towards the same coast that we were. We had crossed Iceland’s watershed so it was downhill all the way from here.

Now we followed the course of this stream on foot until it became large enough for us to paddle. But we found ourselves in a hellish landscape. Beneath our feet were rocks and gravel. But the going was more like quicksand. Everywhere was saturated. We sank knee-deep into rocky gloop at every stride. We crossed stream after stream, searching for solid ground, silently begging the river to grow, and loudly swearing at the cold, exhausting slop we were wading through.

We still did not for sure whether this mesh of little streams was going to grow into a proper river heading the way we wanted to head. Like pioneers trying to read the land we climbed a ridge to peer ahead. There were so many river channels we could follow now. What we had to do was to choose one, and then live with our decision.

In the end we took refuge back up on the glacier, finding it easier to traverse along that than to follow the hellish meanderings of the rocky swamp valley. At long last though the river appeared to be widening, gathering volume from countless other tiny streams gushing off the glacier. We pitched camp beside the river. All of our clothes were drenched with mud. We cooked a disgusting dinner with grey muddy water. It was especially unenjoyable as I had bought all of our dehydrated food at a discount because it was years out of date. Normally this was not a problem but just occasionally we would have a meal that tasted disgusting. Disgusting but we did not have any spare food. So I swallowed it down as fast as I could and decided that this expedition sucked. As I climbed into my sleeping bag, I consoled myself that at least the worst must now be behind us. Tomorrow we would be paddling. Surely that would be fun?

This expedition was generously supported by:

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2. Iceland: the expedition begins
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1. Your article should have a beginning, a middle and an end – do not just tail off. Make the opening paragraph one of your strongest, in order to pull the reader in. You do not have to tell a story in chronological order – you can open with a tense situation and then flashback to how it began.
2. Ensure that your piece has a strong central theme that moves the reader forward and provides a point to it all.
3. Do not try to cover too much in one article – there may be several different articles hiding inside one large piece. You should be able to sum up the contents of your article in a single sentence.
4. Show the good and bad side. Disasters and tricky situations often make for a more entertaining read than harmonious, straightforward trips.
5. Present an honest account. If you hated a place, then say so (and why).
6. Feature articles should have personality – though often not yours; dialogue and comment from local people add colour to a story.
7. Think about how you can avoid blandness in your descriptions of a destination – recounting a seemingly unimportant incident can bring a place to life more than a detailed adjectival description of its physical appearance. And don’t forget smells, sounds, flavours and even temperature or air quality as well as sights and emotions.
8. Be aware of the political, environmental and social background to the places you describe – they may not be pertinent to your story, but be sure of this, especially if you are going to allude to them.
9. Be aware of the consequences of what you write – for example, ecological issues such as the damaging effect that snorkellers may have on a coral reef. Be wary of endangering the subjects of your article if describing an illegal activity or political views.
10. Avoid Americanisms (unless you are recounting speech or quotations from an American!), jargon, foreign terms that are not generally understood, and the numerous travel clichés that many writers fall back on – snow-capped mountains, lands of contrast, kaleidoscopes of colour and seething masses of humanity will all get the chop.
11. If a publication has recently run an article on a particular destination or topic then it will probably be some time (perhaps several years) before they cover that area again.
12. Check your facts and be wary of making generalisations that you cannot be sure of.
13. Be careful of patronising the peoples you describe and making generalisations about characteristics that could be deemed insulting.
14. Never Give Up.

Thanks to Wanderlust for this helpful list.

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Each talk will consist of only 20 slides that will automatically scroll on after just 20 seconds. It is an unusual, challenging presentation format. Once the talk begins there is no stopping or going back: it is fast and furious and the audience must be ready to be swept from adventure to adventure!

Confirmed speakers so far are:

• Bonita Norris – The youngest British woman to summit Everest
• Ed Stafford - In 859 days, Ed has just become the first man to walk the entire length of the Amazon from source to sea. This is his first public speech!
• Katie L’Herpiniere – is the first person to walk the length of the Great Wall of China, completed the longest ever crossing of the world’s 3rd largest ice-cap by a woman, live at -50C on the Arctic Ocean, cycled through East Africa….
• Al Humphreys
• Ben Saunders – Ben is a polar explorer and a record-breaking long-distance skier, with four North Pole expeditions under his belt. He is the youngest to ski solo to the North Pole and holds the record for the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton.
• Sohail Azhar – A Pakistani perspective
  
• Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop – Digital Explorer – Adventures in Education & The Academy of Exploration (www.digitalexplorer.com)
• Oliver Steeds – a critically acclaimed independent broadcast journalist, presenter for Travel & Discovery Channels with the popular World’s Lost Tribes series and Mystery Investigator.

Doors open 7pm – Talks start at 7.30pm
On registration we will send you the location details – but it’s to be held at the Google HQ – and so you MUST register for tickets or you wont be allowed in!
Many thanks to Google UK for hosting this event!!!

*** Tickets are £20 each (paid on the door) and all proceeds will go to the DEC Pakistan Floods Appeal ****
*** As Eventbrite will take a percentage of the money through the site – please bring cash or cheque made payable to DEC PAKISTAN FLOODS APPEAL on the night ***
***YOU MUST REGISTER: The event is at GOOGLE HQ so you have to register for tickets or you WONT be allowed in!!***

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An insurance company has just refused to insure where I live. They explained that this was because they deemed me to be a “high net worth individual”. I found this extremely amusing!

Filling out their form I had listed my career as ‘Author’. This seemed a wiser choice when applying for insurance than calling myself something like an ‘Adventurer’. The insurance company then Googled me to  check up on me. What they found online persuaded them that I was a high net worth individual (HNWI) which, according to Wikipedia, means that I am worth at least $1,000,000. Flattering indeed! So the company were a bit confused that the only valuable items I claimed to own were a computer, mountain bike, a camera, and a packraft!

They clearly did not delve very deeply into this blog. Had they done so I hope that they might have been interested by items such as these:

- Get Rid of 10 Things

- Doing an expedition fuelled on ketchup sandwiches

- A cheap Spanish adventure

- How to walk across India for £500

- The Happy Traveller: a book for poor men

- Reasons I love travelling by bike

Anyway, must dash. Time for caviar methinks.

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Listen to this madness here:

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