In early May 2025, I entered the third year of my attempt to retire, full of enthusiasm.

Year 1 of my retirement was about coming to terms with my decision. My business didn’t just stop, so I was still involved with the day-to-day activities, as my wife, Wooksie, was also my business partner and was still going into work every day.

Year 2, I tested my boundaries a lot more. If I was bored, I didn’t default to work, and we shut down my own office, so there was nowhere for me to sit. I found lots more things to do, like building sheds and doing things around the house, and when winter came, I had my first winter season in the Alps at our apartment, so I was beginning to enjoy my freedom.

An old friend from Australia came to stay in April 2025, and he asked how my book was coming along. I had to confess it wasn’t. The idea was to write a book about my adventures, but I didn’t know where to start, so after some discussion, he suggested a blog, and here we are.

The idea of starting a blog and recording all my adventures was really exciting, and I threw myself into the project. If you are reading this, you will be one of the few people who have found the fruits of my labours.

I was also full of beans after losing some weight with the help of Manjiro, and I had also sorted out the politics in the walking football team and was looking forward to a summer of tournaments, so there was everything to live for.

For the blog, I used our original company name of Rare and adapted it to Rare Adventures. By mid-May, the website was up and running and everything was in place.

The blog was supposed to be a historical account of my adventures, but it very rapidly turned into something else, more like a travel diary and a record of current events rather than looking backwards.

As with most things in my life, I turbocharged the idea and decided I wanted to become an influencer, as there was money to be made from it. Rather than using it as a chance to reflect on a fun life, I ended up initiating new adventures and documenting them, and each one of them had the same element of chaos and fun that my old adventures had. In parallel with the website, I set up a YouTube channel and a Facebook page so I could make money.

I concluded that the blog and social media needed content, so I went in search of it full-time. This was my new job. I gave myself the title “Chief Adventure Officer” at Rare Adventures on the basis that I can now be anything I want to be.

I headed to the Alps on my own to go mountain biking. Rather like snowboarding the previous winter, this was a bit nerve-racking, but I mostly ride on my own at home anyway, so I just promised myself to keep off the red and black runs, which worked. What I didn’t expect was to be setting records on Strava for the fastest old bloke on the mountain. I was absolutely buzzing.

My daughter travelling in Costa Rica was an excuse to go to Central America and create more material. We did every adventure that we could find. We headed there for July and August and had a great time. I even went surfing again in Jacó.

When I got back, I was only home for a week before heading back to the Alps for more mountain biking and making YouTube videos of the best runs in the region. My creative side was in full flow, coming up with new ideas and ways to use existing material, such as video clips from concerts.

In between all this, I was playing football every week in tournaments, and my club, Portishead Town, was on the march. We did very well in the summer tournaments and even better during the winter season. With a small squad, we established ourselves as one of the top four over-65 teams in the South West by the end of the season, but every week was a battle to find players, and I was regularly calling people from the other side of the world trying to persuade them to play.

I was just generally having the time of my life. I even had a long weekend in Ibiza with my mate The Mechanic, something I had always wanted to do but thought I was too old for. Well, at 66, there was still plenty of life in this old dog.

Wooksie was proving very resilient with all these adventures, but took the opportunity to head back into the safety of the office, out of my way, whenever she could. To my surprise, she agreed to head to South America, and we toured Brazil and Argentina in November.

The blog content was a major driving force behind all this, as I wanted material, but we were having so much fun as well. We were breaking new ground all the time and, in fact, we started to ponder where else in the world we wanted to go, as we had now done six of the seven continents and all the big trips.

In November, I was contacted by one of our clients. They wanted me to do a high-profile assignment for them. It was a follow-on from work we had done three years earlier, which had felt unfinished at the time. Having turned down a client seven months earlier and believing I had left consulting behind, I was left with a very difficult decision.

This was going to be highly paid, last more than four months, and I needed to be on my A-game. I didn’t need the money, but I could see the potential for helping my kids with their student loans. My heart said no, but my head said yes.

It started as soon as we got back from Brazil. I pulled in one of my oldest colleagues to help and, even though it was a tough assignment, I knew we had been here before and I was 100% sure we could get it right. I also felt that if we didn’t do it, one of the big consultancies would do another bad job and rip my client off, so I had mixed motivations.

In truth, it all went well. The client was happy, we kept to the schedule and came out with a result they liked, but there were some difficult moments for me. My long-time colleague hadn’t worked with me for two and a half years, and we had both changed.

I was often wrong-footed by events between us. We overcame them, but we weren’t in lockstep like we used to be. I wasn’t sure if either of us was to blame. We had both changed. Age does that to people.

Memory fuzzes, times and dates seem to be in a different dimension, words disappear from your head, you forget things or, even worse, forget you have done things.

I also felt the stress a lot more than I did before. Part of this I attributed to the fact that I would normally have four or five jobs to worry about when I was full-time, so the stress was spread. Now I only had one job to worry about, so I worried 24/7.

It is just the way my hyperactive brain works. It needs stimulation to keep it going, and having a high-profile job and dealing with very senior people was giving it plenty of stimulation. I was losing sleep for no reason, and it was a massive relief when the report was signed off and the invoices were paid.

I hope my kids will be grateful in years to come, but that was my last assignment.

I still managed to spend a month in the Alps in January, but it wasn’t as relaxing as it should have been because the assignment was going on while I was there.

Once again, I had a steady stream of mates coming to stay during January.

The previous year, my mates were arriving a bit ad hoc, and I seemed to spend a lot of my time being a chalet maid, so this year I was more organised. I put together a schedule, and they came and went on different days, but this created a new problem.

Each group or individual would arrive full of beans and enthusiasm for their ski holiday. Unfortunately, it was often within a few hours of me waving the others off. I was ready to put my feet up; they were full of fun and excitement and ready to go, saying, “Come on, mate, let’s get out there.”

I didn’t actually get any days off on my own to chill out (I don’t need many). The previous year, I was nervous about riding on my own; this year, I was actively wishing I had some time on my own.

As it turned out, the snow was among the best in years (despite global warming), and we had some great days out.

So, another year of retirement came to an end in April, and what did I learn from the year?

1. The sky is the limit – going forward, I can do anything I want (within financial limits). This year has proved that physically I can cope with most things, so I need to get as much done as possible before I am too old. Life is a race and I want to win it.
2. The old me lives on – the blog project has proved that I still have the energy and commitment to achieve whatever I want. It is also raising a question about what the year would have been like without the blog project. What will I use my time and energy for next year?
3. I was finished with work – I went out on a high, doing a difficult job well, pocketed the cash but felt the discomfort of pressure again, which I had lived with for 50 years but didn’t need any more.
4. I’m becoming a loner – I spent the previous winter on my own snowboarding and then spent the summer mountain biking in the Alps, and I realised I enjoy my own company more than I realised, but not for too long.
5. Influencing is expensive – it has become evident that finding followers to influence is going to be a very expensive business, as without paying Meta or Google, the algorithms will ignore me. By the end of the year, it was obvious that there was only a very limited market for my blog articles. What the world wanted was a 30-second hit and then to move on. I developed different content for Facebook but decided I wasn’t interested in the TikTok world, and certainly not X with the moron who owns it.