Rare Adventures

Tag: Adventures

Wooksie in the Alps – the day we conquered Mt Blanc.

After waiting 8 years to visit the Alps, I was giving it my best shot to make sure she had a good time. It started badly when we went on a more arduous trek than I’d intended, but I’d got my house points back with the leisurely day out in the beautiful town of Evian, the place that invented bottled water.

The big event of the week was Mt Blanc, and we decided to let the gondola take the strain to get to the top of Mt Blanc, ahead of my suggestion that we walk up to the mid station. L’Aiguille du Midi is a giant gondola that runs from the centre of Chamonix to a peak that provides amazing views of the mountain, as long as it’s not cloudy, of course. To get the view, you have to go to the Panoramic top station; the mid station just gives you a nice view of Chamonix.

As it was Wooksie’s week, I thought it was probably time we went to see one of the most famous mountains in the world. I went online a week early and booked ourselves a 10:30 gondola so we would be overlooking the peak before the afternoon clouds arrived.

Wooksie was almost excited with the treat, as it promised little walking and a nice lunch in our old stomping ground of Chamonix, where we learned to snowboard many years ago.

We were up early and drove to Chamonix with plenty of time for coffee overlooking the mountain before our slot. All was going well until we actually arrived in Chamonix and realised that Google Maps had done too good a job and dropped us in the centre rather than at the big car park. We managed to squeeze into a small car park and agreed to say no more about the £35 per day charge.

The sky was clear and the view of the Mt Blanc peak was stunning as we supped our coffee and looked forward to the trip. Before we knew it, the time to join the queue arrived, and after 30 minutes we reached the departure gate with the QR code tickets dinging as they were presented. When we presented ours, there was an alarming buzz. Obviously, there was a problem with the gate.

The steward came along and checked our tickets and, to our horror, the date on them was 1 week later. I had chosen the wrong Wednesday on the portal, and we were promptly kicked out of the queue. Wooksie didn’t look pleased.

At this point, I have to admit this is beginning to become a trend. It isn’t the first time I’ve mis-booked in the last 18 months. I am not sure if this is a characteristic of making so many online bookings that the odd error is bound to happen, or if it is a characteristic of the onset of my dotage.

I ran around to the ticket booth to try to exchange the tickets. “Non” was the answer from the scary lady behind the glass. We had two options: come back next week, which was out of the question, or buy tickets for today and write off the £100 worth of tickets we already had.

Wooksie wasn’t particularly communicative, so I made an executive decision and bought more tickets, but unfortunately the next lift wasn’t until 15:30, so we had four hours to kill. “Cheer up,” I said. “We will go and have a smashing lunch in a beautiful town in a wonderful location,” and we headed into town.

Killing two hours is one thing; four is something else, especially if all the shops shut for lunch. We had a nice lunch and, when we ran out of things to do, we sat in the shade and I fell asleep. It didn’t help my popularity, to be honest.

At 15:30 we were back at the gate and started queuing again, and for the next three hours it felt like the only thing we did was queue. We queued to get to the mid station gondola, then we queued again to get to the top station.

The Panoramic station at the top is an incredible construction with an amazing history. The views across into Italy are stunning. Unfortunately for us, it was now late afternoon and the clouds had amassed around the peak, so we did not have the view we had hoped for.

We weren’t at the end of the queues even at the top. We had to queue for the photo in the glass window, which involves stepping out over a vertical drop that needed a leap of faith and hoping the glass didn’t break. Just to be safe, they gave us slippers so we didn’t crack the glass with our boots.

On arrival at the top, we were given a return schedule on an allocated gondola. So, we queued to get each of the gondolas back down.

By the time we got back to Chamonix, we were exhausted from queuing, it felt like we had climbed the mountain itself.

We were glad to be back sitting down in our air-conditioned Passat.

The fun wasn’t over, though. That night we returned to our lake and watched the biggest eclipse of the sun for 90 years from our bar, in the company of our Brit pack friends.

I hadn’t covered myself in glory on this trip, but it ended well when I contacted the gondola online helpdesk and explained my error, and they immediately gave me a refund.

Wooksie insisted on doing nothing the next day, so I went for a mountain bike ride to join in the spirit of the Worrld Enduro championships that were happening in Morillon, unfortunately I had a bad fall, resulting in a badly sprained wrist and cracked ribs.

I didn’t get much sympathy to be honest, so next day we went for a walk and things really took a bad turn.

We saw lots of cars and people heading along a nice-looking trail into the woods. Unfortunately, the trail through the valley turned into a trail up a cliff.

We followed it for 30 minutes, with Wooksie getting redder and angrier and inferring that I had planned to kill or injure her.

It seemed appropriate to call a halt to our trekking, and we went back into Samoëns for lunch and a beer. Unfortunately I lost the keys to the car for a while as well, it wasn’t a good day.

Even after 35 wonderful years together, she still thinks I actually plan to do things to cause her pain and make her annoyed.

They are all honest efforts to have a good time; they just don’t all work out well.

I got the distinct impression she was glad to head home, a bit like the Apprentice with his broken arm and The Mechanic with his broken fingers.

01/10/2026
Jungle Adventure: Monsoons and ancient trees

The second day of our Jungle Adventure was largely shaped by the events of the previous night.

On our way back from Piranha fishing and Caymen hunting the weather really turned. We had spent the evening listening to the thunder and watching the storm clouds gathering, then as it got dark the lightening forks started to appear in the sky.

Our little canoe made its way along the navigation channel of the lake in pitch darkness, so the navigation sticks in the channel were hardly visible, we ran aground a couple of times but managed to get back into the channel with lots of pushing and panting.

As we came around the corner of the channel into the deeper lake, the rain started. We were probably about 400m from the shore and the lights of the lodge were visible in the distance. The rain started as a few big dollops of water landing on our heads and within 30 seconds it turned into a torrential downpour, with claps of thunder and fork lightening all around us.

Jungle Monsoon

As we made our way towards the bank, we became aware of hundreds of jumping silver fish, this awareness mainly came about because they were hitting us on the heads from both sides and landing in the bottom of the canoe. These things were everywhere, I have never seen anything like it.

By the time we made it to the bank we were absolutely soaked, and the scramble up the mud bank to the Lodge was not a simple manoeuvre either and ended up with a few face downs in the mud. I have seen a lot of tropical rain over the years, but nothing matches what happened here in the jungle.

However, we were the lucky ones, because the canoe that we overtook in the Caymen hunt was not behind us. It transpired that the other canoe could not find the channel across the lake, and as such ran aground. Visibility was bad enough without the rain, but with the water curtains provided by the monsoon conditions they got completely lost and arrived back at the lodge a good 30 minutes behind us.

We then discovered the jeopardy associated with the location of our room, in the monsoon conditions the walkway was in pitch darkness and slippery so even getting a jacket was challenging, thank goodness for the torches on our phones.

So, after a very exciting day of adventures, we all headed to bed for a good night’s kip wondering what tomorrow would bring. However, while we were laying in our very hot room, there were a group of poor souls camping in the jungle in those conditions and getting thoroughly soaked, and that shaped our view of the next day.

The big trek

We were up at the crack of dawn for the day trek into the jungle to look for giant snakes, monkeys and anything else the Amazon has to offer. After a hearty breakfast we set off into the jungle with a guide at the front and rear so nobody could wander off and into danger.

One of the first things we learned was that this part of the Amazon is not famous for its animal diversity. The Peruvian Amazon has a much better animal eco system, this part of the Amazon is famous for medicinal plants, sort of nature’s pharmacy.

The other thing we discovered is that the end of the dry season is not the best time to explore the jungle, this is because the water level is very low and most of the creeks dry up. This particular event should have involved a canoe ride into the jungle, but we ended up hiking instead.

The temperature in the morning wasn’t too bad, but the humidity was still high, and we were all sweating profusely after 10 minutes clambering along the steep banks of what should have been a river. We couldn’t walk along the riverbed as it was still boggy, and probably the home to a wide range of nasty insects.

Our tour first took us to the overnight camp used for jungle night; the overnight monsoon had dropped so much water on the shelter it had collapsed onto the happy campers. If Wooksie had any thoughts about agreeing to the night in the jungle they evaporated when she saw the campsite, we would be staying in our very hot, but dry room at the Lodge.

We headed off deeper into the jungle and spotted our first animal, a howler monkey high up on the trees. To be honest, these creatures, are so far away they are impossible to see unless you have got eyes like a hawk.

The guides gave our intrepid adventurers range of fungus and potions that they found lying on the ground in shells, most of them were really small so it is unlikely we were ever going to find them again, or if we did, we would probably die from eating the wrong thing.

The journey through the jungle involved navigating a number of obstacles and temporary bridges to get across the streams where the riverbed hadn’t completely dried out. There were plenty of funny incidents and comments along the way to keep our spirits up in the rapidly rising temperatures.

It was during the trek, and seeing how Wooksie was struggling with the heat, that I decided to cut our 3 night stay in the jungle down to 2 nights, at the end of the day, the jungle seemed to be the same in every direction and the river and canoe activities weren’t possible due to water levels, so 3 more days of walking around in that heat didn’t seem like too much fun.

We stopped to look at a huge snake in a tree, which unfortunately I couldn’t see, and after a few hours of tough walking, discussing politics and the state of the world with my mate Antoine, it was time to head back to the Lodge, a nice lunch and a cold beer.

The big decision facing Wooksie and I was where we would have dinner, the plan was to go to the overnight camp with the rest of our travellers, enjoy the jungle barbecue and come back to the camp afterwards.

As we lay in our room, recovering from the walk our conversation was constantly interrupted by the booming sound of thunder. After the monsoon the night before, we were only too aware of what would happen after a few hours of thunder, and so did our travelling companions who made sure they packed their wet gear.

As the afternoon went on the thunder got louder and more regular, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out it was going to be a very wet night in the jungle. So, being people of a certain age, we decided that we didn’t need to be heroes. There was no point getting soaking wet in the jungle just for the sake of some barbecued fish, and opted to stay at the Lodge, enjoy the hammocks, the view across the lake and enjoy a little bit of time out.

As it transpired, despite 3 or 4 hours of thunder hardly a drop of rain fell, it could be best described as a spring shower at worst, so our companions did not get washed away after all, and we felt like we had missed out on something, but we stayed in a comfy incident. After 2 hours in the hammock, I had a horrible cramp attack so I dread to think what it would have been like in the jungle.

The last trek was a walk in the jungle to look for sloths and to see the incredible tree of life, at 450 years old it is one of the oldest trees in the Amazon and hopefully the loggers don’t find it.

That marked the end of our Jungle Trek, and we embarked on the trip back to civilisation and an unexpected day in a hotel, where Wooksie could enjoy an aircon room to cool herself down and I sat by the pool drinking beer and cocktails.

However, the surprises weren’t totally over, as when we got back to the hotel we found we were sharing it with Amazonas, the Manaus professional football team who were using it as their base to prepare for their next game and to meet a genuine Plymouth Argyle supporter, which they were all so excited about.

As with other things we have discovered on this adventure, once you have seen one the impact of the other diminishes. This was our first visit to the Amazon, but we had been in the Costa Rican jungle only 4 months ago, not to mention jungles in Thailand etc, in the end, they all look the same !

09/12/2025
From Business Owner to Adventurer: A Retirement Story
The challenges of letting go and embracing freedom

Being retired isn’t so easy when you have owned your own business for 23 years, and spent most of them hunting clients, delivering assignments under pressure whilst keeping the company together. So, in effect, when I declared that “I am done”, that was the start of the process.

After my daughter’s wedding, I was good to my word, I jumped in my VW Camper and headed to off-grid to the Highlands of Scotland with my dog Tess as company. Wooksie (my wife) asked how long I would be gone for, “more than a week, but less than 3”, and that was about as much planning as I had done. The trip to Scotland is a separate blog, but for here, I was gone 10 days, rejoiced in the freedom but eventually got bored with nothingness and made my way home.

I had been delivering a company strategy over the previous 5 years that moved all our services to digital online solutions depending on face-to-face service, this development work helped us through Covid and gave us a way out. We had reached a point 2 years previous where the change was done and in effect, we could deliver our services from anywhere in the world, we just needed a laptop to manage the whole thing. As I explained to Wooksie, we can now live on a yacht in the Bahamas, login every day to deal with requests and put our feet up.

At this point Wooksie pointed out that she doesn’t like yachts, the sea or the sun as she is a red head. This was the start of the first unexpected issue, my business partner of 23 years, who often complained she hated the job and wanted to leave, but who happened to be 12 years younger than me pointed out she wasn’t ready to retire.

Boom I didn’t see that one coming, I had a vision for a retirement full of fun, adventure and travel which wasn’t shared. I had always had this exit plan that we could have a business that would essentially run itself with minimal input from ourselves but give us an income, this was now seriously under threat.

This came as a real shock, but slowly we worked out how to make it work. The company would keep running to allow for a gradual transition as the hard-earned client based slowly withered. As I wouldn’t be doing the sales, account management and service development demand would inevitably drop off, which it did. This seemed a solution that worked for everyone, including the staff, as the last one was happy to retire in that timescale.

The first year was hard in other ways as well. I struggled to say, “I’m retired”, so when offers of work came in, I found it really hard to turn them away, as money is money and habits of a lifetime don’t change overnight.

Talking to others that had taken retirement from employment, they seemed to have different issues, but these helped me understand my challenges. If you go into work for an employer everyday of your life, when you stop work, you are faced with a void – suddenly you don’t have to get up, go into work or get on with your task list or routine. I’ve noticed these people seem to drift back into full time or part time jobs as they struggle to fill the void.

When you own and run a business, it is different, you live that business 24 hours a day, clients, staff, finances, suppliers, payment is in your head 24 all the time, and you are the escalation point for everything, so saying you are retired doesn’t change much. What does change is that your energy and ambition is no longer driving the business forward with an eye on the strategic challenges and opportunities, but this takes time to take effect.

The challenge for me was that I wanted this stuff out of my head as I had mentally moved on and opened a new chapter in my life, but the business was sucking me back in. We also faced a number of unexpected challenges from government bodies that undermined the 5 years of investment in that business model and the services we had developed, which was hugely frustrating for me and our customers but helped with marking the end for the team, the company was over.

To be honest, in that first year of supposed retirement the company were hit by these unexpected missiles, we might even have decided to call it a day anyway. A number of our competitors of 20 years did make that decision, but it was a tough year for all of us, and we found a way though as we always do.

It wasn’t just work that was changing, at home we had one daughter heading into her last year at university and youngest son had just finished A levels and was heading for university. There was a lot of disruption at home too, this isn’t the normal retirement scenario for most people, having 2 kids at university and having to shut down a business!

By the end of summer, Wooksie had warmed to the idea of less work, but not enough to consider living on a yacht in the Bahamas. As a way of marking the start of a new era, she came up with the idea of doing the Inca Trail in Peru (BBC’s Race Round the World helped a lot with the transition !), this was something we had planned 20 years early but pregnancy put an end to that, So 5 days after youngest son went to Liverpool Uni, we were on a flight to Peru to open our new chapter. It was great trip, but not without incidents that will be part of the travel blog in due course.

The real benefit was that it started to draw a line under being the dedicated business owners and always on tap parents, though mobile phones still worked in Peru 😊.

Even though I was trying to stop working, I settled for “running down” as I was back in the office 2 or 3 days a week, but I did offload the baggage of “attendancism”, and moved to a “work to live” mode rather than a “live to work” mode.

This worked, I continued delivering limited client assignments to keep the company accounts in good shape and in truth, when winter came along, I was glad of the company of the team. I’d go to the gym or meet a mate for coffee, but head to the office to help and have a chat with the girls.

The first year ended the following April undertaking a progress review for a client. This was a review of recommendations I had made 18 months earlier that had been reported to the top-level board in that organisation. The board approved the report and funded the implementation of the recommendations.

My review was to check on progress with the consultancy that had been given the task of delivering our recommendations. What became evident was that hardly any progress had been made, in fact, they had implemented things we had said should NOT happen.

At a workshop, I asked the group, “did any of you actually read my report and recommendations”. there was silence. Millions had been spent on this consultancy to implement our recommendations, and, they did what they thought should happen not what they were commissioned to do, and the things they implemented were the things that had repeatedly failed in the past.

At this point, I was completely exasperated. I honestly concluded I was wasting my life doing this sort of work when I could have been out having fun, the money was obviously nice but most of it goes on tax anyway, so what was the point.

12 months on from “I’m done”, I had another big moment where I realised my hunger for money was gone as well, and I didn’t want to waste my time advising people who were going to ignore me. I now really wanted to get on with my next chapter.

I discussed this with my old friend Ugly Bloke in May; he had managed his transition at a much younger age and was a good sounding board for me. He didn’t believe that I was going to call it a day, so I wrote down some promises about what I would and wouldn’t do in the next 12 months, because I still did have obligations to the team. He looked after the notes on a napkin and The Ugly Bloke commitments proved very powerful when I had a big decision to make in the next year.

Lessons from the first year

So, what are my conclusions from that first year:
- You can’t just walk away from something that has taken 20 years to create it is hard to walk away from the old habits and behaviours, it’s different to retiring from a job. However, you can make promises to yourself about the scope of what is acceptable and test it out.
- Having an epiphany, where you realise it’s time for change, helps the motivation to make the change, it is very hard not looking back. I used to advise clients they had to “mark the end” of the old ways before change can happen, this applied to me too.
- Making assumptions about people around you, what they want and need, how fast the world is changing undermines plans all the time.
- Signature adventures – the trip to Peru marked a major change in our life, it enabled planning future adventures to places we had never been, like Patagonia, safaris, and other adventures we can look forward to, in fact, they start to take over your life.
So, moving into the second year, I am now openly talking about being “retired”, though I prefer to say being “finished with work”. I have my commitments to Ugly Bloke to uphold, so let’s see how it goes.
13/07/2025