Rare Adventures

Author: Janner Boy

The Apprentice’s wrecks the Alps

It took me eight years to persuade one of my best mates, The Apprentice, that he should come mountain biking in the Alps and that we would have a great time, riding in the sun during the day and drinking beer by the lake at night – what was there not to love.

Massive storms, floods, diverted flights, broken bones and a long lost son.

Over the last couple of years, we have established an annual boys event on the bikes, 2 years ago we did the North to South Devon bike trail, a 100 mile ride across Dartmoor, with a night in a country pub with a lot of cans of beer on the train home to celebrate our achievement.

Last year the plan was to ride my 50km route around North Somerset, checking out the pubs as we went, but this was sabotaged by VW Festival, which was taking place exactly halfway round the route on the day of our ride. So, we included it in the schedule, camped overnight, and made a video blog of the chaos of that day.

So it was with some trepidation that my mate agreed to come on the trip, and to be fair things did not start too well. I arrived the day before on a 7pm flight into Genevea and tried to make the trip to our apartment on public transport, but was sabotaged, I was caught in a huge thunder and lightning storm that shut down the entire train system in South West France and left me stranded with a £70 taxi bill.

When The Apprentice flew the next day things got significantly worse. The region had another huge lightning storm in the evening. It shut down Geneva airport, created torrential rain, as well as the train network. His flight was heading for the Geneva until 30 minutes from landing. I was poised in the apartment preparing to leave to pick him up when his Easyjet flight path suddenly changed towards Lyon, and then even worse diverted again towards Nice, basically he was going on a tour of the airports in South West France. Luckily he stocked up with beer in the flight.

After refuelling at Nice, they took off and flew back to Geneva now the storm was over, but no, they went to Lyon because they were now too late to land in Geneva. After sitting on the Lyon runway for 90 minutes waiting to be unloaded, he finally got on a bus and finally at 5:15 am, 10 hours late and he had been to 3 airports.

By the time I picked him up we arrived back in the apartment at 7am, and the enjoyed a beer on the balcony watching the sunrise, “welcome to France mate”.

So, after only a couple of hours kip, we decided due to tiredness, to skip mountain biking for the day and go for a walk in Cirque de Fer a Cheval, an amazing canyon with waterfalls everywhere. Unfortunately, the storm from the night before had caused the floods down through the valley and surge had washed the roads away and it was all closed, in fact, even worse a woman had been killed when a bridge was washed away but the surge.

Undeterred, we ignored the roadblocks, parked near the Cirque, reviewed the damage created by the storm surge and did the walk anyway, leaving my mate amazed at the beauty of the Alps at it’s best, even though bits had been washed away the night before. In hindsight and having recently watched the scenes from the water surges in Nepal, I’m not sure that this was one of my better ideas.

That evening I introduced my mate to the “Morillon Massive”, the group of Brits with homes in the village that gather for beers, by the lake in the summer or by the gondola in the winter. My mate got to enjoy sitting in the sun, watching the sunset looking west, and looking east towards the orange glow on the mountains from the setting sun. The Apprentice was falling in love with the Alps.

We had our evening BBQ on our balcony, investigated the booze cupboard and I presented him with a Rare Adventures T Shirt as a memento of that moment. Unfortunately, he has put on a bit of weight lately so the T Shirt wasn’t big enough, this list of bad luck was getting longer.

The thing is, when you have been friends with someone for 40 years, and have managed to get up to all sort of mischief, there is a never ending list of stories to reminisce on, all of which get funnier the more you have to drink.

In our block there is a little bar called the Tetras, and in the winter it is a major distraction when trying to get back home, as it is difficult to pass it after a good day on the piste, especially with the Morillon Massive are gathered discussing the day. It has been noted by other friends that the landlord, indomitable Flo. has a striking similar to The Apprentice. So this was the first opportunity to put them side by side, I will leave you to form an opinion but the word “love child” does come to mind, and Flo did actually smile and look happy, or maybe he was just bemised at the attention of the latest member of the Britpack.

Next day, we headed off to Avoriaz to show him around the spectacular scenery before doing the incredible bike trails in La Chatel. We made it safely to the peak on the French and Swiss border with some of the most stunning views in the region.

In one of those amazing coincidences that only seem to happen to me, I heard someone shout “Hello Rod”, in this remote corner of France, one of my pals from walking football just happened to get off a lift at the split second I was putting on my helmet, 30 seconds later he wouldn’t have seen me, an unbelievable coincidence.

The Apprentice and I headed down the trail, stopping for photos, and then into the last section into the Avoriaz valley for coffee when disaster struck. On the very first trail of the day he managed to go over the handlebars on one of the gravel access roads.

I had stopped to wait for him and was looking at the view when I heard a scream and a crash, the two Frenchie riders stood beside me ran towards the accident. I turned around and genuinely could not believe my eyes, there was my mate on the ground, covered in dirt with the bike wrapped around him.

I was so disbelieving I actually nudged him with my toe to check it was him, which got an unappreciative response, as did my enquiry as to where was all his protective gear I had given him. Luckily, he had a full face helmet on, but we was clearly badly shaken up.

Sadly, a trip that had 3 days of mountain biking in beautiful scenery ended right there, he never got to see the bike parks. We got him down to the village, where he had a couple of recovery beers that did him good but didn’t solve the problem of his smashed up body what turned out to be a broken wrist. Examination of the GoPro footage still hasn’t really solved the mystery of why he fell off.

So we headed back to the bar by the lake, downed a few more beers, shared his story with the Morillon Massive, one of who was a medic and diagnosed the broken wrist, one for A&E when he got back.

I offered to take him for a hike across the mountains on the last day, but he opted for a day of watching Indiana Jones films in the apartment followed by a pub crawl along the river and a final sunset beer by the lake.

It had been quite a trip, it hadn’t gone anything like it was supposed to but we really had a great time with plans being put into place for next years adventure. In fact, it had been even more eventful than the visit from my mate The Mechanic in June, which was hardly dull.

So it’s not only me that has these misadventures it rubs off from my friends as well.

As I often say what’s the worst thing that could happen?

As he still carries the scars from Thailand in 1992, I guess he knew what to expect !

26/08/2026
Exploring Da Nang and Bana Hills

When you ask people who travelled in Vietnam 20 years ago, “What is the best place?”, they often say Da Nang as it had a reputation for a chilled out beach resort. Well, all that has changed now.

The Da Nang is in the lee of a mountainous headland which is now a national park, and with a beach that stretches for 20 miles along the coast to the estuary at Hoi An, it is very easy to see what it would have been like back in the day. However, the tourist dollar, and in particular, the Korean Won has had a bit of an impact on the place.

The locals describe it as Miami, because it now has 10 miles of high rise hotels stretching along the beach and reaching a few blocks inland. The place is bustling, with wide pavements along the beach to enable the hoards to walk to stretch their legs and plenty of things for them to do.

All is not lost, with a bit of hunting around I did find a little surf shack on the beach that felt as though time had passed it by, and we did get to have lunch and feel the surf vibe despite being in a concrete jungle.

We planned to meet youngest son, Sambo, here for the night before he headed to the Philippines on his world journey. We treated ourselves to a bit of 4* and a 20^th floor balcony, and I have to admit the Hilton was worth the extra money.

As normal, some chaos ensued. When I booked the hotel, a quirk in the hotels.com app led to a double booking. I contacted the hotel and they could see it was booked within seconds and agreed to cancel the second room when I checked in, which they did.

Sambo had planned to stay in a hostel, unexpectedly turned up and asked to stay with us in our 4* hotel. I then had to go back to reception and ask if I could cancel the cancellation of the room that had just happened, they said no as I had to pay the walk up rate. So, I then ended up having to pay 25% more for the room I had just cancelled because I was booking it on the day – who would have kids, even when they are 21.

We had looked at the potential entertainment options from Da Nang, and most of them involved going to Hoi An or trekking into the mountains but we were quite happy to hang out on the beach and chill for one of our last days. We had read about the Bana Hills amusement park and decided this was not for us, we had done enough of these Vietnamese tourist attractions designed to attract the Koreans.

I wasn’t feeling too great as I was at the onset of a virus that ended up lasting a month, and quite frankly felt like poo and was happy to do not very much. Then Sambo turned up and all that changed.

There is a famous Instagram picture of a mystical hand holding up a bridge, it seems to be one of those that has to be done. Sambo explained it was only a 10 minute taxi ride away so we agreed we would all go and get our photo done.

We called the Grab cab and realised the 10 minute cab ride was actually an hour, and we were heading into the mountains we decided not to go to. We then discovered that the hand was an integral part of the Bana Hills theme park, another place we didn’t want to go to, and when we got to the ticket kiosk, I was £100 lighter by the time we bought the entry tickets, Mugged by Sambo yet again, bless him.

Bana Hills

golden bridge da nang

I have to admit that Bana Hills is a truly amazing place, even if I didn’t want to be there. The Vietnamese are in the process of building a vast amusement park ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN. It is only when you get there that you start to grasp the scale of it.

There are FIVE cable cars reaching out from the park entry up to different peaks, each of which has a different perspective on the park. When we were there only 2 of the cable cars were actually working, but just travelling up in them is a marvel, it doesn’t really match Fansipan near Sapa for size, but it is heading that way.

First job was to head for the Instagram favourite, the Golden Hand bridge, and fight our way through the selfie hoards, so we could do selfies ourselves from every angle, and it was quite easy to miss the incredible views back towards Da Nang and the national park.

After getting over the sheer scale of the place, it is even more surprising to find that it seems to be dedicated to French culture. The French have many qualities and I love going there, but not many of them lend themselves to being a theme park. Once you have had the croissants, baguettes and glass of wine for lunch you start to quickly run out of steam and have to head for the amusement arcade for entertainment, which the Koreans seem very fond of.

It reminded me of some of the Disney Epcot park, where they emulate scenes from around the save the Americans from going there, I think the Vietnamese are trying to do the same thing.

There is an Alpine railroad, which is basically a little cart that runs along a rail, it had to be done but we were glad we only paid for one go, the queue to get on it took 50 times longer than the ride itself.

The owners of the park obviously got bored with the French theme and built a huge German bierkeller, which I have to admit was a lot more interesting, with all the beer being brewed onsite. Which was another reinforcement of this incredible engineering feat, as all the water has to be piped up from the valleys, absolutely incredible.

After an hour we were finding it hard to find reasons not to go back to the hotel, so we did, we then hit another problem, finding food. The seafood restaurants required us to select the individual seafood creature we wanted to eat, which made Sambo and Wooksie a bit queasy, and they were already very hungry, so we settled for seafood paella and whatever was in it, by this time I felt so rough I just went to bed and left them to it, then we had an huge tropical storm, which was a spectacular end to the day.

Next day it was it was goodbye to Sambo for 6 months, and time for us to head back to Hanoi for the flight home as our adventure draws to a close.

21/08/2026
Unforgettable Moments at Angkor Wat Temple

Most people arrive in Cambodia planning a visit to one of the most famous temples in the world, namely Anker Wat. Located on the outskirts of Siem Reip, located on a site measuring 162.6 hectares (1.6 km²; 401.8 acres) within the ancient capital of Angkor, it was constructed between 1113 and 1150 CE during the reign of the Khmer king Suryavarman II as a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu.

When you plan your trip, you normally have a choice of watching the sunrise or sunset, and bearing in mind the searing heat, we opted for the sunrise trip before the heat kicks in, the downside of that is you have to get out of bed a 3.30am to get to the site in the dark. I spoke to people who did the sunset tour as well, and apparently the heat drop off.

The coach picked us up and we headed off in pitch darkness off ready to for the sunrise, and there was no time to spare because daybreak broke very quickly after our arrival. Sunrise was the big show of the day and as the light increased the temple became visible across the lake and the cameras were clicking from to get their money shot.

Sunrise was a particularly tranquil experience, sat on the lawn watching the brighten over the temple and the monks pottering around chatting to tourists. It was then that it sunk in that one of my all time bucket list items had been ticked off. The various types of Wonders of the World can be an anticlimax or much better than expected, Anker Wat was almost exactly what I expected, which I guess is a consequence of so much information online.

Once the photos were done it was time to do the tour of the temple, which was getting hotter by the minute as the sun came up. It is made up of various towers and inner chambers that have incredibly carvings in the stone walls that record stories of history.

The temple was originally discovered by the Portuguese in the 16^th century, then it was forgotten about and rediscovered by the French in the 18^th century, when it became overgrown again and restored in the 20^th century, it is surprisingly similar to the Inca temples in Peru like Machu Picchu.

The other intriguing issue is that the temple looks truly ancient, but it is less than 1000 years old, the problem is that the stone is eroding through being weathered. It struck me that in another 500 years it will have lost even more shape and just be lumps of stone. A lot of the temples has modern buttress supports and scaffolding to make it safe for tourists.

Climbing to the top of the biggest tower really did bring the history and scales to life and an opportunity to just absorb the atmosphere, which was getting hotter and hotter so we were ready for a b it of aircon bus and the next trip.

To be honest, most of the other temples were smaller versions of the Anker Wat, so the other temples were interesting in their own right, once we had seen the main event if did feel that the other temples were a bit of an anticlimax, so when we arrived at the café for breakfast and coffee it was a welcome relief.

My enduring memory of this tour, apart from the Anker Wat temple, was undoubtedly the Frankenstein type trees that have taken over the temples. These trees had grown up over hundreds of years and managed to creep their roots through the buildings to the point where the temples seemed to be dependent on these the huge roots to maintain their stability.

We did also see the odd monkey running around, but the power of nature through these trees, to exist within, around and over the buildings apparently existing outside of soil. Looking at the photos, they are still amazing.

When we had completed our tour of the temples it was some relief, as the heat was intense and there is only so many temples that you can walk through before boredom starts to creep in, however good the guide is and by midday it felt like we had been up all day, which of course we had.

The hotel pool beckoned and an afternoon trying out the monster cocktails became our mission for the rest of the day, before, heading to Pub Street for dinner again that evening.

12/08/2026
Petrolhead tour: Wild Atlantic Way adventure in Ireland, Part 5

From Blarney Castle to Dublin

Day 5 and the final day of driving was another big one, all the way to Dublin and another 250 miles. At this point the novelty of the long drives was beginning to wear off, Wooksie had been doing very well in the passenger seat but her back was starting to complain so our mindset would be best categorised as lets get this done with the minimal hassle.

The first section of the drive was the countryside to Blarney Castle, which was our main event of the day, after that it was head for Dublin and every man, woman and child for himself.

Blarney Castle is a major tourist attraction and was full of coaches of Americans from Dublin and other tours who had come to kiss the Blarney Stone. The convoy arrived mostly together so we had a chance to line the cars up and a photo opportunity, as normal I missed the memo and was parked around the corner, but it made for a good video.

To be honest, there isn’t much to Blarney Castle, an interesting bit of history and the legend of being blessed by fairies if you kissed the Blarney Stone was one of the more ridiculous fables I’ve come across in my time, but we still queued for nearly an hour, to kiss the almost completely inaccessible Blarney Stone, which requires you to hang upside down with a bloke holding your ankle, quite a good way to get Covid as well I would imagine with the dozens of people before you doing the same thing.

After a pleasant hour wandering the grounds we bumped into Yaris GR Simon and had a much more interesting hour listening to his world when he was a Formula 1 Team Principal and eating ice cream.

We then spent the next few hours on back roads and motorways heading to Dublin and we ended up at the spectacular 5* St Helens hotel, great choice OTR guys. Which was fabulous, but where the staff were not too bright,

For some reason the entire hotel was designed to have nowhere to sit in the sun and enjoy our last night beers. So the Plymouth (me and Blowey) and the Pompey boys had to reorganise the furniture on the lawn so we could sit in the sun, and that worked very well.

We had our last night dinner together, which was fabulous chatting with our new friends despite the hotel’s best efforts to sabotage the event with slow service. However, the fun was not completely over, as the ferry back to the UK did not leave till 2pm.

There was time for one last high speed drive across the amazing Sally Pass, a mountain range that seemed to start almost within the city limits of Dublin. Wooksie wisely opted out with some of the other wives and went on a walking tour of Dublin, so the boys were left to their toys.

This was one of the most fun drives of the trip as the convoy stayed close together, Kevin out front was being an excellent pace man and alterted us to oncoming danger, whilst the rest of us had a high speed tour of the mountains – a great way to end.

We all headed back to the ferry for the 4 hour crossing and the long trip home to all corners of the British Isles, literally, from Scotland down to Plymouth and even over to Kent.

Though in my case it wasn’t quite so straight forward, I went back via the hotel to settle the bill, and my satnav gave me a different and much slower route to the ferry port, and as I sat in mile upon mile of queues I have to admit to having a bit of squeaky bum time as the clock ticked on, but I got there on time, to find a flustered Wooksie at the gate waiting for me, I didn’t bother mentioning that I’d gone up the wrong side of the motorway and was faced by a mass ot traffic that I just managed to duck away from down the slip road, but that is a story for another time. So, a wonderful week with the OTR boys, some of my besties and a whole bunch of great new people that sincerely hope I will get to meet again on a future adventures or chance meeting somewhere I very much hope.

12/08/2026
Petrolhead tour: Wild Atlantic Way adventure in Ireland, Part 4

From the Singing Chef to the Blarney Stone

The penultimate day of the tour and talk about the morning after the night before. Needless to say the day started off very slowly, lots of subdued people reflecting on the impact of Baby Guiness, I was reflecting on how I came to be in a fountain at 1.30am, and even worse, posted the image on Instagram that made me look like I had not pants on. The Scots were reflecting how Norway so nearly beat their old enemies, whilst the English started to dream of a World Cup final in 7 days time.

Ahead of us was the toughest drive of the tour, with 280 miles of Irish roads and a hangover. There was no sign of the Singing Chef at breakfast either, I’m pretty sure he was still in bed.

After a hearty breakfast, I dragged myself out to the car and managed to negotiate the route out of the hotel and into the town where we filled up with fuel for the day ahead. My head wasn’t able to cope with all the revving of the cars, so we let the convoy disappear into the distance and settled into a long, and hopefully incident free day, following the OTR satnav.

The route took us by motorway down to Limerick, which was thankfully without any incident. At one point, to our surprise, we passed the convoy filling up with fuel again and were once again, inadvertently in the lead. After negotiating the traffic jam called Limerick, it was so bad the satnav gave up tried to send us north again. We headed out to the spectacular coastal scenery of the Ring of Berra where we were sharing the road with lots of Sunday drivers.

By the time we got to Killarney the roads were crammed, the scenery was beautiful but we didn’t have many opportunities to enjoy it with the roads being busy, and it wasn’t just cars, we had horse and carts and even ended up in a sheep jam, when the hairy beasts asserted their right to roam.

Eventually we came to the highlight of the day, the spectacular Heal Pass, which meanders over a mountain range at the point where the Atlantic Western Approaches meet the south coast of Ireland, with deep water inlets and bays stretching miles.

As we climbed over the pass we stopped to have a chat with a lad doing the trip on a motorbike and then Sandy and Louise appeared, thankfully not with a tray of Baby Guiness on this occasion, but in their supercharged Jag, so we traversed the pass together and I tried, unsuccessfully, to get a video of them travelling down through the valley, it appears that my eyesight was affected by the night before.

For the rest of the trip we ran through pretty, colourful, towns and villages before finally ending up at the penultimate hotel, the Celtic Rose at Rosscarbery, Mysteriously, we were one of the first to arrive again, I think it might have been because we don’t get distracted, me and Wooksie are a very efficient couple.

Arriving early gave me a chance to head off a 4^th night crisis with Mr Blowey’s room. I was able to have a chat with the receptionist to make sure he had a room with a view across the bay, like us. For once, he was happy with his room, but then got agitated because I didn’t want to get involved in drinking copious amounts of wine again after the night before.

Unfortunately, the view across the bay also included a view across the busy main road as we had the noisiest rooms in the hotel, meanwhile, the Pompey boys have a view across a very peaceful graveyard at the back and slept like logs.

11/08/2026