What Adventure Means To Me

The text of a speech I gave on Thursday September 19th at the Adventure Writing Prize award ceremony.

Thanks so much.

I'm grateful to be here, and tickled to be asked to kick off today's ceremony with a few short words about what the spirit of adventure means to me, and my experiences as a judge for this year's awards.

I've been fortunate to forge an especially unorthodox career in adventure, as a writer, journalist, podcaster and business owner.

And my own understanding of adventure began as a kid growing up in Manchester, in the late 80s and early 1990s.

I grew up obsessed by action sports: first skateboarding; and then, soon after, snowboarding and surfing.

When I first discovered these activities, they were attractive to me for many reasons. As a subculture. As a physical challenge. As a means of finding an identity at a crucial age. But also a means of self-expression.

I was just fortunate enough to interview legendary skateboarder and musician Tommy Guerrero for my podcast Looking Sideways and he described skateboarding as 'a vehicle for your voice'.

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And that's exactly what these activities have always been for me. And still are, 30 or so years later.

These pursuits also introduced me to the importance of travel. If you're into any of these activities, especially if you're from the UK, then you are a traveller by default. And they opened my eyes to vistas far beyond the grey corners of my own Mancunian existence.

As did the books I began to voraciously read at the same time. And looking back, it's clear that literature had an equally important role in fuelling my sense of self, and hunger for adventure, from an early age.

And this is where Wilbur Smith, who I first encountered back in 1990, when I was a 14-year-old working at Stretford Carpet Centre in Manchester, played a crucial role.

That was my second job, and it's fair to describe it as another formative experience. I spent my days playing darts, fielding dead arms from Joey, my boss, and discovering the works of Wilbur Smith.

Like a lot of working class people who had left education early but still burned with a ferocious intelligence, Joey was a prolific reader. He had the Courtney Sequence on his shelf, and one day I picked up A Sparrow Falls. Nope, he insisted, you have to read them in order, which I did.

As many people at that age do, I read the lot in one go, and they helped to open my eyes to the way books and history could equally be a vehicle through which to find a means of adventurous self-expression.

This different ways into this notion of ‘adventure’ eventually coalesced to became my career. Initially, I was fuelled by an urge to escape my hometown, and do as much snowboarding and surfing as possible.

Later, as I began to develop my career as a journalist, those formative reading experiences began to exert their influence on me, and further inform my own understanding of what adventure could be.

It's what led to me organising a snowboarding trip to Iran back in 2005, for example. Sure, I wanted to go and ride the spectacular mountains north of Tehran, which I knew snowboarder Craig Kelly had visited.

But I also wanted to see the renowned Timurid architecture of Isfahan, which I'd read about in Robert Byron's Road to Oxiana, with my own eyes.

It was a similar story when I decided to swim the Hellespont, the 7km stretch of water that separates Europe and Asia, inspired by Byron and Paddy Leigh Fermor. I’d suffered a broken collarbone, and decided to spend the rehab period prepping for that.

Or the time I arranged another snowboarding trip to Uzbekistan after reading F.M. Bailey's classic Mission to Tashkent, which I based our itinerary on, and which later inspired a film script I wrote years later.

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And it's this mixture of bookishness and adventurous pretentiousness that meant I was so thrilled when Georgina and Charlotte asked me to help judge this year's Wilbur Smith Awards. It was a full circle moment for me, and it was something I didn't take lightly.

And, as you'll know if you've read the shortlist, here we have six remarkable books, and six remarkable authors, who also have unique and clearly defined takes on what adventure means, and who through their work help us as readers rediscover it anew for ourselves.

Here, we find adventure recast in various different beautiful ways:

Whether it's through the heartbreaking story of Pietro and Massimo in wartime Italy in The Curse of Pietro Houdini.

The high seas picaresque that is Saltblood.

Obie's subtle, delicate journey through post same-sex prohibition Nigeria in Blessings.

Our Hideous Progeny's queer, feminist recasting of the Frankenstein story.

Hard by a Great Forest's savagely hilarious investigation into generational trauma and post-Iron Curtain geopolitics.

Or Light Over Liskeard's sly pre-apocalyptic musings.

Here is adventure defined in endless ways, each as varied and thrilling as the last.

As is probably becoming clear by now, adventure, whether physical or literary, has been one of the keys driving forces of my life. It has shaped my career, my worldview, and my understanding of human experience.

The works we celebrate today do the same, pushing the boundaries of what adventure can mean, and inspiring readers to embark on their own journeys of discovery.

And I hope you will agree that in Saltblood we have chosen a worthy winner.

Thank you.

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