Episode 6: Why Not? Adventures, Laughter & Looking Up

This week on Adventure Geek Radio, we’re asking a simple question…

Why not?

It’s amazing how many adventures begin with those two little words.

Join me as I catch up on everything happening in the Adventure Geek community, including our Halloween Haunt plans, We Will Rock You at Rugby Theatre, the latest photo competition winner and an update on the cycling group.

There’s another Mystery Sound to guess (with a guest appearance from Caroline!), this week’s Good News, a quick stop on the Peak Pilgrimage Trail, Richard Jones shares his latest walking thoughts, and Maxine reflects on how our recent trip to Albania helped us grow in ways we didn’t expect.

We’ll also celebrate another fantastic month in the StepUp Challenge, where together we walked an incredible 3,084 miles despite the heatwaves.

In this episode:

• Quote of the Week – “The best adventures often begin with three simple words… Why not?”
• Adventure Geek News
• Mystery Sound
• Good News from around the world
• Round Robin
• Maxine’s Wellbeing Corner
• Peak Pilgrimage Trail
• Featured Trip – Amsterdam 2027
• June StepUp Challenge Leaderboard

If you enjoy the podcast, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a review, share it with a friend, and don’t forget to send me your Mystery Sound guesses—you might hear yourself on next week’s episode!

Live your best life… because life is better when you add a little adventure.

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_01 0:11

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Adventure Geek Radio Show. We are now on episode 6. Can you believe that already? I hope you're all having a brilliant week, and by the time you listen to this, I'll hopefully be soaking up the rays in sunny Dubrovnik, that's in Croatia, with a fantastic group of lovely peeps. If it's all gone to plan, we'll be wandering around the ancient city walls eating far too much ice cream and probably trying to persuade ourselves that walking up the mountain is a much better idea than taking the cable car, although I think I know what's gonna win. While I'm away, I just wanted to say a huge thank you to all our wonderful ward leaders back home. It's lovely knowing that the Adventure Geek just carries on whether I'm there or not. So a special shout out to Louise, Paul, Emma, Michael, and Kelly for giving up your time. It's really appreciated. Everything you do, guys, is really appreciated, and I'm sure everyone uh that's joining you appreciates you too. Now, this week's quote really made me smile because it sums up Adventure Geek quite perfectly. The best adventures often begin with three simple words. Why not? That's about reading this AI script, and it says three simple words, why not? And that's actually two words. So anyway, the best adventures often begin with two simple words, why not? I love that. Oh my god, talk about keeping it real, Julia. Anyway, if you think about it, so many of the best things we've done together started with one simple saying, and that's why not? Why not join that walk when you didn't know anybody? Why not climb that hill? Why not book that trip that you've been thinking about for months? Why not just step a little bit outside your comfort zone? None of us ever really know where those two little words might lead. Sometimes it's just a lovely morning out, other times it turns into a new friendship, a new hobby, or even a new adventure you'll still be talking about years later. So perhaps as you're listening to this today, have a little think about your own why not. What could you say yes to this week? Now then, talking of adventures, here's a little reminder of what Adventure Geek is really all about. So this happened, if you can visualise it, there was a group of us walking the Stowe Gardens walk at the weekend, and there was a running group coming up behind us. So our group split into two and we made like a guard of honour tunnel. Um, and then we started started clapping these runners as they came through our tunnel. I think there was only Dave that had a stick or a walking pole. The rest of us were just holding our arms up. But yeah, this just sums up what Adventure Geek is like, and we did have some giggles. Are we doing away? I think that just goes to prove that Avengig has never really been about the miles, it's always been about the laughter, and we certainly have a giggle or two on these walks. Right then, let's move on to the adventure geek news. So, first up, a group of us headed over to Rugby Theatre to see We Will Rock You on Friday evening. It was one of those really warm evenings where you don't quite know whether to sit still or just melt in your seat. Luckily for me, I had Emma, also aka known as Mary Poppins, who has everything in her bag, uh, brought out a couple of fans and sort of dished them out. So that was brilliant. So thanks Emma. But despite the heat, it was a brilliant night. The cars were absolutely fantastic, and it was just lovely spending an evening together, just doing something a little bit different. So a big thank you to Carol for organising it all. It really is appreciated, and it just goes to show that AG isn't just about walking, sometimes it's just about getting together, having a Google, and enjoying each other's company. Now, speaking of having a laugh, we've got something rather excited exciting to tell you. So rather than an AG treasure hunt this year, we've decided to move it later in the year and turn it into a full-blown Halloween haunt in Stratford upon Avon. So I think spooky clues, yes, a fancy dress if you fancy it, prizes, food. So yeah, we're gonna be doing food, we've got live music, we've got a venue as well, and it's gonna be a full charity do, lots of laughs, and best of all, we'll be raising money for Shout, which is yeah, our chosen charity for AG. It's a mental health charity that does awesome work. So I'm really looking forward to putting this one together. So if it sounds like your sort of thing, then keep an eye out because bookings will be opening soon. Right, talking of social events, the hairy hikers finished a very respectable seventh in this week's quiz, uh, while the geeky blinders came in second after a winning tie break, taking home 30 quid. And then Stuart went one better by winning the snowball question. Well done, Stuart. Um, although apparently one of his winnings was one of those old pound coins that hasn't been a legal tender for years. I suppose that's one way of keeping the prize fund under control. But well done everybody on the quiz. The next quiz show or the next quiz tickets have now been released for the end of July. Um, and finally, huge congratulations as well to Emma Sapsford, uh, who won the Dunes photo competition. If you've seen the winning picture, you'll know exactly why it won. So Emma actually carried um an adventure geek, um not an adventure geek, but a post box like that she took from home all the way up into the Albanian mountains just to get the perfect shot. Talk about dedication and commitment to the task. I honestly don't know anyone that is gonna top that this year, and the photo was just stunning. So well done, Ems. You did a brilliant photo and uh certainly a worthy winner. Uh just as a reminder, your theme for July's photo competition is simply clouds. So the next out time you're out on a walk, don't forget to look up. You never know what you might spot. Now then, before we carry on, it's time for this week's mystery sound. So last week I played a mystery sound and I asked you to send me your guesses. I had some brilliant answers come through, but I think my favourite was this one from Caroline Rose. Is it a donkey? Hey, thanks for that, Caroline. And no, unfortunately, it wasn't a donkey. And for those of you who did want to know what the sound was, it was a red stag. Now I've got another one for you this week, and it's not an animal this time. I have a feeling this one might get you scratching your head as well. So have a listen and see if you can guess what the mystery sound is. So, what do you think it is? Uh, if you've got a guess, please just send me a WhatsApp voice note and or you can type your answer if you want, but I'd much rather you sent me a quick voice note because I'd love to include your guesses in the podcast. Uh, don't worry about getting it wrong. Sometimes the wrong answers are far more entertaining than the right ones. So if you've got a creative answer, just like Caroline did, then uh just send it over. So have a think, send me your guesses before Thursday, and you might just hear yourself on episode seven. Okay, let's move on to something that always makes me smile. A few pieces of good news from around the world. Right, it's time for a little bit of good news because we could all do with a bit more of that. So the first thing is plastic bags found on UK beaches have fallen by an incredible 80% since the single-use carrier bag charge was introduced. What year was that? I can't remember, I have to Google that one. Um it just shows that a small changes really can make a huge difference. Um Portugal is invested in its largest ever wind farm, another step towards cleaner energy for the future. Over in Pembrokeshire, this one made me smile. A huge project is underway to restore part of Britain's rare Atlantic rainforest, creating more space for wildlife to thrive. Yep, Wales and Pembrokeshire and Rainforest, you'd never thought they'd all be in the same sentence, would you? Um Mattel Toys, Mattel Toys has launched a blind Barbie helping more children see themselves represented and encouraging understanding from an early age. Love that one. And John Lewis, my brother works with John Lewis, but um John Lewis is trialing an in-store clothing repair service. I really hope this one catches on because not everything needs replacing, sometimes it just needs a little bit of TLC. Um, it's easy to think of everything in the world being bad news, but there are some lovely things happening if we just stop and look for it. Right, so I'm just gonna move on to the ram robbing question today, and uh the question was do you like gardening?

SPEAKER_00 9:21

So I thought if I could plant loads of meadow seeds, and I don't have to worry about the weeds, do I?

SPEAKER_02 9:27

The hardest thing in the world to grow is a meadow.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

This is the gardener. Dave's trail name is Green Finger.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Yeah, yeah, my reputation goes before me, doesn't it? Yeah, Dave and Whistlebury. Um, yeah, did 12 years as gardening? My wife does it at home, and I uh my responsibility is mowing and digging holes. I make the mole. Dig the holes.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

So apologies for not putting in the whole of the round robin audio would have just gone on and made such a long podcast. So hopefully that little snippet of Dave's will give you a taste of what everyone was talking about. Uh, and Dave is Mr. Greenfingers, I think he must be one of our longest standing members. He's been with me since more or less we started, I think before we even started charging people. So uh anyway, thanks for that, Dave. Really must get an interview with you, mate. So, next up is our resident well-being expert, Maxine. Um, as she's been reflecting on a recent trip to Albania and why stepping outside our comfort zone can help us grow in ways that we don't expect. Here's Maxine. And today this is something quite cool actually. We've literally just got back from Albania. We've done a trip in the Albanian mountains uh through the Alps, which was rather challenging at times. But this was your first sort of big trip, wasn't it, away in the mountains?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

And it was my first one on my own without a partner.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Okay, how did that feel?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Um that was a room for growth. Um, having I've never held the passports in my life. So I have been responsible for my own passport. I know it's not a huge thing, but for me it was quite quite big. And doing my own checking my own bagging, doing all of that, so that I've grown so much. Now I know I can do it, I don't need to do it again. I'm happy to travel with somebody else, but it was just to tick that box to just know you've done it, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

It wasn't just that as well. I think it was the yeah, the actual hike was quite challenging. Well, I found it was quite challenging. How did you find it?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah, well, it's it's those things are more than just a hike, aren't they? You know, it's you can walk anywhere in that sense, but it's what gets thrown at you and and what goes through your mind and how long you're walking for as well.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

So, what would you say surprised you most about yourself that you perhaps you didn't know before?

SPEAKER_00 11:57

That I am much more capable than I thought I would be. Yeah. Um I mean I put things in place week in, week out, you know, a 10-minute strength workouts, um, I have a focus on longevity, I look after um my core, and it all seemed to fit together that I needed all of that to get through the hike. So I'm much stronger than I think I am because I think I don't do much, but have a they all have a cumulative effect, so that 10 minutes here and there add up, and I am so much stronger when climbing over the boulders and the rocks and the big gaps and jumping over the streams.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

There was a few of them, yeah, and we did get wet feet. Yeah, I mean it was really tough. The heat as well absolutely was so. Would you say resilience is quite high? Did you realise how resilient you were?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Yes, I think though resilience, because obviously, as you know, I uh have um things that look after my metrics, so my actual resilience while during it dropped, it took things from me. The hike took um resilience, you know, I leaned into it. So as much as these things now will help me build a stronger resilience afterwards, at the time you rely on your resilience, so you lean into that, you lean into the strength, and then it's only now as we step away from it that all of the good now becomes stored again at a higher level, so that you've upped your game, yeah, but you don't feel that at the time, you don't feel like you're getting anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

I remember you know when we got to on the second day and we got to that shack, and then you said to me, I I probably would have given up by now. Yeah. And you said that you probably would have gone back, yeah. But you didn't really have that choice, that was taken away from you because once you committed to do the climb, you had to really finish it. Yeah, and that must have been what was came through your head then.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

So if I'd have just done that walk with me and Paul, I would have convinced him to have gone back and said that we were not physically able to do it. Um, and I think that's just self-preservation in the sense that my body hadn't done a mountain, never climbed up a mountain, didn't want to do it, um, and convinced my mind that um we didn't really need this in our life and we're perfectly capable of going through life without climbing this mountain. Um, so working through that, realising then that there is not an option to turn back, I don't want to turn back, and then I think when you change that mindset, you think you can. So I go from I think I can't to realising that actually I can.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah. And I think we we're all so much more capable of what we have in our brains. The brain is such a powerful thing that controls how we think and how we feel.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Absolutely. I mean it um it decides how much energy you're having at any one particular point. It decides how much length is in your muscles. We think when we do our flexibility, when we do our yoga, that we are stretching and we're working on building that stretch when, in fact, all we're doing is re-pattering our nervous system to allow that stretch to happen. I had the conversation a couple of times with some people on the hike about a surgeon who, when doing a hip replacement, would push your leg beyond the realms of what you would think is physically possible because your body is capable of doing that. It's the mind and the nervous system that prevents that no, we can't do that, but actually you can. You can, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Yeah, brilliant. Okay, so I would say so. Sometimes the biggest adventure isn't the mountain itself, it's discovering what you're capable of.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yes, I think the um the biggest lesson that Albania taught me, but was like we say, we're far more capable than we think, and the challenge doesn't have to be hard, but we can meet it at one step at a time. Um so whatever you're doing, even if it because the second day that we did was a lot longer, and it was just a case of putting one foot in front of the other, the moving, the the getting forward. Um sometimes the mountain changes less than the person climbing it. So uh but it was nice to do the um guided meditation about the the walk as well that we did. Yeah, um the appreciation of the f the feet, the legs, the knees.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

So just to put this into context, so we had a really long day on the first day was quite a long day, and then when we got back while James was getting the keys to the hotel, um we had a Pilates like stretching um session in the garden, then followed by a guiding grateful meditation, so being grateful for your body. Uh, and it was just awesome.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

The whole day was just really, really it really sort of completed it then, as if we'd achieved the mountain and then appreciated our bodies for for getting us there through it, um, for booking the trip, all of those things we had to be grateful for. We certainly do. So cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Anyway, thank you for joining me today. We'll round that up because I've got a dog in the background who's growling at someone out the window. So I'm gonna say goodbye now. Thanks again for joining me. Lovely, see you next time. See you later. And that's me mum ringing. Well, no one can ever say that this show is not authentic, so yeah, that was Alfie and my mum and trains going past. But Maxine, you were awesome, thank you so much for joining me, and we'll see you again in a couple of weeks. Okay, right, let's move on to the next section. So, if you enjoy hearing about our adventures, the latest Peak Pilgrimage blog, that's day two, is now live on the website, and I have to say, it was a bit of a mixed bag. We encountered what has to be the most famous Wonky Donkey. Have you ever heard that song? Uh in Derbyshire. We walked past this donkey sanctuary, and someone mentioned Wonky Donkey. I'd never heard of the song, so we're on YouTube, and oh my god, it goes on forever, but it was funny. Um, it was we we crossed loads of ridiculous like stone styles and also some stone gates, which was so so thin, we had to take our rucksacks off and then go through sideways to go through them, and then randomly there was this yellow Robin Relion in the middle of nowhere. Um, you know, just like the one out of OnlyFalls and Horses, just totally random. Um, I also described the Lathkild Dale, um, which was just it's just absolutely phenomenal. I love Lathkildale, it's one of my favourite sections on the Peak Pilgrimage Trail. So, anyway, after a long day on our feet, the evening ended with a few rather well-earned foot massages. Uh, I won't mention the palm reading we did as well, uh, but you'll have to read the blog to find out a little bit more about that. If you'd like the full travel story with plenty of photos from the day, you'll find it over on the Travel Geek website. So, before we finish this week's podcast, uh let's have a quick look at how we got on on the step up challenge during June. Despite the heat waves and despite having to cancel loads of walks because of the weather, you all managed an incredible 3,084 miles between you. That's our third highest monthly total ever, which is absolutely fantastic and something we should all be really proud of. A special congratulations goes to this month's top five walkers. In fifth place, we had Gillian with 364.9 thousand steps, fourth was Jane with 391.1,000 steps, third was Paul who clocked at 462,000 steps. Second place went to Rosie. Well done, Rosie, with an amazing 486,000 steps, and topping the leaderboard this month was the lovely Amanda with a phenomenal 499,000 steps. Well done, Amanda. Collectively, you guys have walked miles that would have taken us all the way from Toaster to Guinea-Bissau, is that how you pronounce it in West Africa? Not bad for a month that saw some pretty extreme temperatures. So whether you walk two miles or two hundred miles, thank you so much. Every step counts, every mile contributes together, uh, and we've just achieved something pretty special. So let's see where July takes us. Well, that's about it for another week. As we heard at the beginning of the podcast, the best adventures often begin with two simple words why not? So perhaps your why not this week is finally booking that walk that you've been thinking about, entering the July photo competition, joining us on an adventure to Amsterdam, or maybe even getting outside for half an hour and enjoying a bit of the fresh air. Whatever it is, I hope Adventure Geek gives you the little nudge uh that you need to say yes to something new. Thank you as always for listening. If you've enjoyed today's episode, I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a review on your favourite podcast app. It really does help other people discover Adventure Geek Radio. But don't forget to send me your guesses for this week's Mystery Sound, preferably as a voice voice note, because you might just hear yourself on next week's episode. And if you know someone who enjoys walking, travelling and the outdoors, why not share the podcast with them as well? The more people that we can encourage to get outside and embrace a little adventure, the better. If you'd like to join us on one of our walks or adventures, you'll find everything over on the Adventure Geek website or Adventure Geek travel website. We'd love for you to come along. Until next week, whatever you're up to, live your best life, take care of yourself, take care of each other, keep exploring, and remember, life is better when you add a little adventure. That's it. Thanks for everything. Bye for now. I'll see you on the other side after Croatia. Bye bye.