What's Normal?

For some of us, it’s a stroll over the fells. For Bruce Duncan, it’s a ten day race through the exquisite but unforgiving landscape of Patagonia.

We were lucky enough to hook up with Bruce, a full-time adventure athlete last week. Keen to meet this local adventurer, we were bowled over to encounter someone so refreshingly down to earth and ‘normal’.

Bruce in Sweden, photo courtesy of Bruce Duncan

Whether it’s the fact that Bruce left a full-time job in the Aberdeen oil industry to train and compete full-time, or the fact that he prefers "normal" food over sports nutrition food (as you've got to also enjoy it), he breaks all one’s preconceptions of an athletic hard nut.

At the same time, he reeks of inspiration. Part of the top UK adventure racing team, Helly Hansen, he’s passionate about running and trekking and kayaking, mountain biking, and rope work.

The 2010 team, photo courtesy of Bruce Duncan

In 2009, Bruce and the Helly Hansen team won the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, a truly epic adventure competition over nine to twelve days that has been dubbed “the last wild race”.

Drawing on all their psychological and physical resources over hundreds of miles of terrain, athletes from all over the world compete to sea kayak, trek and cycle across the waters and wilds of Patagonia.

Photo courtesy of Bruce Duncan

The 2009 race was almost 600 kilometres long and, in the trekking section, saw six of the eleven participating teams drop out. It’s that tough. So hats off to Bruce and his co-adventurers for their incredible victory.

But as if that wasn’t enough, they returned in February this year and won the Race for a historic second time. Requiring six thousand calories a day each, Bruce and his team members (three men, one woman) stocked up with ten family-sized pizzas, rolls, crisps, chorizo sausage and chocolate.

The Winning Team 2010, photo courtesy of Bruce Duncan

Imagine racing for 116 hours, of which you sleep less than fourteen. No wonder the team crashes at the end and has to rest for three to four weeks again they can resume any kind of training.

After that stint in the Patagonian wilderness, it was great to meet Bruce on home territory in the Lakes. Refreshing too to meet an athlete who, though generously sponsored by big players, is interested in kit that’s functional rather than ‘brand of the moment’.

So he prefers Paramo kit to the hi-tech stuff because it’s the most waterproof brand on the market. And British. Nice to think too, that he may be sporting a bag from Millican for when he’s out and about in future.

You probably won’t see Bruce and his ilk at the Olympics – the idea of focusing on one sport and for a race that’s over in minutes or even seconds isn’t likely to appeal to this multi-tasking adventurer. But we’ll certainly be watching out for his exploits, not least in the route he creates for the Adidas Terrex Adventure Race in Keswick in August, our first UK adventure race since 2007.

Hearing of Bruce’s exploits has motivated us to get back out there on wheels, rather than just fell walking and running. So I'm back training on my cyclocross and Nicky has her Dad’s bike set up for some off-road cycling across the cycle trails of Whinlatter, England's only true mountain forest.

Last word, though, to Bruce and his three team mates as they reminisce about this year’s Patagonian race:

Andrew Wilson: The winds were really tough the whole way. Most of the mountain biking was into the wind. There were times when we were literally blown into the ditches at the side, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Nicola MacLeod: The final twenty hours we had to keep moving all the time, otherwise we would have frozen. We couldn’t stop to sleep because we didn’t have enough kit and we couldn’t stop to eat for more than about thirty seconds.

Mark Humphrey: I think I tore a ligament in my left knee during the first beach run, right at the start. It swelled up like a balloon. Going downhill it was really painful, the guys took my pack for a while, and the teamwork got me through. I had to push through the pain a lot.

Bruce Duncan: If we hadn’t known about it, we wouldn’t have noticed. He was a bit slower than usual, but he was still bashing through the forest, wading through the streams, so real credit to him to push on. He was clearly hurting and took one for the team.

Respect.

Water For All, All For Water

We always knew water would feature strongly in our lives when we moved to The Lake District (hint), and the wettest valley in England to boot (bigger hint).

Photo courtesy of Skittzitilby

As I came back from walking the dog this morning, decked out in full waterproofs and creating a puddle on the kitchen floor, it was hard to imagine that in many places in the world rain is rare, and safe drinking water is unknown.

So as today is World Water Day, it seemed a good time to reflect on the 1 in 3 of us who don't have access to a toilet, or the 1 billion people who can't access safe drinking water.

Over the last 100 years, the world's population has tripled, while water useage has simply exploded, increasing sevenfold. The terms "water crisis" and "water footprint" are now finally showing up on the radar, thanks in part to the work of One Drop.

Photo courtesy of Snap

With a rallying mission of "Water for All, All for Water", One Drop is forging ahead, showing the world the real extent of the water issue.

One Drop arrived on the world stage last September when Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque De Soleil and self-professed water-warrior, became the first Canadian space explorer to raise awareness of water issues.

With One Drop, World Water Day (a UN Environmental Agency initiative) has a greater platform to shout from today.

That's needed, because it's estimated that by 2030 over a third of us will have less than half of the naturally available water we need to survive. Changes will simply have to be made.

We can all do our bit, fix that leaky tap, put water butts in our gardens, take showers instead of baths and use an economy flush on our toilet. But the commercial world needs to join in, as it's predicted that industry's water usage will double by 2030.

I'm thinking business is managed by people. And people can make changes.

Simple.

All Together Now

One of my favourite movies is Cinema Paradiso. Its evocative story of the tender friendship between a young boy, Salvatore, and a cinema projectionist, Alfredo, in a small Italian town never fails to bring a tear to my eye. The relationship between the older man and boy speaks volumes about our childhood longing for acceptance and belonging. At the same time, the film's wider canvas – about the decline of cinema in a small community – presents a moving account of how cinema can captivate and transport us – but how it can also fall prey to the demands of the commercial marketplace.

We were reminded of this while on our recent visit to Marrakech. It was then that we learned about the Save the Cinemas in Morocco campaign. It turns out that there were 300 cinemas in Morocco at the start of 2008 but there are now less than 50. The reason is a mixture of heavy taxation on cinema earnings combined with a saturated market of pirate DVDs. As a result, home cinema in Morocco is now in crisis.


Having said that, protesters are running a great campaign. What we loved about their message was its focus on the value of cinema for all members of the community from the very young to the very old. These campaigners are passionate about stressing cinema’s freedom of expression, its creative spirit and educational power, and how it can open whole new worlds to children. Think of the impact of movies on young Salvatore in Cinema Paradiso.


One of our most moving recent moments came as we visited the Eden Cinema, the heart of the campaign in Marrakech. As I walked into the deserted auditorium, the impact was tangible. Essentially a deserted room aside from its chairs, the cinema’s walls are painted faded lemon and are now crumbling and laden with cobwebs. Chipped wooden chairs in flaky green paint stand empty. The screen stretches, a white void. And above, the balcony looms, somewhat precariously. I’ve rarely experienced such a combination of emptiness and intense atmosphere. As Cinema Paradiso-style music played, I could hear the scraping of chairs on the concrete floor, the murmur of voices, the mix of laughter and gasps of alarm.


In days gone by, the community of the Medina would flow in here for a great evening’s entertainment. Now the cinema stands in danger of being condemned. What a tragedy that would be. Let’s hope that the campaigners are successful in their efforts to restore Moroccan cinemas. This isn’t about simple nostalgia, as much as that spirit suffuses Cinema Paradiso. It’s about valuing the experience of a community gathering around shared stories, surely something as old as the earliest human settlements themselves.

In our DVD age, where we can also watch movies online, we seem to have prioritized private convenience over the joys of the communal experience. And that’s our loss. Our loss because of the way that any cinema audience instantly raises the emotional temperature of its individual members’ responses. And because of the loss to our gathering as a community and recognizing that we’re united by things larger than our individual lives.

I was struck by this again reading a recent Guardian article by writer Tobias Jones. Jones wrote an illuminating book, Utopian Dreams, a few years ago detailing his investigation of several experiments in community living across Europe and the UK. Well, he has now put his money where his mouth is, sold up his comfortable family home, and bought a woodland dwelling with his wife and two young children which they plan to run as a centre for people in personal crisis.

Writing of his suspicion of the contemporary gated definition of the insular, nuclear family, Jones describes how he and his wife came to the point of giving up belongings for something that they realized they valued far more – the gift of belonging. They are going to start small, invite one or two people to stay, and gradually find their feet extending help and refuge to wayfarers, refugees, and those struggling with mental illness, breakdown, bereavement or penury. It might sound pious presented at second hand but Jones’ article doesn’t smack one whit of smugness or self-righteousness. It’s more about he and his wife trying to find a more purposeful life and giving away some of their good fortune to help others.

I was particularly hit by these words, as they go to the heart of a niggling concern for many of us. He is talking about communities that have traditionally opened their doors to those in crisis:

“It's difficult to put into words quite why we want to try and do something similar. In part it's because it feels to me as if old-fashioned charity is at the far periphery of our life. We have a few standing orders to worthy causes and put a small cheque in the post, or do a soup run, once in a while. But that sort of charity seems increasingly to me like carbon offsetting: a way to cleanse our conscience, to make us feel better about the fact that actually we could keep living just the way we want. It's a sop, nothing more. I want charity, in the old cliche, to begin at home, to be an integral part of our lives – not just something we do with loose change once in a while”.

Jones has seen the value of community living from the research for his previous book and it has left its mark. Like the Save the Cinemas in Morocco campaign, he is taking a simple stand to uphold community values over individual privilege. It’s not a stance that all of us could manage or we’re all ready to make. But both the Moroccan campaign and this family’s campaign testify to the poignant beauty of community. At this time of social networking and online communities, we’re of course finding all kinds of new ways of connecting. Let’s not forget, though, some of the older tried and tested ways – meeting face to face, helping each other out, or just sitting cheek by jowl with others in creaking cinema seats to watch a story that speaks to us all.

Travellers' Tales Part II

Last week, following my visit to The Royal Geographical Society, I wrote about the changing face of contemporary travel writing. Reporting from the Travellers’ Tales Festival, I described some of the soul-stirring lectures I attended.


Next on my itinerary that Sunday was a workshop about the merits of digital photography. You’ll probably already picked up from these blogs that, here at Millican headquarters, we’re not unthinking fans of all things digital. We reserve a special place in our heart for humble analog tools like the Moleskine notebook, pencil, and the human foot.

Having said that, the workshop about old school versus new school photography was totally fascinating, provoking loads of questions.

For example, is photography simply a recording activity or an art form that manipulates reality?

Easy to argue for the former but, in fact, one makes a whole host of choices about how to frame a photo, what to position in the foreground or background, and so on. As politically radical film director Jean-Luc Godard once said, every camera position is a political decision.

Of course, there are tremendous beauty and integrity in the manual elements of developing analog photos, a wonderful romance to the darkroom. However, digital photography is clearly here to stay, all the more so now as new technology promises increased combination of still and moving recording technologies within a single camera. Surely whether photography tilts more towards the documentary recording or towards an art form will continue to depend much on the photographer?

I just wish that my modestly priced digital camera didn’t have such a dreadful time lag between button pressing and recording. I’m not exactly on my way to winning any split-second news reporting photo competitions.

Back into the RGS lecture theatre for travel writer, Chris Stewart. After tales of war-devastated Africa and Afghanistan from previous speakers, it was something of a relief to hear from this sheep-shearer who moved to Spain and fell into travel writing. Chris writes all his stories with pen and paper first so that he can keep track with his thoughts.

Chris Stewart

Passionate about land, writing, and simplicity and community, he is also a very funny man. I loved his description of the health and safety warnings now issued on British gravestones to protect passers-by from tripping over our loved ones’ last resting places them. “They are dead, for God’s sake”, remarked Chris drily. To him, these warning labels are the ultimate sign of a nanny state.

Topping the bill and last up was legendary war photographer Don McCullin. Now in his 70’s, McCullin has been lauded for his war coverage over the last few decades. So it was interesting to hear just how profoundly disillusioned he is about how he has made a living and the fact that he has won numerous awards on the back of human suffering.

Don McCullin

I suppose that it’s inevitable that if you’re a campaigning photographer exposing the horrors of war and you don’t see your work altering political reality, you’re bound to question what you do. However, it seemed to me that McCullin cannot discount the incredible impact of his work on many of us who are otherwise shielded from the cruel facts of human conflict.

Although he talked with enthusiasm about his latest project to record the frontiers of the ancient Roman empire, I remain more haunted by his accounts of his war-torn work. And I find myself similarly compelled by his original, adrenaline-charged photos of conflict rather than his striking images of Roman ruins from across Europe.

Photo of Roman Forum "Temple of Saturn" courtesy of David Paul Ohmer

What the festival brought home to me is the importance of increasing our understanding and empathy for fellow human beings and cultures across the world.

This surely is what travel writing is all about at its finest.

Goodness knows, in our insulated consumerist lives, it’s easy to live comfortably within our existing boundaries and to fail to empathize with people in very different stations of life and different cultures. For me, McCullin’s work remains profoundly important because it allows us a window into the lives of others, not merely the innocent victims of war but also the men and women involved in combat.

When I fall back on knee-jerk assumptions about such people and issues, it’s good to look into the haunted eyes of one of McCullin’s subjects and be transported to another level of involvement with the subject.

Travellers' Tales

Hard on the heels of our return from a brief visit to Marrakech, I recently attended the Travellers’ Tales at The Royal Geographical Society. After our five days trawling the Moroccan souks, it was quite a contrast to tread the hallowed halls of the RGS.

Fuelled by childhood memories of explorers’ tales, it was a thrill to have full run of the RGS’s historic premises. From the map room with its wooden map drawers and vintage maps lining the walls. To the theatre, its wood paneling topped by the names of famous explorers and with pictures of Presidents past and present, including today’s Michael Palin.

In the subterranean archives, I glimpsed some real treats. A pair of Mallory’s goggles, plus his handkerchief (unused, thankfully) plus climbing rope. A fabulous Tolemae Atlas from 1460, its blue oceans coloured with ground lapis lazuli that bankrupted its publisher (do we see such self-sacrifice these days?), Shackleton’s expedition shopping list from – well, why not? – Harrods. Including Axminster carpets and Royal Doulton porcelain mugs (it makes a change from kit from George Fisher's). And Philby’s coffee pot, a crucial tool of hospitality as he travelled amongst the Bedouin people.

Shackleton, Marshall and Adams, 1907-9.
Photo courtesy of © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS on Lisa's photostream

Having recently read Three Cups of Tea, the riveting account of American Greg Mortenson’s building of fifty five schools across the forbidding mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, it was interesting to muse how coffee and tea have always been key to the interaction of Western travellers and native peoples. As Haji Ali, Korphe village chief in the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan told Mortenson, “Here we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything – even die”.

Photo of K2 courtesy of reurinkjan

I’m going to spread my observations on the Festival’s talks over this blog and my next one. But suffice to say, with talks from a selection of travel writers and photographers – including, on the Sunday alone, writers Dervla Murphy and Chris Stewart, and legendary photo-journalist Don McCullin – I was not disappointed. Fantastic too to see such a wide and varied audience from across the sexes and generations, all filled with a passion for travel and recording, for learning from posterity and for working towards a better future.

My first lecture was with Dervla Murphy. In her 80’s, Dervla has travelled the globe by foot, bike and mule, writing twenty-four books in the process. If genius is indeed defined as Malcolm Gladwell reports in Outliers by 10,000 hours of learning, Dervla is the authentic article.

Authenticity is central to her writing too. Interestingly, in contrast to the poetic license in the writings of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux, she stresses factual correctness and accurate research. She believes that travel fiction needs not only to entertain and inform its current readership, but also to be an accurate record about travel and cultures for future generations and research.

In contrast to Dervla’s toughness, I noted the two glamorous ladies sitting next to me in the audience, one with an American accent. As I noted down in my Moleskine:

“Two Conde Nast females next to me, seemingly lost at this festival of die-hard travellers”.

Straight after Dervla, these ladies were up onstage – award-winning African tribal photographers, Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith. Well, there go my credentials as a seasoned observer of human nature.

Angela and Carol spoke about their passion to help preserve traditional African values through recording their many ceremonies, their own trust fund, and telling stories of their travels. And wonderful storytellers they are too. They held a captive audience in the palm of their hand with tales of the Karo, Dinka and Surma tribes and their initiation ceremonies and body-painting traditions.

Photo of tribe's woman, Ethiopia courtesy of Gujser

Just as Dervla had lamented how deeply Afghanistan, her favourite country, is currently being riven by the havoc of war, it was poignant to hear African stories of modern day encroachment, civil war and controversial missionary activity. ‘Twas probably ever thus, but no less lamentable for that.

What was heartening after I’d scanned the names of the great and good patriarchal explorers topping the theatre’s paneling was to see the mix of female travellers and octogerians who have helped change the face of modern travel writing. Paul Theroux has sometimes been accused of misogyny. No danger of that amidst most of today’s intrepid travel writers.

Next time I’ll blog about the merits and pitfalls of analog photography versus digital developments. Introduce you to a hilarious sheep-shearer and travel writer living in Spain. And to war veteran and reluctant photo-journalistic legend, Don McCullin, now cutting a very different path across the globe with his current photographic project.

But, for now, it’s worth reflecting that I left the Festival day-dreaming my way into future adventures overland, recording what we see with the aid of a camera and notes. School of Life teacher and writer on the art of living, Roman Kraznaric, has written much recently about the virtues of ‘outrospection’ in an introspective, navel-gazing age.

The Travellers’ Tales Festival reminded me of how we can all record our travels for personal remembering in future – but also how we can emerge from the limits of our established selves when we journey abroad and encounter a world as real, vital and important as anything we know at home.