Episode 3 | Friendship, Adventure & New Beginnings

The One About Cows, Calmness & Community

This week on Adventure Geek Radio, Julia shares an unexpected personal victory involving a field of young cows, a long-standing fear, and a surprising lesson about resilience.

We celebrate the winners of the May Photo Competition and Step Up Challenge, hear some wonderfully corny wisdom from Pete’s famous Round Robin question, and catch up with Adventure Geek member Claire Coussens as she shares what the community means to her.

You’ll also hear why a tunnel full of grown adults making echoes perfectly sums up the spirit of Adventure Geek.

Plus:

🥾 July walks are now live
 ❤️ Over £300 raised for SHOUT
 📸 Hazel wins the May Photo Competition
 👣 A record-breaking 3,880.14 miles walked in May
 🌍 Good news stories from around the world
 ☀️ Treat of the Week
 🇦🇱 Excitement builds for Albania
 🚶 Camino Inglés 2027 is now live
 🎄 Last few places on some of our most popular trips
 🇹🇷 A new travel blog from Cappadocia

Whether you’re walking the dog, driving to work or enjoying a quiet cuppa, thank you for spending a little time with us.

Adventure awaits.

#AdventureGeek #AdventureGeekRadio #WalkingCommunity #MentalWellbeing #WalkingForWellbeing #CaminoIngles #OutdoorAdventure #StepChallenge #PodcastUK #AdventureAwaits

Adventure Geek is a friendly adventure community based in the UK, helping people improve wellbeing through walking, travel, friendship and real-life experiences.

🥾 Walking groups
 🌍 UK & overseas adventures
 💚 Wellness, community & connection

Find out more:
 https://adventuregeek.co.uk
https://adventuregeektravel.co.uk

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, share or leave a review — it genuinely helps more people discover the community.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Adventure Geek Radio show. My name is Julia Dorty and I'm your host today, so thank you for joining us. This is the new channel and hopefully it will get better over time. So please just bear with me whilst I experiment with different types of audio. This show is for you guys, so any feedback of what you think works or perhaps doesn't work would be really appreciated. By the way, you can also subscribe to this now on iTunes Podcast or Spotify or anywhere that you subscribe to your podcast. Just give us a search, Adventure Geek Radio. So whether you're about walking a dog, going into work, making a bro or hiding from the washing up, then thank you for spending a little bit of your time with me today. It's been another busy week in Adventure Geek World. We've had escape rooms, book clubs, funmazing, photo competitions, and some very impressive walking miles and a few encounters with cows. What we'll hear from some of our members today, but let's be honest, Adventure Geek has never really been about the walks. The walks are really just the excuse, it's always been about the people. So as I say, grab a couple, loose at your boots if you're out on a walk listening to this, or settling into your favourite chair, and let's get started. So we'll start with this week's quote of the week, and this week's quote of the week is we don't always overcome our fears by fighting them, sometimes we overcome them by becoming calmer than they are. I think this is one of those quotes that sounds quite simple on the surface, but the more you think about it, the more powerful it becomes. So let me explain where that quote's come from. So last weekend we were out at the Royal White Stones and we found ourselves sharing a field with some quite young cows. Now, if you've walked with me for any sort of length of time, you know that cows really isn't my ideal situation. I have a genuine fear of cows and not a mild dislike at all, it's it's a genuine fear. So if you don't believe me, then here's a snippet of audio that I try that I had tried to cross a field of cows on the South Downs Way in 2018. As you can imagine, my heart starts waiting, my breathing changes, and every sensible part of my brain suddenly starts packing its bags and sort of believed. So have a listen. I've had therapy, I've done hit moist tests, I even went to a session that taught you how to do that tapping thing where you tap different parts in your face and things like that. I've tried anchoring techniques, loads of different techniques to you know you can imagine being worthless and being afraid of cows is just not a good place to be. Um then something unexpected happened probably about four years ago. I started meditating, and nothing to do with cows, it's just because I just wanted to be calmer, I just wanted to be more present, you know, less reactive, I wanted to have a bit more patience, but it was like someone in Tesco who's decided that they wanted to get their purse out, they couldn't find their purse when I actually got to the checkout and been waiting for ages. Things like that used to really really wind me up. Um so yeah, I just wanted to slow things down a little bit. And do you know what? Over time something changed. This weekend I noticed that although the fear was still there with these cows, I I could manage it, I could breathe through it, I could calm myself down, and then guess what I did? I actually stroked two cows, two actual cows, and nobody was probably more surprised than me. There wasn't any sort of dramatic musia plane, and nobody gave me a medal, um, but it felt like a huge personal victory for me. Sometimes you know the biggest changes happen so slowly that we just don't notice them until we don't one day we're doing something that once felt impossible, and then you know suddenly you're doing it, and it's like, how how did I do that? So, have you ever had one of those moments, perhaps something that you've struggled with for years that suddenly felt manageable? I just find it fascinating how the brain works. Anyway, I'm off in now talking of things that make us smile. It's time for one of my favourite parts of Ventch Geek Life. If you've ever walked with Pete, you'll know exactly what's coming. Pete is one of our members and he's become famous for his wonderful, corny, round rubbing answers. So the rest of us often roll our eyes before we even start secret uh speaking, but secretly we all listen to every word because we know it's going to be entertaining. So earlier this week Pete was discussing hot air balloon. So the round robbing question was Pete in a hot air balloon.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

I've never been up in a hot air balloon. I did I previously worked in a helium balloon factory, but I left because the bus is so good.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

I'm not going to be spoken up to that.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

So I mean there really is nobody like Pete. I think every walking club should come with a P. Anyway, let's catch up with what's been happening around the club this week. So, first off, a huge thank you to Jan for organising the escape room social mountain cleans this week. I'm pleased to report that everybody escaped, but actually, nobody is still locked inside as far as I know. We also raised over a thousand pounds for shout. Uh, that's with the team networking event that happened in Kenworth while we did a walk around Kenilworth Castle. So that's just brilliant. So, thank you very much, guys, for contributing to that. We've also got a new uh sort of new Adventure Geek keyrings that are arriving soon. They're sort of like these wooden keyrings, they've got a QR code on them, and they say Love Walking Scan Me. So if you would like a keyring, let me know, and uh I'll order one for you. Free of charge, of course. And if you come across anybody that asks you about Adventure Geek, you can just say scan this, and it goes to my newsletter, so they'll get to hear this podcast, and people will find out a little bit more about Adventure Geek. So just let me know if you would like one, you can attach it to your rucksack or obviously your keys. Congratulations to the lovely Hazel Crawford who won the May photo competition. There was only one single point between Hazel's cow photo and Kelly's beer photo. Uh so don't forget next month's theme or this month's theme for June is all about post boxes and letter boxes. We've had some really good ones coming through already. Um, so yeah, all that's all good. Get your uh entries in as soon as you can. We've also launched July walks, so they're all now live, so get booking your walks and events uh throughout the month. So we've obviously got the wellness events as well as the quiz and the book club, that sort of thing as well. So get booking, they're all live now. Uh, there are loads of new routes as well, and some member requests have been included as well. Uh, a big massive thank you as well to Sarah who continues to perform admin miracles behind the scenes. Honestly, I have no idea how I managed before she came along. Uh, and finally, in the adventure geek news, I'd just like to say that the Camino Ingless 2027 is now officially live. If walking in Santiago has ever been on your bucket list, now is the time to have a look. The links are on adventure geektravel.co.uk, and you can see the link in this week's newsletter as well. So, one of the nicest things about Adventure Geek is the people that you meet along the way. So, I thought it would be lovely to hear from one of our members. Uh and this week we've got Claire Cousins. Claire is is well known within Adventure Geek community and recently shared some thoughts about the club. I think it's always interesting to hear uh what Adventure Geek means from someone else's perspective. So have a listen and thank me right. So we are on the morning local walk on the Friday, and I've got lovely Claire Cousins with me.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

There's also many love men. So I'm in the wind with this cab. Absolutely. Can you remember can you remember the white call? Absolutely so. Okay. Um I used to put the dogs in soap supports. And um I I I like walking with people with the dogs. So uh it was it was ideal. Fantastic. And what what's your favourite type of walk? Uh sure. Should I get up to six miles? Okay. You like the dog walk? Absolutely. You could show. Yes. That is true. And of course. Okay, what attracted to what I'm gonna say I would say. What is what's your favourite cafe? Yes, it are. And you can order sausages for the dogs. Okay, yes. So let's tell everybody about the two dogs. Two dogs for dogs. Yes, beagle is uh uh jaxing. A very noise exactly. I used to move the park. Because the bus hugs. He does. Yeah. But she loves to have a little run. You can't do that if you're in the group. Because she does her own thing, she does. What do you do? So safe so that we'll walk her. Well, I've recovered from the school. We're gonna ask again. Right, just m just walk your socks up. So you contribute a lot to the leaderboard as well, so we're getting across the world. Very good. Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 11:32

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for that, Claire. Really, really appreciated, and uh hopefully we're here for some other members soon. Right then, so times for time for some good news around the world. So the first one is the Japanese researchers have managed to remove the extra chromosome linked to Down syndrome in laboratory cells. It's still early stage science, but it's an incredible step forward. So that's always some good news. Better than this doom and gloom that's out there, isn't there? So my next one is scientists are also developing eye drops that could one day correct vision, so that would be quite cool. South Korea has been testing separate walking lanes. This one I don't know if this is good or bad, but uh separate walking lanes. So they've got lanes for slow and lanes for fast, and they're different painted different colours, one's blue and one's red. So a bit like our redways in Milton Keynes, but they're they're split into two, so like I suppose like cycling lanes and walking lanes, but they've got one for slow and fast walkers, that's some bit different. And finally, Japan. So Japan has achieved uh internet speed so fast that apparently the entire Netflix library can be downloaded in around one second. Uh you know, it's slightly slightly mind-boggling when you remember dial-up internet for those of you that are old enough to remember that horrible like noise. Uh, so anyway, you're officially vintage if you do remember that. Same with fax machines. Anyway, this week's treat of the week is a sun hoodie. Now I realise that doesn't sound particularly exciting, but hear me out. I've been trying a new one which isn't 100% polyester because you know what? Polyester starts to stink even after it's been washed. So this new light this new one that I've got, I got off Amazon. It's lightweight, it's comfortable, and it feels much more like cotton against your skin. So I'm gonna take it to Albania next week so that I can and that will be the real test because it's meant to be 30 degrees heat over there, so it's gonna be interesting, and I'll report back. Um if you found a piece of walking kit that you absolutely love, then just let me know. Just send me a little voice note on um on WhatsApp and I'll add it to the audio and we can share the good news. Always looking for recommendations. So yeah. Oh, by the side uh a side note, I am off to Albania, as I said I always said next week. So there won't be a podcast next week, I simply just haven't got time to record one. Uh, but I'll be back the following week. So talking of Albania, the I mean the mountains look spectacular, and I really can't wait to share the share the adventure with everybody. So keep an eye out for the blogs on Facebook. Meanwhile, a huge thank you to all the walt leaders who are holding the fort to me, uh, especially Annette. Annette's just doing I think three or four weeks in the short few days that we're away. So thanks Annette, you're an absolute star, as well as all the other walt leaders as well. So without them, yeah, eventually that just simply wouldn't happen. Uh and if you're staying local, then don't forget there are plenty of walks available throughout the week next week, and there'll be a newsletter for next week as well, but as I've already said, no podcast until the week later. Let's move on to this week's featured trip. So this week's featured trip is the Camino in Glass, which is now live on the Adventure Geek Travel website. Uh if there's there is something incredibly special about walking actually into Santiago de Compassela. You spend days moving through forests, Spanish villages and countryside, you strip life back to the basics, you know, you just eat, walk, sleep, repeat. And somewhere along the way, something shifts. It's really difficult to explain until you've experienced your wondered whether a Camino might be for you, perhaps this is the year to find out. Or have you ever walked a pilgrim walk? Or is it something you'd just like to try one day? Anyway, it's live on the website now, so have a look at that. If you've got any questions, loads of people within Aventu Gator actually walk the Camino in class, so just ask around. Or if you've got any doubts, just read to me and I'd be happy to answer any questions for you. Okay, let's be funny. Okay, so here's a little reminder that it isn't just about walking about feeling yourself. So a few trips are now starting to fill up. We've got the Dam Busters weekend in the Peak District, that's just a handful of places remaining there. Norfolk, that's filling up nicely for next year. So if a slower pace of adventure is more for you, then Norfolk is right at your street. The Caminita del Rey that would like booked out within 24 hours, so that was all good. Uh the Romanian Husky Adventure for next February is also getting closer to closing, so please, please uh book on that one if you can. Uh if one of these trips has been sitting in your I'll do it later, then please consider this as your little nerd. This week's smile of the week. Smile of the week goes to pour the later on the long light. It was one of those hot, sunny days where everyone was just mounting lightly, and I fight him absolutely can't just go and smile.