EP 4 - Ed Stafford | 4000 Miles in 860 Days! Record Breaking Adventurer, Explorer & TV Survivalist
Welcome back to our latest episode of the No Excuse Podcast.
Episode 4, Show Notes :
In this podcast, I have the privilege and pleasure of speaking with renowned British adventurer and explorer Ed Stafford.
Our conversation delves into Ed's remarkable journey, which includes his notable Guinness World Record for traversing the entire length of the Amazon River—a staggering 4,000-mile expedition that took him 860 days to complete.
Throughout the episode, Ed shares insights into his motivations, the challenges he encountered along the way, and the personal growth that arose from his experiences.
He reflects on the evolution of his goals, initially driven by ego, and how they transformed into a deeper understanding of himself and his purpose. The episode captures the essence of adventure, resilience, and the human spirit's capacity to adapt and thrive in the face of adversity.
Additionally, the discussion touches upon the impact of Ed's work on audiences worldwide, particularly the younger generation who look up to him as a source of inspiration. In a world increasingly disconnected from nature, Stafford's story serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of adventure and the lessons learned from stepping outside one's comfort zone.
Takeaways :
- The podcast episode highlights the remarkable journey of Ed Stafford, who is known for walking the entire length of the Amazon River over a span of 860 days, showcasing his resilience and determination in facing various challenges.
- Ed Stafford reflects on his evolution from an ego-driven adventurer to a more introspective individual, emphasizing the importance of personal growth and the lessons learned during his expeditions.
- The discussion underscores the significance of mental health awareness, particularly for men, and highlights the work of organizations like Men's Minds Matter, which aim to address the alarming rates of male suicide.
- A key takeaway is the idea that achieving goals should not come at the expense of personal relationships or mental well-being, advocating for a balanced approach to ambition and self-discovery.
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Transcript
From the ordinary to the extraordinary and everything in between.
Speaker A:Join us in the conversation.
Speaker A:What it takes to lead a no Excuse Life.
Speaker A:My name is Jamie Clark and this is the no Excuse Podcast.
Speaker A:Well, welcome back to the next episode of the no Excuse Podcast.
Speaker A:And I'm really excited for this episode, partly because while it's been a long time, I appreciate there's been a bit of an absence, but I'm now well and truly sat on the podcast saddle.
Speaker A:But more importantly, it's because of the guest today.
Speaker A:He's someone that I admire greatly.
Speaker A:He is someone who I've lived vicariously through watching him on his TV adventures in recent years.
Speaker A:And also my whole family are a great fan.
Speaker A:So it's a real privilege to be able to talk to him today and bring a conversation to you with some of his life experiences.
Speaker A:So a quick introduction of the guest.
Speaker A:He's a British born explorer.
Speaker A:He's a former army officer whose name has now become synonymous with adventure and with survival.
Speaker A:He's already racked up some very impressive lifetime achievements, one of which being awarded the Guinness World Record for walking the entire length of the Amazon river from the Amazon source right through to the Atlantic Ocean, a journey of some 4,000 miles, which took him no less than 860 days.
Speaker A:So just get your minds around that one.
Speaker A:Outside of his Amazon adventures, he's also, I would say, become a bit of a household name on the television here in the uk.
Speaker A:He won't want me to say that, but for his adventures on Discovery Channel, for his solo film, survival shows and his survival challenges, as well as some really hard hitting documentary pieces with Channel 4, amongst others, he's also, as I found out, got quite a following in China and in Asia and in South America and lots of other countries.
Speaker A:So I'm keen to talk to him about that.
Speaker A:And away from the tv, he's also an author of a number of books, he's a patron and he's a supporter of many great organizations in the uk and also very well known ambassador for the Scouts.
Speaker A:And lastly, and most importantly to me, he's a family man, he's a dedicated husband, he's a devoted father who now lives with his family in the very sunny jungle of Costa Rica.
Speaker A:So, without further ado, let me introduce the man the Daily Mail described a few years ago.
Speaker A:This is so corny.
Speaker A:Mail two years ago.
Speaker A:Is being the next British hero after Scott of the Antarctic.
Speaker A:So the man, the mythologian, Mr.
Speaker A:Ed Stafford.
Speaker A:Welcome.
Speaker B:Thank you, Jamie.
Speaker B:Thank you, mate.
Speaker B:How you doing?
Speaker A:I'm Doing really well.
Speaker A:And as.
Speaker A:As I can be very open and transparent.
Speaker A:That was my third attempt at trying to.
Speaker B:You did amazing.
Speaker A:Thank you, man.
Speaker A:Hugely.
Speaker A:I'm hugely thankful for your time today.
Speaker A:I really am.
Speaker A:I appreciate we haven't had much time to prep prior to.
Speaker A:Prior to the podcast today, so I'll try my very hardest to keep us on track and try and delve as deeply as I can.
Speaker A:I think that because we haven't had much time to prepare.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I thought we'd play a very quick game.
Speaker A:Are you up for it?
Speaker B:Yep, go for it.
Speaker A:It's not really going to be much of a choice anyway, but the game's really simple.
Speaker A:It's just as a way of trying to warm us up a little bit, I thought I would ask you.
Speaker A:Well, I put to you a number of words and all you need to do, two simple rules.
Speaker A:One rule is you need to choose one of those words over the other.
Speaker A:And the second rule simply is you don't provide any justification as to why you've chosen those words.
Speaker A:It'll become very simple.
Speaker A:Let's try it.
Speaker A:So the first one bring up my trustee.
Speaker B:Quick Game's a good game.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Especially with only two rules.
Speaker A:I can't remember one.
Speaker A:Three.
Speaker A:Okay, so this is how simple it is.
Speaker A:Leicester Tigers or Stoneygate rfc.
Speaker B:Oh, that's tricky.
Speaker A:Tigers, Borneo or Bullies?
Speaker B:Porneo?
Speaker A:Naked and Marooned or Last Man Out?
Speaker B:Naked and Marooned?
Speaker A:Sheffield or Leicester?
Speaker B:Leicester.
Speaker A:Pyrenees Mountain Dog or Newfoundland?
Speaker B:Newfoundland.
Speaker A:Eating a gecko or a sea cucumber that you just found on the beach?
Speaker A:Okay, yeah, I probably agree with you that one.
Speaker A:This one.
Speaker A:I think this is vitally important to the view in public of Great Britain.
Speaker A:Bear Grylls or Ray Mears?
Speaker B:Bear Grylls.
Speaker A:Choice.
Speaker A:Bear Grylls at Middleton Fair Grills.
Speaker A:Well, there you go.
Speaker A:You've successfully passed your selection process for no Excuse Point.
Speaker A:Guys, well done.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker A:Before we get into the meat and bones of the podcast today, one thing that stands out to me.
Speaker A:I've mentioned to you that Molly, my eldest son especially, is a huge fan of you.
Speaker A:He's 13 years old.
Speaker A:He actually uses your name in everyday conversation when it comes to talking about his own intentions of working in the jungle when he's older and being a TV presenter.
Speaker A:So what's just come to mind then is do you ever take stock for a moment that everything that you do outside the entertainment value, so there are actually people out there that draw, I suppose, motivation from what you do?
Speaker A:There could be a whole generation Young generation like my 13 year old son who looks at Ed Stafford and thinks that's what I want to do when I, when I'm older.
Speaker B:I think it's.
Speaker B:Yeah, I am aware of it.
Speaker B:Like every now and again I get messages and it's actually something my wife reminds me of a lot because, because I'm like, well, what I do, I, I've got that very British thing of being quite self deprecating.
Speaker B:So I just made daft TV programs.
Speaker B:You know, I just make things up as I go along.
Speaker B:That sort of dialog goes on and she's like, I've seen the messages that people send you and you know, some of them are, you know, I was going through real troubles with depression or I was doing this and you know, watching your stuff has really helped me to watch and see how you approach certain things.
Speaker B:So I am aware of it.
Speaker B:And it was never, I guess from the outset, if you want a sort of snapshot of how it's evolved.
Speaker B:I think when I started walking the Amazon it was all about ego, it was all about me, it was all about proving myself and beating my chest and, and, and you know, that was a compensating for an element of insecurity in myself, I think, which I think you see in a lot of explorers actually.
Speaker B:But I think it has evolved into something which I now recognize is more meaningful and has more in the world of tv it's called take home.
Speaker B:But you know, lessons for an audience, you know, so I don't really care about whittling spoons or you know, doing sort of geeky Bushcraft stuff.
Speaker B:But if, if by filming little, these little mini challenges essentially which I do at the moment is, is just going and doing an episode of Marooned.
Speaker B:It's a construct, you know, it's artificial but, but once you press play, everything is real.
Speaker B:It's like going through a scenario in the place or in the military where you're, you're being tested, like you very soon get into, you start role playing, you know what it is.
Speaker B:And, and I do recognize that how you approach things and the stresses that you're under and stuff is, is very relatable because it might not be.
Speaker B:I can't go file it.
Speaker B:It might be I can't pay the mortgage.
Speaker B:It might be I'm stressed about, you know, the kids getting kicked out of school or whatever.
Speaker B:It might be different stresses, but it's how you deal with things.
Speaker B:And therefore I do think there's hopefully a little bit of value in what I do.
Speaker B:But but it's.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's.
Speaker B:It's one of those things that I guess it's quite humbling to.
Speaker B:To sit with that there are people who.
Speaker B:Who have actually taken a fair bit of positivity out of the work that I've done.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think it must be humbling too.
Speaker A:And I think it's great that you can see it now from that perspective.
Speaker A:Probably more, I'd assume in later years, the more and more that you've done it.
Speaker A:I imagine for a long time, some of what you did, it's all to do with.
Speaker A:You're in the moment, you're filming yourself doing something.
Speaker A:But I think now that wider audience, which I've just.
Speaker A:I know alluded to, is.
Speaker A:Is huge.
Speaker A:I mean, your.
Speaker A:Your viewership in China is.
Speaker A:Is surprisingly massive.
Speaker A:I've since found out.
Speaker B:Well, it is nuts, actually.
Speaker B:Like in.
Speaker B:In England, like, I've had program go on Channel 4 recently, and it got just under a million views and it's like.
Speaker B:Which is, you know, okay for Channel four, but not enough to get recommissioned and stuff like that.
Speaker B:And it's all.
Speaker B:It all feels quite British and small numbers, relatively, really.
Speaker B:And then in China, the latest series of Maroon, before it even got released around the world, it got early release in China, got 100 million views.
Speaker B:Just like that.
Speaker B:It's like 100 million.
Speaker B:It's just ridiculous.
Speaker A:That is insane.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's numbers that you can't even.
Speaker B:Hundred million Chinese people have already watched.
Speaker B:This series has only been out two weeks.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Bonkers.
Speaker A:Crazy.
Speaker A:I'm fantastic.
Speaker A:I'm very.
Speaker A:I'm very happy for you.
Speaker A:I mean, that's so much.
Speaker A:When I was looking into a little bit of your story before the podcast, I realized that we couldn't do justice to everything you've done and some of your experiences and achievements in three podcasts.
Speaker A:But I think for those of you that who are watching, who don't know you, could we maybe just go back in the.
Speaker A:In the sort of life of you, right back to those early years when you were at school, those sort of formative years, and maybe just talk to some of those memories that you might have growing up, your.
Speaker A:Your upbringing, your school, and if anything really sticks out to you there that you think is important for.
Speaker A:For who you are now, maybe in the journey that you've been on.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Crikey.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I think if you were to underpin the essence of who I am, and, and you're starting right at the beginning of life, and this is not a Sob story at all.
Speaker B:But it definitely helps explain who I am and why I do what I do.
Speaker B:I was adopted, so my birth mother was 15 when I was conceived, 16 when she had me.
Speaker B:Too young, understandably, to be able to look after somebody.
Speaker B:And, and I, from my perspective, I'm very grateful that I was even born.
Speaker B:You know, in a lot of circumstances, I wouldn't have been with a mother of that age.
Speaker B:But there's a.
Speaker B:There's a concept surrounding adopted kids called the primal wound.
Speaker B:And essentially, when a baby's born, the only thing it can do to survive is to form a bond with its mother.
Speaker B:And obviously it doesn't recognize its sense of self.
Speaker B:So when you take it away from its main caregiver, its mother, it causes a.
Speaker B:Causes a trauma essentially to the equivalent of death as far as the baby's concerned, because that's the only thing it's programmed to do in those first few weeks and months in order to survive.
Speaker B:And you get similar.
Speaker B:I'll talk laterally about the sort of what, what that meant to me as I was growing up, but you get similar behavioral traits in incubator babies.
Speaker B:It's quite, Very, very stark similarities.
Speaker B:And, and, and literally that separation from the mother at birth has.
Speaker B:Has an impact and, and I think it caused an insecurity in me, a huge insecurity in me as I was growing up.
Speaker B:And I never really understood it, I have to admit.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I felt.
Speaker B:Always felt more comfortable in the outdoors.
Speaker B:I was in the Scouts.
Speaker B:I grew up in the countryside and we were building dens and dams and stuff.
Speaker B:And I was confident within my village setting or, you know, Scouts was a couple of villages away when that was cool.
Speaker B:That was in Leicestershire, and it was rural and it was wholesome.
Speaker B:It was in this late 70s, early 80s, and life was a bit different back then as well.
Speaker B:But in social settings, I was officially out of water, so I got sent to posh school and.
Speaker B:And I had this sense of anxiety all the way through that I eventually got expelled from boarding school because, well, I chopped a tree down that the queen planted and, and shat on the astroturf and like, basically just did everything I could to get myself kicked out of this school because I found it really constraining.
Speaker B:And I just.
Speaker B:At the time, it was anger.
Speaker B:It was kind of rage.
Speaker B:And I think with men, obviously, sometimes you can put a layer of anger over pain, basically.
Speaker B:And if you've had deep sadness in your life, somehow in men, it comes out a little bit more than women.
Speaker B:I think in terms of anger and I was just furious at the world and I wanted to smash things and cause disruption.
Speaker B:So I got expelled.
Speaker B:And so I think both of the being adopted, the resonance with the outdoor world, the being expelled from institutions and then obviously having a real good track record with institutions.
Speaker B:I then joined the British army, which was.
Speaker B:It was that weird thing.
Speaker B:It's like I kind of knew it wasn't really me, but I love the outdoors and so I just thought, are you just going to roll around in the mud for the next four years of your life?
Speaker B:It's going to be amazing.
Speaker B:But it was so constrictive and.
Speaker B:And if I'm more honest, as much as I've got a few mates who are soldiers who I enjoyed, the officer's mess was so with a few exceptions, if you listen to this and you're in that officer's mess, was they were such arrogant.
Speaker B:They really were.
Speaker B:And you know, you had to.
Speaker B:As a young officer, you had to sit at the end of the table and you.
Speaker B:You weren't allowed to initiate conversation or dominate conversation.
Speaker B:Bearing in mind I joined the army at 22, joined the officer's mess at 22, so I'm not exactly a sprog.
Speaker B:You could only compliment conversation.
Speaker B:And you got these completely arrogant wankers in the middle of the table getting marvelous, outstanding and talking about absolute nonsense.
Speaker B:Completely full of themselves.
Speaker B:So I was quite pleased when my time ran out at the end of four years.
Speaker B:I left on the.
Speaker B:Literally the day I was allowed to leave and felt an enormous freedom from that and was trying to get a job in the city.
Speaker B:For some reason I thought I wanted to drive a Porsche and have a cocaine habit and all of that stuff, like city boys do, and I couldn't get a job in the city.
Speaker B:I was really struggling.
Speaker B:It was the previous financial crisis or probably 2 financial crisis before the one we've just gone through now and, And I couldn't get a job.
Speaker B:And there was a list of very, very boring jobs.
Speaker B:Estate agents and policeman.
Speaker B:It wasn't policeman.
Speaker B:I get it.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The jobs that when they come out of the military.
Speaker B:And at the bottom of this job, this job list, I.
Speaker B:I saw expedition leader Belize.
Speaker B:And it was.
Speaker B:It was a job to take Gabbia kids into the middle of the jungle in Belize and do a conservation project.
Speaker B:And I went, right, I'm gonna do that for three months while I'm continue networking to get into the city and.
Speaker B:And get my Porsche, but never went back.
Speaker B:And I think it was to come full circle.
Speaker B:It was me Being able to, okay, the military wasn't quite me.
Speaker B:I thought it would be because of the outdoors and rolling around in the mud.
Speaker B:But now I found something which, which 100 resonates with me.
Speaker B:Expeditions.
Speaker B:Being outdoors, not necessarily being antisocial, being leading people is something I absolutely love doing.
Speaker B:Leading expeditions, leading groups of people.
Speaker B:And so I guess that was my evolution.
Speaker B:It was all quite small scale, it was all quite humble until I just came up with this daft idea to walk length of the Amazon.
Speaker B:And then, then it got a bit more grandiose, I guess.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Let me hold you there then.
Speaker A:Let me, let me just go back a little bit, if you don't mind.
Speaker A:With apologies, I seem to have chosen the noisiest seat to sit on in the world.
Speaker A:So actually if I give you a.
Speaker B:Little bit of that.
Speaker B:Talking so much.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker A:You might hear about that.
Speaker A:So I might have to move.
Speaker A:I'm just thinking about school quickly, if you don't mind.
Speaker A:You know, you, you got yourself expelled.
Speaker A:How old were you at that point?
Speaker B:16.
Speaker A:Okay, so you're sort of.
Speaker A:You're the tail end of secondary school, aren't you?
Speaker A:You're at the end of.
Speaker B:Yeah, I was actually, I was actually at the beginning of A levels.
Speaker B:First term available is when I got exposed.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And that, and that.
Speaker A:Again, just looking back at some of the things that I've read, I, I think you were talking about how possibly at school you found your passion with rugby and with sport as an outlet.
Speaker A:You just talk to that quickly as well about how I think rugby for you maybe became something you could concentrate on when times are tough.
Speaker B:I think it was what young boy with issues is self aware?
Speaker B:They're just not either.
Speaker B:You know, you've got these feelings, you've got no idea about them.
Speaker B:You've never been trained how to manage your brain or your emotions.
Speaker B:That's just not how the world still work today.
Speaker B:Even with the conversations around mental health, you just never had those conversations.
Speaker B:So you've got this energy inside you and it's explosive and it's caused me a few hiccups in my life.
Speaker B:But suddenly rugby was presented to me and it's a legitimized space in which I could just smash people.
Speaker B:And whether that be tackling or running through people, I was blessed that as I started rugby with being a lot taller.
Speaker B:I'm six foot one now, but I was six foot one when I was 12, I think.
Speaker B:And at that age I was head and shoulders above everyone else and, and it was amazing.
Speaker B:For my confidence and, and it, and gave me this avenue to, to not get into trouble, but use, use that, use that rage inside me for, for positive, for something positive.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So yeah, I, I, I, it, it had a big, big impact on going from a shy young boy in social settings, certainly to, to developing more confidence.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:As I mentioned, you know, I'm a dad.
Speaker A:I've got two beautiful boys myself.
Speaker A:You know, one's 13 and I, I always worry about, you know, the things that happen outside of a parent's control.
Speaker A:When, when your young ones are at school, do you think that looking back at school and I'll move past this, but could anything been different for you at school to made that easier?
Speaker A:Did you feel that there's a sort of place that you could have opened up and spoken to about if you were finding things difficult or very just, you're a young lad, just closed shop.
Speaker A:I'm just going to remain angry and that's going to come out and in any way that it does, you know.
Speaker B:Definitely things could have been different.
Speaker B:It's okay.
Speaker B:If I would never.
Speaker B:My eldest is seven Ran and he's, you know, he's had his own issues.
Speaker B:When we came, when we brought him to Costa Rica two years ago, you know, he would, he, he kicked my wife in the fanny.
Speaker B:He was headbutting his sisters.
Speaker B:He was furious at me.
Speaker B:He's like, why have you taken me away from all my friends?
Speaker B:So you've got huge anger issues there.
Speaker B:And obviously that, you know, not just triggered me but like resonates like, what have I done to this kid?
Speaker B:And, and if the concept of putting someone who's already starting to show anger into a boarding school in an environment where I would have less and less influence over it doesn't even cost my brain.
Speaker B:I think, personally, I think a lot of the issues I had, it wasn't my adopted mum and dad's fault at all.
Speaker B:But I think being sent to boarding school meant that it was, you know, it is a sort of Lord of the Flies type scenario.
Speaker B:The teachers don't really, back in the day, didn't really care about the students.
Speaker B:They, they did their lessons.
Speaker B:But you got brought up by the older boys in the house who'd all been bullied and you know, it was a twisted and quite dark environment really.
Speaker B:And therefore I think, you know, my mom and dad lost me in terms of that connection to me for the period I was there.
Speaker B:So I definitely wouldn't send my kids away for boarding school.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, as they grow up.
Speaker B:I think that a lot of people have said to me who've got older kids that they've, they've lost their kids once they've entered teenage years, once they've got a phone, once they've got social media accounts and, you know, and I was quite resigned to the fact that that's just going to happen at some stage or lose them and hopefully when they're adults they'll, they'll come back, you know.
Speaker B:But I've had the conversations also with people who've got kids of sort of teenage years during lockdown who said, no, actually that doesn't have to happen as long as you keep that relationship close.
Speaker B:And I really like the work of Gabor Mate as well, who's sort of quite an aging now psychologist and Auschwitz survivor.
Speaker B:But he's, he's, he's written a book called Keep Them Close.
Speaker B:And it's, it's all about ensuring that the bonds between your children and you as strong all the way through so that their main influence is you.
Speaker B:And it's not that they end up following their friends down a slippery path, it's you can help support them through that.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, I would do things very differently, but we live in different times and have fun awareness about these things.
Speaker A:Yeah, and hindsight, always hindsight.
Speaker A:We have a saying here, family first.
Speaker A:It's something that I repeat to the boys constantly because I'm very similar in that vein.
Speaker A:And they'll have their computer time that they can have because sometimes actually having an iPad just for 20 minutes is a savior, you know, if you're trying to get something done.
Speaker A:But I think it's the important thing of pulling them away from the computer and being outside.
Speaker A:We love being outside, we love nature.
Speaker A:But there are, you can definitely see it, very easy for kids nowadays to be drawn straight into that.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, that, just adrenaline, that sort of, that, that constant loop of computer game, computer game.
Speaker A:Being with my friends online, computer game, phone, you know, it's, it's a difficult one.
Speaker A:So, you know, huge props to you to go to Costa Rica.
Speaker A:I mean, you've obviously really taken a big step to try and open their minds up to what can be opposed to what they think it is, you know, in this little computer game behind the screen.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, there's twofold reason for that.
Speaker B:One is because life is more outdoors here.
Speaker B:You know, they, they are playing in streams, but we whack onto a river which has got little pools in that you can swim in and it' enough to swim in and, and that's beautiful.
Speaker B:And there's monkeys coming down to the breakfast table and stuff in the morning and it's cool that they've got their interaction, but it's also because of the fact that it's like going back 25 years, coming to Costa Rica and there isn't the same influence that phones have in the uk and so we've been able to shield them from a lot of that.
Speaker B:They have got an iPad each and plane journeys and long car journeys.
Speaker B:But the car journey here, when I say longs, like seven hour car journeys, they'll get them.
Speaker B:But I don't think all that, all that takes away from them is those fights that you have with your siblings and cars when you're growing up.
Speaker B:So they, yeah.
Speaker B:So yeah, for those seven hours on a long car journey, they're zoned.
Speaker B:They're not really evolving as human beings, but for the majority of their life they, they are.
Speaker B:And, and I think they're really important thing with getting kids outside and detracting from or putting something in, in their life that is wholesome, that isn't a screen or a games console or whatever is adding an element of danger.
Speaker B:And I think that's, I think that sometimes is missing.
Speaker B:So I'll get the kids outside.
Speaker B:Let's go on a dog walk.
Speaker B:It's like what kid likes going on a dog walk?
Speaker B:They, they, they want to do really, really exciting things, which means climbing over stuff that if you fall off you might hurt yourself.
Speaker B:And I think that for me that's the, that's certainly what I've seen with my kids is soon as it starts getting dangerous, it's then exciting and then they're completely involved and love it.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:It's true.
Speaker B:It's a tricky one for everyone.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So with danger then and risk, because I know that's one thing that a lot of people associate you with at certain parts of your journey will be risk and things and it's different.
Speaker A:The risk that we're willing to take.
Speaker A:Does that mean though that with, with raising your children as you are, your levels of risk for them are higher, do you think, compared to maybe the typical family in the UK right now?
Speaker B:Probably, yeah.
Speaker B:But consciously so, I think it's not a recklessness.
Speaker B:Um, but I do try.
Speaker B:And for example, there's, there's snakes outside, you know, and the kids are always walking around barefoot and you're like, if you were to do a risk settlement or that you're like, well, does that add up?
Speaker B:Like, and, and, and I Don't know, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
Speaker B:Like the, no one wears seatbelts here.
Speaker B:And, and we know coming from the UK that's probably a good idea to wear a seatbelt.
Speaker B:And yet no one drives more than about 35, 40 miles an hour.
Speaker B:And so we kind of relaxed and gone with no seatbelt policy.
Speaker B:No one wears helmets on their motorbikes around here.
Speaker B:Again, some of them have horrific accidents and die.
Speaker B:But there's just an element to which I, I'm enjoying and it, there is an element of it that sounds reckless and when I have the moral debate with myself about the seat belts especially, I'm like, what are you doing there?
Speaker B:You know, what, what, what, what?
Speaker B:But there is, I say it again, it's like going back 35 years, it's like there's something I'm tapping into something that feels like my childhood in the 70s in the fact when wearing seat belts wasn't the law and you know, it wasn't like everyone thought that everyone was reckless in the 70s.
Speaker B:It was just normal and out here it's just normal.
Speaker B:So I guess it, that's kind of making an excuse for myself.
Speaker B:But, but I think risk in life is important and, and, and I think them learning their own mistakes is super important and then having to pick themselves up from that and evolve as human beings is super important as well.
Speaker B:So yeah, it's a balance.
Speaker B:And you constantly as a parent, aren't you, you're doing a dynamic risk assessment the whole time going, look, if he fell off that he'd probably hurt himself but he's not going to cause himself too much harm.
Speaker B:And if that's the case, then crack on, do it.
Speaker B:Sometimes it goes wrong and sometimes, yeah, I mean to take an extreme, when Laura did, my wife did a expedition to kayak the length of the Essequibo.
Speaker B:I, I, it was a 3 month x 4 month expedition.
Speaker B:My boy was 8 months old and I, I flew into the jungle to take, ran in to see her halfway through her expedition and we're, we're going up this, going up this river driven on a outboard, outboard motor with an indigenous guy driving and my little boy here with his little life jacket on and stuff and amazingly never saw a jaguar in the whole time I walked the Amazon, got a jaguar sunbathing on the rock over there and like couldn't walk at this stage, this boy couldn't.
Speaker B:It was hard, it was on formula and, and yeah, I kind of think if you think that at that age it's worth reading a bedtime story for your kids because it's all going in then.
Speaker B:Then surely shooting up a jungle river at the age of 8 months with Jaguars all over the place is probably a good thing too.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:We do take more risks than most, but I like to think it's for the right reason because I think the only things that I've achieved in life has come because I've taken risks.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I think I saw an unreason video of yours waking up to be stung by a scorpion in bed.
Speaker A:Was that right?
Speaker A:Think of that.
Speaker A:Yeah, you just take to bed.
Speaker B:I think there's a nest under the house.
Speaker B:It's annoying the cast.
Speaker B:I don't know if you've seen that video online of cats near snakes.
Speaker B:And like apparently the cat's reaction is like three times faster than the snake.
Speaker B:So it's like if you've got cats, don't worry about snakes because they literally they.
Speaker B:A snake will strike a cat and they'll.
Speaker B:They'll just jump out of the way.
Speaker B:They're just.
Speaker B:They're just faster than them.
Speaker B:And it seems the same with scorpions because like they'll just play with scorpions and the stings haven't been taken off by me or anything and they're just toying around.
Speaker B:They never get stung at all when they're just like batting them around.
Speaker B:So yeah, there are scorpions.
Speaker B:I got.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Woke up the other morning and literally sat bolt up.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And went what the.
Speaker B:And yeah, just this proper pain.
Speaker B:It's like, I don't know where you've been stumbled scorpion.
Speaker B:It's like, I don't know, 10 bee stings put together or something.
Speaker B:It's quite cheeky.
Speaker B:And yeah, I'm happy with you just.
Speaker A:To do that for us and then film it.
Speaker A:That's fine.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah, I'll do.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So we sort of.
Speaker A:We come up then to the army stuff.
Speaker A:I appreciate you were sort of chasing down maybe the.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The adventure and your love of the outdoors.
Speaker A:It does seem like a strange.
Speaker A:You leave that structured environment of the school, which necessarily you weren't that happy with, to then join.
Speaker A:Probably the most structured environment you could ever join as in the military.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Outside of maybe how that may didn't necessarily fit with you.
Speaker A:Was there anything positive though that you took from your time in the military that then served you well in the journeys afterwards?
Speaker B:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker B:I mean some really good friendships, but I think the main one certainly has it come in relation to what I've done Since is I was pushed hard, harder than I'd been pushed.
Speaker B:There's exercises like the Sandhurst, not that difficult but the platoon commander's battle course was, was hard and you know, pushed way beyond what I thought my physical limit was.
Speaker B:And I remember when I started watching, sorry, walking the length of the Amazon and we were walking up the Coca canyon to get to Nevada Mismi, which is the highest mountain and it's the, where the source of the Amazon is.
Speaker B:And you know this, the three week walk up is essentially desert conditions in the Colca canyons about from memory, 3km deep or something ridiculous like that.
Speaker B:So you're having to walk by this river and every tributary is obviously a canyon as well and you have to go down and up like 3km and like multiple times and like a few days anyway it was ridiculous.
Speaker B:And I remember Luke, who was my original walking partner, often saying to me, this is the by far the hardest thing I've ever done.
Speaker B:And I think for me it was just nice to know that when I was in the military I'd been pushed harder and, and it wasn't therefore the hardest thing and therefore I'd got this sort of bank account of memories of having been pushed harder and it gave me a bit more reserve, I think and, and therefore I wasn't so out on a, you know, this wasn't so extraordinarily difficult for me that I couldn't cope with it.
Speaker B:So yeah, it had its benefits and I think, you know, turned me from a spotty student into a, into a man, you know, I think giving that weird relationship of an officer and soldiers.
Speaker B:You know, I was 20 or 20, no, 22 when I, when I joined my regiment and put in charge of, you know, soldiers who've been serving 19 years or whatever and, and, and to think you can walk in on day one and tell your platoon sergeant what to do is a, it's just an absolute fallacy, you know, you, of course you can't.
Speaker B:And I've got mates who joined the regiment at the same time who really fell on the wrong side of that because they came out of Sanders thinking that they were, you know, this, this military guru and they got no experience at all and you know, trying to give their platoon press ups on an exercise in Salisbury Plain where Sergeant just shakes his head because they hadn't done an attack.
Speaker B:Well, it challenges shakes his head.
Speaker B:Then the corporals look at him shake their heads and all the soldiers refuse as well.
Speaker B:And he's just standing there being completely, completely ignored by the whole of his regiment.
Speaker B:So I think that's a balance as well, coming into that.
Speaker B:And you.
Speaker B:And you learn about life.
Speaker B:You know, you learn about having to earn respect, you learn about managing people.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, there was, there was a few, Few positive things to take out of it.
Speaker B:I just inherently didn't.
Speaker B:There was a pomposity of.
Speaker B:Is that a word?
Speaker B:They were pompous?
Speaker A:If it's not, I understand what you mean.
Speaker B:It was the word we were talking about before we went on air that we said we wouldn't use.
Speaker B:But, yeah, they were them.
Speaker B:See you next Tuesday.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I couldn't stand that bit.
Speaker B:And there, there was a bit of a chip on my shoulder.
Speaker B:I mean, I joined as an officer.
Speaker B:I should have been prepared for social settings that were somewhat, I don't know, ra.
Speaker B:Um, and yet.
Speaker B:And yet I kind of wasn't.
Speaker B:I, I, I didn't.
Speaker B:I didn't like it at all.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah, and, and so there was good and bad, but.
Speaker B:But I.
Speaker B:On the whole, I'm kind of glad I've done it.
Speaker B:You.
Speaker B:You can speak to other ex military people who have obviously got fascinating stories and you speak the same language.
Speaker B:I think that's quite important.
Speaker B:You know, you know, been a regular army officer and the infantry for four years and I think, therefore, you.
Speaker B:It just opens up a world where people can actually speak to you who are in the military and you can relate to them.
Speaker B:And I think that's quite beneficial as well.
Speaker B:Especially do.
Speaker B:Because a lot of the safety behind the scenes are all ex military guys.
Speaker A:Do you find anything that you rely on in, in that sort of world of survival was anything that you had exposure to whilst in the army?
Speaker B:Very little, actually.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Again, all the posters for joining the army was here.
Speaker B:You're going to be wind surfing in the Caribbean.
Speaker B:You're going to.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:I mean, crikey.
Speaker B:What was the most adventurous thing I did?
Speaker B:I think we went mountain biking in the French Alps.
Speaker B:That was about it.
Speaker B:But no, none of the survival skills came from that.
Speaker B:I didn't do jwick jungle warfare instructor or anything like that.
Speaker B:Didn't have any jungle experience before my first expedition, which was for a charity called Trekforce.
Speaker B:When I went to Belize, no jungle experience at all.
Speaker B:And actually there.
Speaker B:Do you remember Bruce Parry?
Speaker B:Are you too young to remember Bruce Parry?
Speaker B:But Bruce Parry, he was an ex Royal Marine and he was also a.
Speaker B:An instructor for Trekforce.
Speaker B:And they.
Speaker B:Because none of the new instructors for these expeditions were about to start, had an experience of going to the jungle.
Speaker B:They shipped in Bruce Parry and.
Speaker B:And he gave us some amazing, like, firelighting lessons in the jungle and stuff like that.
Speaker B:And I think since then, it's mostly been indigenous people that I've learned from and just picking up things as I've gone along from.
Speaker B:From the indigenous guys series, like Marooned are amazing because I'll always put a couple of days beforehand where you've got time with locals in order to learn what plants are completely inedible and what leaves they use to thatch and.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And it's quite humble because one, it means you're not just doing the same thing in every single episode, but two, it means you're learning about each environment that you're going to.
Speaker B:So that's been a massive learning.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Learning journey for me.
Speaker A:So the.
Speaker A:That sort of time, then between when you left the army to you.
Speaker A:You spoke about looking to my work potentially in the city.
Speaker A:How did you go from that then to.
Speaker A:You're talking about expeditions and leading expeditions.
Speaker A:It's quite.
Speaker A:There's quite a jump.
Speaker B:Well, because this job of being an expedition leader came up and I couldn't get a job doing anything else.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And then on that expedition, I had a little epiphany that I didn't want to.
Speaker B:I didn't want to go and work in the city.
Speaker B:You know, I didn't.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I think there was.
Speaker B:There was.
Speaker B:I'm slightly misremembering.
Speaker B:There were.
Speaker B:There were two places.
Speaker B:One was when I started expeditions and then I had a little wobble because expeditions didn't pay much money at the time.
Speaker B:Trekforce, I think, paid me £50 a week.
Speaker B:But you had all your expenses paid and it was.
Speaker B:It was a giggle.
Speaker B:But I ran out of money, then had to do a.
Speaker B:Not mercenary job, but a consultant job out in Afghanistan and.
Speaker B:And just in order to earn more money.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And then I think at that point, I.
Speaker B:I came back and retrained as a personal trainer in England.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:And then the expedition company, Trekforce, said, look, Ed, will you do one more expedition?
Speaker B:Because Prince Harry is wanting to do a Trekforce expedition and we'd like you to be his expedition leader.
Speaker B:And I was like, well, it's.
Speaker B:That's too good an opportunity to turn down.
Speaker B:So I agreed to do it due to the media attention he'd just received in.
Speaker B: I think it must have been: Speaker B:The World cup that we won in, in Australia, Rugby World Cup.
Speaker B:And because of the media attention that Prince Harry had received, they decided to change his gap Year plan.
Speaker B:So he never ended up doing it.
Speaker B:But yeah, it was on that expedition that I, I think I went on a run during the jungle training and, and I would, I came to a start because the, these white tailed deer skipped across the path in front of me and I had to stop.
Speaker B:And then I looked up in the trees and there were howler monkeys in the trees.
Speaker B:I know they were spider monkeys and they were, they were throwing their own poo down at me and, and I was just like, this beats being a personal trainer, doesn't it?
Speaker B:You know, motivating overweight mums in, in some living room in Market Harbor.
Speaker B:It just doesn't compare in terms of a life experience.
Speaker B:And so I was like, well, even though this is really low pay, I'm going to try and make a career and a life out of, of leading expeditions.
Speaker B:So yeah, I did.
Speaker A:So did you actually lead an expedition with Prince Harry?
Speaker B:No, no, no, it just lured me back into it.
Speaker B:But I'm very glad it did.
Speaker B:And I think it was, it was actually Bruce Parry that inspired me to walk the length of the Amazon because he, when he was coming and teaching us all, because we had no jungle experience, he was teaching us all this junk jungle stuff.
Speaker B:He, he talked about this expedition that he'd just done to try and walk across Irian Jaya, West Papua, and they'd had cannibal encounters, they'd had first contacts and it was just incredible.
Speaker B:And he'd filmed the whole thing on a little Handycam and it had been made into a documentary which I thoroughly recommend everyone watches, called Cannibals and Crampons.
Speaker B:And it was the precessor obviously to, to the, the, the precursor to him going and doing a tribe series with the BBC or multiple tribe series with the BBC, which is obviously what we became famous for.
Speaker B:But, but yeah, he was just saying, look, if you want to make a name for yourself and you want to earn more than 50 pounds a week doing expeditions, then do something daft and film it.
Speaker B:So I did something daft and filmed it.
Speaker A:So was it always going to be the, the whole length of, of the Amazon River?
Speaker A:Was that something from the early days you decided that was the challenge, or did it grow during the time I.
Speaker B:Was looking, I was looking for expeditions to the Amazon.
Speaker B:I'd never been to the Amazon before.
Speaker B:I felt like I'd got quite a bit of jungle experience.
Speaker B:I'd been to Borneo with Trekforce, I'd been to Belize a number of times, Guyana.
Speaker B:I felt like I could, I could handle myself in the jungle, if you know what I meant.
Speaker B:But I'd never been to the Amazon property and I was looking at other expeditions.
Speaker B:I read a book called Running the Amazon, which is written by Joe Kane, who's an American, but him and a.
Speaker B:And a Czechoslovakian guy called Pyotr Himelinski kayak down the full length of the Amazon.
Speaker B:They started with a massive expedition.
Speaker B:Only two of them actually ended up making it.
Speaker B:The rest all dropped out along the way.
Speaker B:It was phenomenal expedition, but they were whizzing past a lot of tribes in their plastic kayaks and they were firing arrows at them and you know, it was hairy, but they seemed to be skimming the surface of, of the actual expedition and not really meeting the people who I thought must be therefore fascinating.
Speaker B:So partly because of that and partly because I'm rubbish at kayaking, I decided to walk the length of the Amazon because I thought if you're walking into those village and having to look the same indigenous people in the eye and try and convince them not to fire an arrow in your head or chest or whatever, then surely that's going to be the more the, the more immersive, amazing expedition.
Speaker B:So that's what I tried to do.
Speaker A:I mean trying to convince somebody not to eat you is always a good start, isn't it?
Speaker B:Never, never saw any cannibals.
Speaker B:None talk his stories about them.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I think because we walked by the river, we got quite a.
Speaker B:A sanitized version of the tribes that we encountered because they'd had fair bit of contact with the outside world because of the fact that the Amazon river is the main logistical artery.
Speaker B:And so you've got boats going by a lot.
Speaker B:So they've seen white people normally a couple of times we went quite far away from the river because of the flooded forest and we had to walk so 80 kilometers inside.
Speaker B:And then you start getting a lot more.
Speaker B:My brain's going to Spanish but bravos a kind of fierce almost some of the tribes a little bit more fierce and they might have.
Speaker B:The adults might have seen a missionary or, you know, someone like that.
Speaker B:But like that was one time when they once saw a white person.
Speaker B:Some of the kids had never seen white people and that was, that was quite exciting.
Speaker B:Also quite scary as well in, especially in Peru because there are a lot of the.
Speaker B:There's a lot of myths around.
Speaker B:I think they're myths around white people coming into indigenous villages and stealing babies and in, in order to traffic their traffic babies, but also killing people and taking their body parts in order to sell on the human body part market.
Speaker B:Now, I never saw any evidence for that.
Speaker B:And, but that's what they believed.
Speaker B:And therefore, when I'd walk into communities, you know, women would grab their children and scream and run away from it, which is all quite disconcerting, really.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Just slightly, yeah.
Speaker A:The mammoth task that would be walking the Amazon.
Speaker A:But how, at the very start of that, do you even bring something like this together?
Speaker A:Because it can't just be simply you and a backpack and a camera going for a walk.
Speaker A:I mean, there must be huge logistical planning and all of this.
Speaker A:And, and how did you even fund it, if you don't mind me asking?
Speaker A:How is that something that came about?
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I think funding was the main obstacle.
Speaker B:But, but I would go back to the beginning of your question and say it was just a man in a rucksack going, right, let's walk downhill and follow this river.
Speaker B:Because, because there was so much that you couldn't plan for.
Speaker B:And therefore, I think it was, you had to just go like, trust your experience and make it up as you go along and just go, okay, wow.
Speaker B:So, so let's go back to the money thing and we'll come back to that.
Speaker B:The money.
Speaker B:I was, I was sending all these cold emails out to companies, trying to word them correctly, and none of it was working at all.
Speaker B:A mate who's quite posh said to me, ed, we've got space on a pheasant shoot.
Speaker B:Can you, can you be one of the guns or whatever?
Speaker B:And I was like, mate, I don't have any plus fours or anything like that.
Speaker B:He's, I'll lend you some.
Speaker B:I lend you.
Speaker B:So I went and shot a load of pheasants.
Speaker B:And at the dinner, while everyone's drinking port afterwards, this guy comes up to me and goes, oh, and what you've done is marvelous.
Speaker B:Didn't want to say anything in front of the chaps, but we'll sponsor your entire expedition.
Speaker B:And so he sponsored the entire expedition.
Speaker B:In fact, he went, he, he, they had clients withholding money.
Speaker B:That was another financial downturn about halfway through the expedition.
Speaker B:So they actually stopped sponsoring me halfway through it.
Speaker B:But it got me off the starting line.
Speaker B:You know, it got, it got me to the, to the state end of doing the expedition.
Speaker B:Then I literally had to rely on people donating to the trip who had, who'd found the expedition and wanted me to keep going, which was, again, extraordinarily humbling.
Speaker B:It was amazing, actually.
Speaker B:But people kept me out there by, by donating through PayPal, which is pretty cool.
Speaker A:PayPal, yeah.
Speaker A:Of course.
Speaker A:This is going back.
Speaker A:How long ago would this be now?
Speaker B:15 years?
Speaker B:Yeah, 15 years.
Speaker A:Did you start that on your own?
Speaker B:No, I started it with a mate of mine called Luke and we were very good mates and I think we were each other's catalyst for actually starting the whole thing.
Speaker B:I think if it had been me on my own, I would have been somewhat more daunted by it.
Speaker B:But I'd always had plans to try and walk the length of the Amazon after I'd read Joe Kane's book Running the Amazon.
Speaker B:And, and I was just in a bar and in Belize, actually I was country manager of Trekforce at that stage and Luke was an expedition leader and I was talking about my plans.
Speaker B:He's like, I'll do that with you.
Speaker B:And I was like, right.
Speaker B:We both had a few beers, obviously, and, and, and the next morning no one backed out.
Speaker B:Which was, which was the surprising bit because you'd think, wouldn't you?
Speaker B:Oh, that was just bravado.
Speaker B:But through various.
Speaker B:I mean, Luke did three months, but he was definitely the catalyst to, for me to start.
Speaker B:But his life situation was very different to mine, I think.
Speaker B:You know, I had no responsibilities, no girlfriend.
Speaker B:He'd just got engaged to be married.
Speaker B:And I think that always tugs you in different directions.
Speaker B:And we'd very soon realize that what we thought we could do in one year was going to take at two, probably more.
Speaker B:And again, I.
Speaker B:Okay, I can't really avoid this.
Speaker B:I hadn't done a lot of work on myself at the time.
Speaker B:And so I think as things like money, pressure and every, every stress that was going on in the expedition came up, I projected a lot of it onto Luke and so I know that he felt targeted and I'm not proud of it to this day, but, you know, I tried to contact Luke when I was writing the book actually of walking the Amazon just to get more of his backstory, do his story justice.
Speaker B:And, and I just got a one line response saying, I never want to hear from you ever again.
Speaker B:So, so it was, it ran deep with him and, and so, yeah, one of my biggest regrets, I guess is, is how, how that relationship ended up going.
Speaker B:And I thought, you know, what, what sort of goes on on expedition, finish the next world back, we'll just have a beer and we'll put the world to rights.
Speaker B:But it ran a lot deeper than that with Luke.
Speaker A:Yeah, I suppose it would have been such an intense time for you as well, crammed into such a short time that emotions would have been even rawer if, if they were felt that way.
Speaker A:And especially you've got an open sort of odd branch to.
Speaker A:You know, you're there for him if you ever wanted to reach out.
Speaker B:I suppose I am, but I.
Speaker B:I've kind of resigned to the fact.
Speaker B:I doubt it was getting happen now, I think.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean I'm not justifying what I did, but I think a lot of us when we're in a.
Speaker B:When we're in an insecure place, we put other people down in order to feel better about ourselves.
Speaker B:I mean I know that my sister does it.
Speaker B:He always used to do it anyway.
Speaker B:And it's like this childish thing, isn't it?
Speaker B:You like.
Speaker B:I don't know, it's when you talk about people and they're doing something different to you, but you put them down, it makes you.
Speaker B:Yeah, but boys you doesn't it?
Speaker B:And it's immature and it's ill evolved and I'm not proud of it, but that was what was going on and so when he couldn't navigate, I'd kind of, you know, dwell on that a bit more because it made me feel better that I could navigate a little bit better than him and, and it was mean.
Speaker B:It was me but you know, you know, we all have to grow up and, and work out ourselves, don't we?
Speaker B:And what's the right and wrong thing to do.
Speaker B:And at that stage I was still very immature.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So how did that affect you at that moment?
Speaker A:So he's left you find yourself the day afterwards you.
Speaker A:Was there a strange motivation that you, you wanted to continue even more now sort of prove people wrong or were you questioning things?
Speaker B:Combination of liberation, you know, thank, thank God it's just me now and terror and because, because I knew that the area we were about to walk through in, in Peru, the, the Shining Path territory, the Red zone was going to be super dangerous and like the.
Speaker B:There was.
Speaker B:It's weird when you've got another British person, especially with you and you, you're walking into a village and you think you might get killed, like, but you're laughing about it to each other and it, and you're kind of British.
Speaker B:It's that stupidity of having a mate there and you.
Speaker B:And, and there's somehow the intensity is reduced.
Speaker B:But as soon as Luke left you walking into that village and there's.
Speaker B:The humor's gone like it's so much more intense, so much more real and, and yeah, I guess you, you're completely on your own, aren't you.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it was quite an unsettling.
Speaker B:I'd say two or three months until I met a book guy who initially I didn't get on with at all called Cho.
Speaker B:He was an evangelical Christian.
Speaker B:He started singing evangelical songs at the top of his voice when he was walking with me.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh, my God, this guy's a complete dick.
Speaker B:And he kept.
Speaker B:He kept doing that thing that, you know, sort of outdoor pursuits instructors sometimes think, are you motivated?
Speaker B:And I was like, I was until you opened your mouth.
Speaker B:So, hey, we said we didn't use that word, didn't we?
Speaker B:And it was weird.
Speaker B:That took a long time for me to.
Speaker B:I can see exercising my demons and recognizing such an intense environment.
Speaker B:I think that I thought, especially latterly come to realize that expeditions are amazing for working through your own issues because they're extraordinarily intense.
Speaker B:You've got challenge after challenge and what.
Speaker B:Everything.
Speaker B:All of your faults start to come to the surface because it is so, so real and so visceral, and you're having to rely on yourself so much to get through things that, you know, invariably the things that are laying you down are the things you end up working on.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I'm not this person anymore.
Speaker B:But I was furious at Cho for various reasons.
Speaker B:Probably the similar reasons I was angry at Luke and.
Speaker B:And it took a long time to recognize his value.
Speaker B:And his.
Speaker B:His.
Speaker B:He was incredibly constant.
Speaker B:You know, I was emotionally up and down like this.
Speaker B:He was a rock, absolute rock.
Speaker B:And he'd.
Speaker B:He'd have all sorts of very wise sayings.
Speaker B:He was virtually uneducated.
Speaker B:I mean, when he started the walk with me, he was reading the Bible, but he was reading out loud.
Speaker B:And again, I found that quite annoying at.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker B:Like, Joe, can you read that in your head, please?
Speaker B:And he didn't know how.
Speaker B:He'd never understood the concept of actually reading but not opening your mouth and speaking.
Speaker B:And I was like, what do you mean you don't.
Speaker B:And I was like, you just don't.
Speaker B:You just.
Speaker B:Just read it.
Speaker B:Just shut your mouth and just read it.
Speaker B:And it was.
Speaker B:I mean, beautifully naive in some ways, but that it never occurred to me and that he didn't have to speak when he was reading.
Speaker B:So, like, not educated.
Speaker B:And yet he had this expression, cuando I I cuando no I no I, which is, if you literally translate it as when there is, there is, and when there isn't, there isn't.
Speaker B:And this was in terms of a lot of things, but this was particularly when we ran out of food.
Speaker B:And he would see me absolutely fixated.
Speaker B:I, I'd like go, we, we ran out of food basically a number of times and, and I would spend all night dreaming about Mr.
Speaker B:Kipling's French fancies, the pink ones particularly.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But I, I drive myself mad because, you know when you get to that stage in the night where you can tell the light's changing and it's coming morning again and the birds start singing, you've not slept at all.
Speaker B:And Cho could see me slightly unraveling at this point.
Speaker B:And this is why he brought up this expression, when there is, there is and when there isn't, there isn't.
Speaker B:And it was actually due to the fact that when he was about 12, his town where he lived in Satipa was attacked by the Shining Path, the communist guerrillas that swept through Peru.
Speaker B:And he had to escape up into the mountains and his mum and dad stayed in the town and he could hear, in the mountains, he could hear the gunshots and the explosions going off in his dam, but he had to live there.
Speaker B:And his expression when there is race and when there isn't, there isn't, was a 12 year old's wisdom of, there's no point focusing on not having any food because you don't have any food.
Speaker B:You might as well accept your current situation and sort of move forward positively.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:Yeah, so an incredibly solid character.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I have no doubt he ended up walking with me to two, two full years to the day until we reached the mouth of the Amazon, which is extraordinary.
Speaker B:And became, became a proper friend.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:When was the last time we had conversation?
Speaker B:About six months ago.
Speaker B:It tends to be about twice a year that we, that we get in touch with each other.
Speaker B:He came over to England for about five months post expedition.
Speaker B:Live with my mum up in Leicestershire.
Speaker B:Played rugby for my local rugby club.
Speaker B:Broke his hand actually playing rugby.
Speaker B:And yeah, got overseas player of the year at the end of, end of season dinner as obviously the only overseas player that we had in our team.
Speaker B:The boys really looked after him actually.
Speaker B:It was beautiful.
Speaker B:He said when he.
Speaker B:I remember him going home to Peru saying, I've got more friends in England than I've got in the whole of Peru now or in Leicester than I have got in Hollow, which is cool.
Speaker A:So, so when you're talking about food, if you're, you're, I'm assuming you're following the actual lay of the river along your, your route, how are you resourcing yourself?
Speaker A:How are you refeeding?
Speaker A:Are you having to Go completely off track to go and pick supplies up or people coming to you or how did that work?
Speaker B:It was, yeah, it was never meant to be a survival expedition.
Speaker B:It was just meant to be an expedition.
Speaker B:No one had walked the length of the Amazon.
Speaker B:So I wasn't putting myself in any artificial constraints, but I just went that.
Speaker B:There's a big settlement from a map recce.
Speaker B:There's a big settlement, there's a big settlement, there's a big settlement.
Speaker B:Let's hop from one to the other and resupply each settlement.
Speaker B:The problem was the distance between settlements and especially as we got into Peru, the, the, the density of communities became a lot lower and I think, I think the furthest we had to walk between settlements was three weeks.
Speaker B:But that's three weeks without seeing any signs of human beings at all.
Speaker B:Not a track, not a trail, not a cut branch, nothing.
Speaker B:And I mean it was, it was, that was the bit of the expedition I loved, I have to admit.
Speaker B:That was that, that was absolutely what it said on the tin.
Speaker B:You know, exactly what it said on the tin.
Speaker B:That was, you know, having to fish for piranhas, having to make piranha jerky or built on piranhas, having you do, literally having to.
Speaker B:We ran out of wire leaders.
Speaker B:You know, the, the sections of wire you put on the end of a hook so that if you've got things like piranhas, they'll just bite your hook off.
Speaker B:But we ran out of these leaders, the sort of shop bought ones.
Speaker B:And Cho managed to, came up with this concept of daisy chaining a load of sewing needles together and making wire leaders using my leatherman and forging them in the fire.
Speaker B:But it was, you know, you're thinking outside the box.
Speaker B:You're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker B:It just felt amazing.
Speaker B:It was, we were both buzzing off it.
Speaker B:It was hard, hard, hard.
Speaker B:And we lost huge amounts of weight in that period of time.
Speaker B:But, but it was, that was, that was how I imagined the whole of the Amazon would be.
Speaker B:And yet the vast majority of it was dealing with, see, chalking yourself out of tense situations with, with tribal people really.
Speaker B:Lesser in Peru, lesser in Brazil, more improved.
Speaker B:I think Brazil had much more connection to the outside world.
Speaker B:You know, you'd go into a village and a tribal chief would still have like a jaguar claw around his neck, but he'd also have a USB pen drive as well.
Speaker B:And they had, they had little Internet cafes in their village and they'd got more connection with the outside world.
Speaker B:They all watch these Brazilian soap operas in the evening and crowd round one TV in the village.
Speaker B:But as a result they knew about the outside world and I wasn't, I wasn't perceived as the enemy or a threat or anything like that.
Speaker B:And it was, you know, people are a lot more generous as well as a result I think.
Speaker B:But that not saying anything negative about Peru but I think in more recent times they've suffered a lot more bloodshed and difficulties than.
Speaker B:Than Brazil.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Were you filming the entire process?
Speaker A:I think there was a documentary that you made at the end of this.
Speaker A:Is it right, that you've.
Speaker A:You've self filmed for?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean it was.
Speaker B:I've got to be grateful for it because it started my TV career and I'm blessed to have that which is which.
Speaker B:You know how many people get that?
Speaker B:Very few.
Speaker B:But the actual expedition film I'm not, it doesn't represent the expedition and I only got the camera out when I felt relaxed enough to get the camera out.
Speaker B:So there's, there were a lot of life threatening circumstances where I just didn't have the bottle.
Speaker B:I've got to be honest, you know, someone pulls an arrow on you like that and the last thing you're doing is right, wait there, hold that, hold that pose.
Speaker B:I've just got to get the camera out.
Speaker B:Got to turn it on.
Speaker B:Oh no, this battery's not.
Speaker B:Just wasn't, wasn't happening.
Speaker B:So there was a lot that was missed and it's the juicy stuff, it's the life threatening stuff that was missed.
Speaker B:So I watched that back and I.
Speaker B:All I do is have to remind myself every time I sort of think of that video or that two part documentary and just saying look, it was your foot in the door.
Speaker B:It enables you to have the life you've got now.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:There any of those moments where you weren't able to film that you really wish you could been able to film so many.
Speaker B:I mean, yeah, I mean I was out of Arrow Point three or four times by indigenous Indians.
Speaker B:I was held up at gunpoint by drugs traffickers.
Speaker B:I was arrested for murder by a village because a man had gone missing in this village the day before.
Speaker B:And because I walked out of the jungle with a white face, they just assumed I must have murdered the man.
Speaker B:And so I was locked up for like eight hours and then held overnight.
Speaker B:And they'd got in his little shack but they'd got four men who patrolled around the shack all night with shotguns like making sure I didn't escape.
Speaker B:And yeah, there were, there were loads of fun Stuff.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:This is all in the book, but, but it's not in the documentary because, yeah, I get, I guess, you know, at one point when I went through the river, Naomi, actually sometimes we'd had to go forward to try and find a guide.
Speaker B:And I went forward by boat and a GPS off where we'd got to walking.
Speaker B:And then we had to come back with this new guide to where I'd stopped walking and we walked through together.
Speaker B:But because I'd already gone forward, I just like, I don't have to carry all my kit.
Speaker B:I can leave some of it here.
Speaker B:And so stupidly, I decided to leave the cameras for this section.
Speaker B:The most exciting, most visceral, most life threatening part of the whole expedition.
Speaker B:About 10 days of walking.
Speaker B:No cameras.
Speaker B:Didn't, didn't have them.
Speaker B:I mean, it was much more pleasant for me in terms of walking because I didn't have all that weight on my back.
Speaker B:But we didn't, but I didn't film any of it.
Speaker B:So, yeah, there is regrets.
Speaker B:And yet, you know, I can't really, I can't really grumble.
Speaker B:Things have worked out.
Speaker A:So you, you spend again.
Speaker A:I'm just going back to the figures I've seen.
Speaker A:860 days.
Speaker A:Is that right from start to finish, is that you actually dipping your bow into the Atlantic on the 860th day?
Speaker B:Yeah, ye.
Speaker B:It was, yeah.
Speaker B:And it was literally two years to the day since Cho had started working with me.
Speaker B:And it was, yeah, two years, four months of, of, of my life.
Speaker B:And as much as people is that I was quite amazed that it had a.
Speaker B:I mean, I was on the front page of the New York Times, I was on the front page of the iPad Times.
Speaker B:Like, I was amazed at the media reaction and how positive everyone had been.
Speaker B:I just thought if we get, you know, something in the Leicester Mercury, that would be great, or the Harbor Mail, that would be amazing.
Speaker B:But, but, but, and I think, I think it was the duration of it.
Speaker B:Everyone just went, well, fair play to the guy.
Speaker B:He stuck at it for two and a half years of his life.
Speaker B:But I, I, weirdly, I didn't view it as being that long because I looked at it in terms of a say in the military, you've got a posting you might get posted to Germany for two years.
Speaker B:You know, it's a posting, you know, and I was like, hopefully I'll get promoted at the end of the posting.
Speaker B:Which is essentially what happened.
Speaker B:And so I, Yeah, I, I've actually think it was a perfectly reasonable portion sized portion of my life to give up to get that sort of level of promotion because from that point onwards of, you know, been an author and a making TV programs and stuff and I'm not as competent as a lot of my friends.
Speaker B:That joint left the military at the same time as me and have been doing, I don't know, consultancy work or behind the scenes work for TV or whatever and.
Speaker B:But it's not about that, is it?
Speaker B:You got a tagline, oh, he was the chap that walked the Amazon.
Speaker B:And then you get looked at differently and you get jobs that you wouldn't have got otherwise.
Speaker B:Oh yeah, I know, I'm an ex soldier.
Speaker B:It's like, well, so what?
Speaker B:Oh, I'm the guy that walked the length of the Amazon.
Speaker B:All right, okay.
Speaker B:Interested suddenly.
Speaker B:And therefore I was prepared.
Speaker B:Dunno what, I don't know how I realized that that was going to have that shift, but it certainly did have the right effect and, you know, enable me to essentially change, change, change everything in life.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You touched on just at the start, when you started the the Amazon that it was a little bit sort of ego fuel, Is that right?
Speaker B:100%, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Was it still the same by the end or had anything changed?
Speaker B:I think it put.
Speaker B:There's a number, a number of times on the expedition where I was humbled.
Speaker B:I was humbled all the time, actually.
Speaker B:I mean, for a start, every single person that walks with me was far more competent in the jungle than I was.
Speaker B:So, you know, you'd go, all right, I'm a tough expedition leader but, you know, they were little whippets nipping through the jungle.
Speaker B:They could use a machete so skilled they could walk across bridges which were just fallen trees, across rivers that, you know, I'd try and walk out on with my clumsy big boots and just slip and fall and get myself all wet and everything.
Speaker B:And so it was humbling.
Speaker B:And then, and then slowly I started to get better, I guess at those basic things, at sharpening a machete, at walking across a bridge.
Speaker B:And so my confidence grew, but not in a kind of ego way.
Speaker B:It grew in a sort of actually more wholesome competency way.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:And so when I think when I finished the expedition, I was actually in quite a good place from that perspective.
Speaker B:It wasn't all about, it wasn't all about ego.
Speaker B:But then I fell into the trap of completely drinking the Kool Aid or, you know, believing the hype when it finished because I did get a lot of media attention and I was on the One show and Blue Peter and all these different things and Radio 4 shows and stuff.
Speaker B:And, and I think, and because I was being paid big money by companies to go and give a motivational talk, you know, Ford flew me to Sydney for 10 days or something to, to launch their new Ford Ranger in Sydney harbor.
Speaker B:And it was like I was just literally like, what is going on here?
Speaker B:This is absolutely bonkers.
Speaker B:And putting me up in posh hotels and stuff like that and I let that affect me and, and invariably when anyone who's done a, a talk or something like that, or comedians suffer from this and they like, you get this amazing rush of adrenaline while it's all going on, but then you go back to your hotel room and straight right down.
Speaker B:And so I allowed myself to fall into that trap.
Speaker B:Unfortunately, I'd been quite solid by the end of walking the Amazon was quite solid and it was, wasn't all about other people.
Speaker B:So yeah, I took myself off to a little cottage after about seven months of coming home actually, and, and just to work out what I wanted to do and, and you know, I, I, I'd walk down to the Amazon, but I was just like, what's going on?
Speaker B:I feel all over the place.
Speaker B:I've drank more in the last six months than I've drank in my entire life and I just feel like a juggling monkey entertaining other people.
Speaker B:And it's like, is that why, is that why I did it?
Speaker B:You know, it felt weird and, and the sort of epiphany that I got in, in the cottage in France was I thought it was going to be what's the next expedition you're going to go?
Speaker B:But it was actually that what would make you happy and I think it was, you know, to have a family, you know, to have, to have the security of a base and, and, and I have a loving family and be able to nurture children.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, it didn't happen immediately but, but that is the thing that has probably made me the happiest in life or the most stable in life, I would say.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Would you say that you're, are you a better version of yourself being a family man?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:100 but, but I don't think I was lucky that I didn't get married to any of my exes, um, because I got married late, I got married at 40.
Speaker B:And, and I think if I'd done it earlier, I would have fouled it up.
Speaker B:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker B:I, I, I, I've got mates who've been divorced by that stage in their life.
Speaker B:And I was, I was just lucky that I'd never, I'd never got married to anyone and, and had, didn't have kids with anyone either.
Speaker B:So that was all quite fortuitous.
Speaker B:But I think I had got to a stage where I was ready.
Speaker B:You know, it's not many men say this but it's like I'm ready to have kids.
Speaker B:I haven't found the right person but I really wanted to have kids and yeah, met Laura and she was fair bit younger than me, but she wants, she was unusual in her early 20s to want to have kids as well and she wanted to have kids and then have a career and so it worked, it worked really well.
Speaker A:Both very much sort of kindred spirits I can see because Laura is also an adventurer herself, isn't she?
Speaker A:She very much seeks out that adventure that you two both I think are on the same page when it comes to that.
Speaker B:I think so, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean she's, she, she cycled across South America without touching any money, which on the face of it looks like a bit of a gap year expedition.
Speaker B:But I joined her twice and it was extraordinarily hard actually.
Speaker B:You know, like cycling all day long, coming to a village, coming to a town or a village.
Speaker B:Got no money, you can't check into a hotel, you can't buy any food.
Speaker B:Like she was going through bins, she was going to bakeries at the end of the day and asking for stale leftovers and stuff like that.
Speaker B:Like pretty, pretty gruesome.
Speaker B:Like going up to people in restaurants when they've put their knives of fork together and saying can I eat the rest of your food that you've not eaten?
Speaker B:Like it's just like stuff that makes you feel.
Speaker B:Because I had to do it as well when I went out and, and cycled with her hard.
Speaker B:So she, she did that for four months, five months.
Speaker B:She also kayaked down the Essequibo river which had never been kayak before.
Speaker B:So she's done, she's led a world first expedition in Guyana.
Speaker B:So yeah, she's very much into this sort of thing.
Speaker B:I think that's.
Speaker B:It is a young man's game and, and I think you know, we probably attracted each other even though we're, we're quite a big age difference because we were about the same level of maturity.
Speaker B:Um, so the 23 year old version of her is about the same maturity as the 40 year old version of me.
Speaker B:But equally we've both now gone through the whole parenting journey together and you know, I, she's more interested in plants and gardening and Ayurveda and yoga.
Speaker B:And so whether she actually ends up being going on big expeditions again, I, I, I doubt it somehow.
Speaker B:But, you know, you get, you get your kicks from different things.
Speaker A:I suppose I'll ask the question now, but I suppose in the same vein, what about you, your stage of life, Father, now, do you foresee any big expeditions in the future?
Speaker A:Do you still crave that?
Speaker A:Or have you got anything unanswered in yourself right now?
Speaker B:I think I've fallen into the trap of thinking that I still do.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B:2016?
Speaker B: Yeah,: Speaker B:Laura was off on a big cycling trip and I think because I was on my own and we hadn't had kids yet, I think because I was on my own, I convinced myself Henry Worsley had just died trying to become the first person to walk across Antarctica.
Speaker B:He'd done 82 days on the ice and died of multiple organ failure.
Speaker B:And I looked at the expedition, I thought, there's quite a few archaic things about how he's done it.
Speaker B:I mean, obviously very sad that he died.
Speaker B:I was like, I think I could do that.
Speaker B:And I got caught up in that.
Speaker B:Again, the ego thing of, oh, you could do walk in the Amazon, then you walk in the Antarctic.
Speaker B:And they work quite well as a duo, don't they?
Speaker B:And I've never, never put on a skis before, literally let alone gone to the Antarctic or Arctic and managed to convince Discovery Channel that that would make a great expedition.
Speaker B:So they commissioned it, but they wouldn't pay any money for it.
Speaker B:And so I had to get expedition sponsorship.
Speaker B:And, and I remember the lady who was in charge of the sponsorship called Louise, ringing me up after, on the, on the deadline of when we needed the sponsorship in order to get the expedition off the ground for the certain window that you want to go to Antarctica in.
Speaker B:And she said, I've not managed to do it and I haven't managed to get you sponsorship.
Speaker B:I started crying on the phone and she said, I'm so, please don't cry, I'm so sorry.
Speaker B:And I'm like, I'm crying out of relief, Louise, that I'm not going to die.
Speaker B:And, and I really was, I just like got sort of cornered myself into this trap where you said you're going to do something and everyone expects you to do it.
Speaker B:And because you're Ed Stafford and you've walked the Amazon, of course you can broads across the Antarctic, no experience, like literally still at this stage, not put A pair of skis on and, and brain spinning about the whole thing.
Speaker B:So I, I kind of learned my lesson that, you know what, you don't have to fall into this trap of just because you've walked the length of the Amazon.
Speaker B:Like I registered walking the Himalayas and walking the Nile before Leveson Wood did both of those.
Speaker B:But it's like if you've not learned what you need to learn about yourself from spending two and a half years walking the Amazon, you're probably not going to learn it walking the Nile and you're probably not going to learn it walking the M Layers either.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I think it's, it's just a different world.
Speaker B:I think the things that fascinate me now are, you know, obviously I am a dad, therefore I think there's that different sense of responsibility.
Speaker B:The idea of actually using my experience now to help people around me, both my children, but also other people.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:My favorite show that I've made for a long time was into the Jungle, which is the show that I made on Channel 4 a few months back.
Speaker B:And, you know, taking dads who struggled a bit during lockdown, maybe drank a bit too much, maybe got a few, few light mental health problems and kids who again, been playing up at school got slight, slight issues themselves and put them into the jungle setting.
Speaker B:And I kind of knew that it would be a wholesome environment and that they'd get closer as a, as a pair.
Speaker B:But it was more successful, the actual filming of it and the.
Speaker B:Than I could have ever imagined.
Speaker B:You know, all of them learned loads about themselves, individuals, all of them got closer as couples.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:So I, and I left that expedition thinking, you know what.
Speaker B:Or that film shoot thinking, this is, this is why I'm put on this planet.
Speaker B:This feels amazing.
Speaker B:I'm using the skills that I've got expedition leading, but also the TV experience and pulling, pulling people into it who are actually benefiting from it and making TV programs.
Speaker B:So I'm making a living.
Speaker B:I'm helping people.
Speaker B:I'm using the things that I think I'm good at.
Speaker B:I felt amazing.
Speaker B:And then the slight hiccup in my own personal development, which was just before Christmas, was that it got critically slammed and no one watched it.
Speaker B:So you have this.
Speaker B:You start to suddenly identify with, yeah, I'm going to be the guy that takes people into the jungle and helps them and da, da, da.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And it wasn't successful.
Speaker B:Channel 4 acknowledged they put it in the wrong slot.
Speaker B:It kind of was advertised a little bit like an sas.
Speaker B:Are you Tough enough kind of thing or who dares wins.
Speaker B:And, and it wasn't that it was never meant to be that.
Speaker B:It was far more light, it was far more emotional, it was far more nuanced.
Speaker B:But that wasn't what people were tuning in for at 9:30 at night.
Speaker B:They were tuning in for something far more physical and hard.
Speaker B:So, so you get again, it's, it's just life, isn't it?
Speaker B:Everything.
Speaker B:I'm sure everything does happen for a reason.
Speaker B:But, but, but, you know, very good not to identify with any of these things because nothing's permanent, is it?
Speaker B:So, yeah, that I, I guess that's the stuff that resonates with me.
Speaker B:It probably is more helping people.
Speaker B:I don't know whether it's in the, in the, as a role, as a, of an expedition leader and leading trips or.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I'm still finding my feet with that at the moment.
Speaker B:But we're still making TV programs at the moment.
Speaker B:There's one I'm hoping for an answer on in the next week for Discovery Channel.
Speaker B:But, but I can feel myself shifting.
Speaker B:I can feel myself shifting towards stuff that is far less egoic and, and, and, and leans towards passing on some of that sort of experience and knowledge, I think.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think we touched on it at the start, didn't we?
Speaker A:About how.
Speaker A:I think even the solo, solo film work that you do that has a very positive effect, maybe in a way that you don't always necessarily think of.
Speaker A:It's not as direct face to face, as helping somebody on screen.
Speaker A:I genuinely do feel that though you motivate people probably more than you even give yourself credit for.
Speaker A:So I think definitely keep the traditional Ed Stafford arc because we watched the show you spoke about on Channel 4 and you know, full transparency, we watched that because of Ed Stafford.
Speaker A:That's the truth.
Speaker A:As I said before, we really very much enjoy what you create.
Speaker A:But what you found in that episode was that you start to get drawn to the stories of the children and the father relationship.
Speaker A:And that was actually really interesting and that Stafford is just now on the peripheral.
Speaker A:But I think some people may.
Speaker A:It's very black and white.
Speaker A:Some people might want to watch you being sick next to a camel or they might want to see that relationship building with the children and the fathers.
Speaker A:You know, I think maybe that's a difficult audience to try and cater for.
Speaker B:I think it is a difficult audience to cater for.
Speaker B:I certainly have had subsequent meetings with the production company who made it and I was like, oh, well, maybe we could Try mums or.
Speaker B:And they were like this, this sphere is a difficult one to get people to watch.
Speaker B:Especially with the changing way people watch TV is changing massively and the type of audience they're getting at that time of night, et cetera.
Speaker B:And they, that now working with kids, we're not, we're not sure that that's, that's, we, you could have, you could make another show that everyone was proud of and everyone thought was really good and again it not perform.
Speaker B:So yeah, I think it's looking at slightly different areas.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Can we just touch on then?
Speaker A:So we're talking about tv.
Speaker A:Obviously you, you just mentioned earlier on about the, that sort of period in between the end of the Amazon.
Speaker A:There's a struggle there I suppose of identity a little bit, isn't there?
Speaker A:As you're trying to work out where you are with everything then, then you move into this sort of TV phase which then becomes this huge.
Speaker A:Yeah almost, it feels like multi decade phase now for you.
Speaker A:And being on tv, how, how did that start then?
Speaker A:Because you've, you're in France, you know, you've met a good lady.
Speaker A:At which point are we, are we talking about tv and have you made the approach or somebody approached you?
Speaker B:Walking the Amazon was successful and, and, and got good viewing figures and, and so discovery came to me actually and said look, we want to do something again with you.
Speaker B:And the obvious was I guess to go down the line that Levison Wood did and walk the Nile or what the Himalayas or whatever.
Speaker B:And I said I don't want to do that.
Speaker B:I want to.
Speaker B:The little niggle that I had in walking the Amazon was how much I'd relied on other people.
Speaker B:And I think from a self development perspective it didn't undermine what I'd done.
Speaker B:But I was like, could I have done it without Joe?
Speaker B:You know, could I have done it without Luke initially?
Speaker B:And so I wanted to test myself.
Speaker B:I wanted to give myself a self reliance experiment.
Speaker B:And so I basically, you know, when I started walking the Amazon, Bear Grylls had just launched his man man versus Wild.
Speaker B:And it, you know, it's, it got a lot of criticism at one stage for not being real.
Speaker B:So I kind of married the two and went, you know what, let's, let's do a survival experiment.
Speaker B:It's going to test me as an individual but it's also going to be a type of TV that I know people love.
Speaker B:But it's, we're going to do it for real.
Speaker B:Say like if I've not lit a fire Then I'm going to suffer the consequences and not let a fire.
Speaker B:I'm going to be cold.
Speaker B:I'm not going to have light at night, you know, and wouldn't it be so much more interesting and visceral?
Speaker B:And I think we.
Speaker B:I think we were onto something.
Speaker B:And, yeah, it did get commissioned and we.
Speaker B:I did 60 days on the island of Olorua between Fiji and Tonga, and it was extraordinarily difficult.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And part of its success, I think, was actually due to the struggle and part to the.
Speaker B:But due to the fact that I wasn't.
Speaker B:Ray Mears dropped on the beach.
Speaker B:Okay, I know exactly what I'm doing.
Speaker B:I'm going to just go and get this type of wood and I'm going to make a fire.
Speaker B:It's like, well done, Ray.
Speaker B:Brilliant.
Speaker B:Part of the success was I was making up as I was going along, but also, therefore, suffering the consequences of this is very real.
Speaker B:And nobody's.
Speaker B:Nobody's going to come and help you.
Speaker B:No one's going to provide you with water, no one's going to give you any food.
Speaker B:And I still, to this day would probably, hand on heart, say that was the most authentic survival program that's ever, Ever been made.
Speaker B:I know a lot of the people have worked on things like naked and afraid and alone, and I know pretty much how authentic they all are.
Speaker B:And I know with my own shows, some of which have been 100% authentic and some have been less than 100% authentic.
Speaker B:I know, I know that.
Speaker B:But that one, that one, absolutely.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:Crikey, it was.
Speaker B:You know, I had to enter therapy afterwards because of.
Speaker B:Because of the impact it had on me.
Speaker B:The impact of isolation, I think meant more than anything.
Speaker B:But it was.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was pretty full on.
Speaker B:But, yeah, people watched that.
Speaker B:And, you know, I think the viewing figures on Discovery channel in the UK at the time, the average slot on 9:00 on a Thursday night was 40,000.
Speaker B:And the first step got 70,000.
Speaker B:The second app got 140,000 and the third, I've got 240,000.
Speaker B:Say it's like beginning.
Speaker B:Beginning of TV career, basically.
Speaker A:Yeah, we watched, actually, we watched a few episodes of that very recently, knowing that I was gonna have a quick chat with you today.
Speaker A:And it was funny because on the introduction, when it talks about you, you know, annual world record of walking the Amazon, my eldest son was.
Speaker A:Sat next to me and he just turned to me, went.
Speaker A:It was at the part where they're introducing you and about some of your achievements.
Speaker A:And he looked at me.
Speaker A:He went, well, that was a flex.
Speaker A:As in not many people can say they've just walked the Amazon.
Speaker A:And my wife was sat on the sofa also at the time.
Speaker A:Just as you jump naked from the boat with a very, very sort of cheeky little shot of you jumping from the boat into the water at that time, obviously with a tiny little bit of smudging to make sure everything's not seen.
Speaker A:And you realize, Jesus, that is.
Speaker A:That is very raw.
Speaker A:You're going to now swim onto the beach and it's just you and a camera.
Speaker A:And you know, the one thing I will say, I think it's beautiful television, is that the fact.
Speaker A:It's very clear that it's just very raw.
Speaker A:It's you and a camera.
Speaker A:I think you had a great connection with the camera, but it's a bit rough around the edges.
Speaker A:It's not perfectly shot.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker A:You can see the whole thing.
Speaker A:You're trying to do this on your own.
Speaker A:And that's the magic of it.
Speaker A:And I think that's probably why it's lasted for so long is this.
Speaker A:We all want to sit back on our sofas criticizing someone on television about, well, I would do that.
Speaker A:There's no way I would have done that.
Speaker A:And I think maybe you supply that outlet to people.
Speaker A:Some of what you do, you throw yourself into these situations, some of which it leaves you a little bit taken aback to think that I think one of them.
Speaker A:I watched you climb into a carcass of a.
Speaker A:A deer, possibly it was a deer, I think, in order to stay warm.
Speaker A:Am I right?
Speaker A:There was a.
Speaker A:There was a carcass of something and you, you wrapped yourself in it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Didn't climb into it.
Speaker B:It wasn't like a bear grill was in his camel job, was it?
Speaker B:Wrapped myself a little bit in it maybe.
Speaker B:Okay, I vaguely remember that one.
Speaker A:It's funny, I've never been a deer carcass, so.
Speaker B:You think you'd remember it, wouldn't you?
Speaker B:I have such a bad memory.
Speaker B:My wife's just goes, look, we met this couple last week, Edward, like, kind of like did we in a day.
Speaker A:From that one.
Speaker A:Like before you move on to the end of that.
Speaker A:What was the one thing that really stuck out to you on that first series?
Speaker A:Because this is new to you now.
Speaker A:You're self filming.
Speaker A:You've moved away from walking the Amazon.
Speaker A:You've had this real flurry of media attention, but now it's just you and a camera.
Speaker A:What.
Speaker A:What did you really take away from that?
Speaker A:Both positive and negative.
Speaker A:I suppose at the end of the 60 days.
Speaker B:I mean I opened a can of worms basically.
Speaker B:I'd never experienced isolation.
Speaker B:Obviously walking the Amazon, I was always with somebody else.
Speaker B:I think there's one day out of the 860 days I was on my own.
Speaker B:And it was unbelievably overwhelming from the very moment that that boat dropped me off and left me.
Speaker B:And I think to sort of summarize, after about, I mean I felt physically sick.
Speaker B:I felt, you know, that feeling when you look up into space and you kind of almost get vertigo because of the concept of just no boundaries is just you can see for billions of light years almost and looking or sometimes down into the ocean and again, if you're really far out into the sea, just the, the, the being overwhelmed by the depth.
Speaker B:I weirdly, without any people there, I felt the same emotion.
Speaker B:I was just, I felt unbelievably exposed.
Speaker B:But also there was just no boundaries, you know.
Speaker B:And, and at one stage, I think it was a couple of weeks into it, I was just, I was so thrown.
Speaker B:I was, I was, I was self doubting myself.
Speaker B:I, it's, it's latter been explained, been explained to me that some people develop their sense of self based on.
Speaker B:It's called a reflective sense of self.
Speaker B:So if you walk into a room and you tell a joke and everyone laughs, you know you're funny.
Speaker B:Or if you walk the length of the Amazon and everyone says you're really tough, you know that you're tough.
Speaker B:But then if you go and put yourself in a, in a period of isolation, there's nothing reflecting you.
Speaker B:So I just, I literally got to this stage was I don't know who I am.
Speaker B:I don't know who I am.
Speaker B:And, and, and I'm trying to record a documentary that I know is going to be sent to millions of people, but I'm unraveling massively.
Speaker B:So I sat down on the beach and I didn't have a pen and paper or anything.
Speaker B:So it's a mental list.
Speaker B:But I wrote, I just started making a list.
Speaker B:It's like, okay, decide who you are then.
Speaker B:And it's like, do you want to be flaky, known to be the one who doesn't turn up when you say you're going to turn up or do you want to be reliable?
Speaker B:And I was like 100 reliable.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's like, do you want to cheat on people and be dishonest or do you want to be honest?
Speaker B:And I no, you want to be honest about everything.
Speaker B:And, you know, and I, and then I stopped myself when it's halfway through making this list, and I was like, you're just, you're just making this up.
Speaker B:This is nonsense.
Speaker B:And then another part of me came in.
Speaker B:It's quite just trying to work this out.
Speaker B:Naked on a beach.
Speaker B:No, you've got to make this list.
Speaker B:Because if you don't make this list, no one's gonna.
Speaker B:No one's gonna do it for you.
Speaker B:And if they do do it for you, that's not you.
Speaker B:You've got to make this list of who you are, otherwise who else is gonna do it for you?
Speaker B:So I continue to make that list.
Speaker B:And weirdly, that list has retained.
Speaker B:Stayed in my head from that day forward.
Speaker B:Like, that is the person.
Speaker B:Sometimes I let myself down, you know, and especially when you're drunk.
Speaker B:But largely, I don't tell lies.
Speaker B:I'm.
Speaker B:I'm true to my word, you know, and.
Speaker B:And I try and live by that.
Speaker B:And I think it's.
Speaker B:It's something that I never expected to happen.
Speaker B:I thought I was just making a TV program about survival and drinking coconuts and killing goats and stuff like that, but it was the mental side of it, it was unraveling to the point where I had to actually just work out who on earth I was or who I wanted to be.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:Yeah, so that's definitely the biggest thing that I got out of it.
Speaker A:You sort of touched on there that there was a period of therapy at the end of that.
Speaker A:What.
Speaker A:What did that help you through anything?
Speaker A:And what was it that you were maybe trying to get to the bottom of, do you think?
Speaker B:Okay, so fast forward, I'm going to guess six, seven months from the end of Naked and Marooned.
Speaker B:A series called Marooned had been commissioned, which was a spin off.
Speaker B:The first 10 days were deemed to be the most intense of that 60 day period.
Speaker B:And therefore we.
Speaker B:We were going to do 10 days in different places all around the world.
Speaker B:And we were going to Taiwan.
Speaker B:I think it was about episode three.
Speaker B:No, it was episode four.
Speaker B:We're going to Taiwan to the Golden Triangle.
Speaker B:And I couldn't get out of bed.
Speaker B:Literally.
Speaker B:The concept of packing to go away to Taiwan and just no Thailand, sorry, not Taiwan was so overwhelming.
Speaker B:I was just lying in bed crying.
Speaker B:And my partner at the time, Amanda, called a psychology psychiatrist.
Speaker B:And he actually came around to the house and assessed me.
Speaker B:And he's like one of the analogies that he said, that's.
Speaker B:That I ended up remembering was he said, if you imagine your courage is Like a bank account.
Speaker B:He said, ed, I've got no doubt that normally you're, you've got loads in the bank that you're very courageous.
Speaker B:He's like, at the moment I'm seeing somebody who's overdrawn massively and he's just like, everything is, is phasing you.
Speaker B:And, and it was.
Speaker B:And you just like you've, you've just, you've just worn yourself out.
Speaker B:And I, I guess it's just a kind of burnout really.
Speaker B:And, and so, yeah, he, yeah, diagnosed me with severe depression and I had three months off from filming and, and I think it was actually that period of time that I got introduced to the concept of meditation.
Speaker B:I, I was, I kind of knew that I could tie the psychologist or psychotherapist in knots.
Speaker B:I could go in and present as absolutely fine or I could go in and to present as depressed.
Speaker B:And I, I know that I'm relatively intelligent and, and I play games with him.
Speaker B:And I said, this is a waste of time.
Speaker B:You know, you, what's the point in going in and, and, and just playing these mind games with this man who's being paid a large amount of money by Discovery Channel.
Speaker B:Thankfully not me.
Speaker B:But the one thing he did was he introduced me to this NLP lady called Mal who is brilliant and she introduced me to the Headspace app, which think it was something to do with the fact that Headspace, I don't know whether you've ever come across it, but it's.
Speaker B:There's no jost sticks involved.
Speaker B:It's not singing, cross sitting, cross legged going on or anything like that.
Speaker B:It was an accessible mindfulness and I just, it resonated with me massively.
Speaker B:And the first time just consciously being aware of not having any thoughts and I just feel this smile on my face and, and I think from from then on in, I've been on in a bit of a.
Speaker B:You can call it a spiritual journey if you want, but certainly a sort of evolution of mental health in terms of just being able to be aware enough to step back from my thoughts, step back from emotions, have a bit more genuine choice in life and be a bit more connected as well.
Speaker B:So it's all ended up being an extraordinarily positive thing.
Speaker B:And I just, I do sometimes think you sort of, you're given these opportunities in life that you need.
Speaker B:You know, I don't think it's a massive surprise that somebody was who was abandoned and had abandonment issues because of his.
Speaker B:Because he was adopted, ended up getting plunked On a desert island naked.
Speaker B:Because I had issues that I needed to, to work through and, and therefore I think the situation was sort of came about in order for me to work through those.
Speaker B:So yeah, ended up being a very positive thing and something that I think gave me the stability to be the good dad and good husband that I am today.
Speaker B:But before that I would have been too emotionally volatile and I wouldn't have been able to trust myself to put myself in those roles.
Speaker B:I don't think.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Do you moved from, I suppose then that, that period of therapy going into that second series of filming, are you confident to say that from that point on you were, you were stronger of mind and you were more aware of yourself.
Speaker B:So when you're stronger, I'm, it's never a, it's never a linear journey, is it?
Speaker B:It's, it's up and down, but stronger.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:As I said, I had a wobble with this Christmas surrounding thinking that I've found the perfect career and in helping people and being an expedition leader at the same time and turning it into a TV program and it not being received well.
Speaker B:And so you kind of, that I think, I think it's always a work in progress.
Speaker B:You never got all the answers.
Speaker B:I just think I'm on the, I feel like I'm on the right track at the moment.
Speaker B:I feel like, yeah, year by year I'm becoming a better version of myself and you know, crikey, I haven't really gone into any of the super negative stuff.
Speaker B:I mean, yes, getting expelled but As a young 20 year old man I was an absolute nightmare.
Speaker B:I was getting into fights all of the time.
Speaker B:I was exactly who you're having to deal with on a Friday or a Saturday night in the police.
Speaker B:And you know, I've been in police cells with, you know, people doing cavity searches at my bottoms for, for, for drugs basically.
Speaker B:And, and I remember the policeman looking at me with sort of disgust going, when I said my parents were both solicitors, she's like, what are for you doing here?
Speaker B:You know, why, if your parents are lawyers, why are you in this extraordinary, you know, bad situation?
Speaker B:So, so it's all been a bit of a journey, I guess.
Speaker A:Oh yeah.
Speaker B:But I wouldn't, I, weirdly I wouldn't trade any of it for anything in the world.
Speaker B:I think, you know, you know, I, do I feel guilt or shame?
Speaker B:Not really.
Speaker B:I just think those are all part of life experiences.
Speaker B:I, I, I'm super happy and grateful to be where I am today.
Speaker B:And I think if I Hadn't gone through all that.
Speaker B:I wouldn't, wouldn't have what I've got today.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:How many across the board then?
Speaker A:How many TV series have you filmed since that first one?
Speaker B:16, I think in total.
Speaker A:And this is across a number of cattle.
Speaker B:A little bit less than one a year.
Speaker B: Yeah,: Speaker B: No,: Speaker B: And yeah, it's: Speaker B:So that's 14 years and I've made 16.
Speaker B:16 shows and in and around that.
Speaker A:And I know that you've written a few books.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:Are they the books that are technically the spin offs to the shows or are they separate books?
Speaker B:Naked and Marooned and Walking the Amazon, I wrote.
Speaker B:The other ones are ghost written.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Shame in that because that was the world I was in at the time.
Speaker B:But I, yeah, I, I, I, I don't like Naked and Maroon because I didn't understand the process that I'd gone through when I wrote it.
Speaker B:And my partner at the time kind of rewrote it as in her words as well.
Speaker B:But the book that I do stand by that I.
Speaker B:Okay, It's a, it's a version of myself that is a lot younger than the one that is today, but is walking the Amazon.
Speaker B:You know, I wrote all that myself and, and, and, and it was a good document of the expedition at that time.
Speaker B:Would, would I say the same things today?
Speaker B:Probably I wouldn't, but, but at least it's honest.
Speaker B:At least it's raw.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:What would be the favorite episode or the favorite series that you have filmed, you say?
Speaker A:Across the board.
Speaker B:Hmm.
Speaker B:The one that I'm most proud of is actually 60 days on the Streets because it was super scary going into it, I have to admit.
Speaker B:Middle class boy, gone to boarding school.
Speaker B:I mean, might have walked the length of the Amazon, but suddenly I'm chucked into a world of drugs and addiction and it was complete, complete carnage.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And you know, spice was a big thing at the time.
Speaker B:And so, you know, talking to guys who like have just begged enough money to get themselves a spice joint and then they're smoking this and then within about three puffs they're turned into zombies and they, the spliff is still in their hand and they can't even move, they can't speak, they're completely vulnerable that other people are coming in and stealing their joint and trying to, it was, it was a world of, world of carnage.
Speaker B:But I think I was quite proud of the fact that I think we were able to see a world or get a glimpse into a world that I think quite, that quite a lot of people didn't know about.
Speaker B:And I think if you sit down with the most homeless people for half an hour, you get presented with a story and it's the story that is often designed in order to get money because it's the, each, each homeless person seem to have this, that off the bat story and it's often, yeah, it pulls on heartstrings, etc.
Speaker B:But then the longer you spend with them, the more that story started to have little faults in it and, and, and started to become a bit transparent and, and there was a, there was obviously another story, but.
Speaker B:And, and I think it was.
Speaker B:Yeah, for me I just felt, you know what, this is taking me in a different direction to all the expeditions and the survival and everything.
Speaker B:But it's equally challenging and it's, and it's actually, it matters more.
Speaker B:You know, it's opening people's eyes up to a, to a field which is a very uncomfortable one to watch but also difficult one to access and get a good understanding of.
Speaker B:So I felt like it had a real good purpose and, and it was well received and it, and it by, by, by critics and by, and by the public.
Speaker B:So I think that's one of the ones I'm.
Speaker B:Yeah, don't get me wrong, I didn't actually enjoy all of it.
Speaker B:Although there were moments which were quite fun when you're shoplifting from, from Sainsbury's.
Speaker A:And there are other supermarkets you can shoplift from there.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But yeah, don't know then you were that 60 days on the streets was technically you living as a, as a homeless person really on the streets of the uk, wasn't it?
Speaker B:Well, it was to tell the story of other homeless people in order.
Speaker B:And in order to do that I slept on the streets.
Speaker B:And I think the mistake I made initially was I got really badly briefed by the producer.
Speaker B:He said just say you're voluntarily homeless.
Speaker B:Like essentially lie to whoever you're talking to and say that you're, you've made yourself homeless.
Speaker B:So I tried this on the curse a couple of times.
Speaker B:I got really negative reactions.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:One girl saying that she was going to smash a bottle around my face and she's prepared to go back to prison to do so.
Speaker B:I, I just could tell it was the wrong thing.
Speaker B:It felt wrong.
Speaker B:It's like a lot of these guys had huge trust issues to go in there as the opening gambit with a lie, just, just didn't make any sense.
Speaker B:So I would often go in, offer them a cigarette, ask them their story, listen to their story, and then at the point where they then said, well, what about you?
Speaker B:What's your situation?
Speaker B:I'd, I'd say, look, I'm not homeless, but I'm sleeping rough for 60 days in order to tell the stories of people like you.
Speaker B:And if you're up for being a part of that show, then brilliant.
Speaker B:If you're not, then.
Speaker B:And you know, some of them at that stage would tell me to piss off and others went, mate, that's really cool.
Speaker B:I love what you're doing and I love the fact you're prepared to put your, you know, sort of walk the walk and actually sleep on the streets to, to tell that story.
Speaker B:So some of them took it amazingly and at that point I then give the nod to the producer or the cameraman and he'd come in with a microphone and mic the person up and we'd, we'd start filming.
Speaker B:But it was, yeah, the, the, it had to be honest, as far as I was concerned, it just, it just didn't make any sense.
Speaker B:You're just undermining a potential relationship from the get go.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And this, this was in line with another one that you did, wasn't it, with.
Speaker A:Was coming in the title Gypsies.
Speaker B:60 days with the Gypsies and then 60 days with the.
Speaker B:On the Estates.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:No, I mean, there were, there were three series.
Speaker B:I doubt there'll be another one.
Speaker B:But there were three series that were trying to access difficult, difficult communities, but also, you know, worlds that people didn't know as much about.
Speaker B:I think with Gypsies it was slightly different.
Speaker B:We were.
Speaker B:There'd been a lot of television about gypsies, but it had all been.
Speaker B:Almost been a sort of caricature of the, the gypsy, like Big Fat Gypsy wedding.
Speaker B:And that caused us a lot of problems when we're filming because gypsy community can't stand Big Fat Gypsy wedding.
Speaker B:And so that again, you got a huge trust issues.
Speaker B:But we really wanted to tell a different story and you know, it's, it's vulnerable being a gypsy.
Speaker B:And I think partly the reason why gypsy communities there is so much of an edge to them in terms.
Speaker B:And I think it's almost deliberate to, to want people to be scared of them because it's quite vulnerable.
Speaker B:You, you're driving around in a caravan, you're, you're stopping at sites and you know, if, and there are lots of gypsy communities that stay together because of that.
Speaker B:Vulnerability.
Speaker B:And you know, if, because there's a lot of racism surrounding gypsies as well.
Speaker B:If you wear a caravan, pulling up on your own, you know, you could easily get a group of lads coming out of a pub deciding they were going to go and smash the windows in and, and, and, and cause trouble.
Speaker B:So, so I think that that was quite interesting.
Speaker B:Again, trying to get under the skin of it with the.
Speaker B:But home, the homelessness one.
Speaker B:Again, the sort of surprising story to me was I thought there weren't enough houses, that's why everyone was on the street.
Speaker B:And then I was sort of talking to them about, you know, oh, you need to go to the council, you need to put yourself on this list.
Speaker B:And there was a real reticence to doing it.
Speaker B:And you know, I subsequently worked out that, you know, there were a lot of people who were, who were choosing to be on the streets because it was a lot easier to be on the streets than it was to go into accommodation because, because of the fact that there was so much compassion at the time towards homelessness by well meaning people.
Speaker B:They were giving quite a lot of cash to homeless people and then 99% of it was getting spent on drugs.
Speaker B:And so we were in this situation where you're kind of.
Speaker B:And you're reinforcing some myths or some preconceptions or prejudices or no preconceived ideas.
Speaker B:Like a lot of the homeless people were taking drugs, but they were, that was just literally what I was saying.
Speaker B:But then there was other ones, like I just thought people were being a bit naive, I have to say, in terms of, oh no, if I want to give that money to a homeless people, I'm going to give it to him.
Speaker B:You know, he's had a tough life.
Speaker B:He's, he's purely there because he knows you're going to give him money.
Speaker B:And I think that was where the, it started to become a bit more uncomfortable for some people because, because that wasn't the story that everyone was thinking at the time.
Speaker B:We slightly ended up flipping on his head because that was what we were seeing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Do you see?
Speaker A:Because there was quite a, I suppose, quite a sort of stark contrast between what you were doing previously with the survival challenges and the solo sort of shows, then you're almost stepping into what was like investigative sort of journalism in a way, but in like in a lived, in a real, lived in sense.
Speaker A:Do you see yourself doing anything similar to that in the future?
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I do.
Speaker B:I think, I think again because of, I, there's Probably more shelf life, you know, I mean, with the action man stuff, running the open down mountains for Discovery channel now I'm 50 this year, you know, there's probably younger, more attractive people who could, who could, who could jump into this role.
Speaker B:Whereas the journalism, you know, it's got a longer shelf life, essentially, hasn't it?
Speaker B:So whether it's that, whether it's more down the, into the jungle route, where you're taking other people into the jungle in order to potentially help them, there's a lot of different ways that it could do.
Speaker B:But I enjoyed it.
Speaker B:It was a challenge.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, at the time when I first got offered 60 days on the streets, you know, at that point, I think we were filming First man out as well, and it was quite a formulaic show and, and, you know, this.
Speaker B:I just started to get that sort of empathy.
Speaker B:Ah, I've lit another fire.
Speaker B:Woohoo.
Speaker B:Yay.
Speaker B:I've lit another fire.
Speaker B:It's like going through the motions and yet suddenly I'm going into a world which is central London, it's the Strand or it's.
Speaker B:It's Piccadilly Circus in Manchester, or it's Saucy hall street and Glasgow.
Speaker B:It's like, I'm scared again.
Speaker B:This is, this isn't every day.
Speaker B:This isn't constructed and it isn't, it isn't.
Speaker B:I'm not blase about it.
Speaker B:And so, so I think it was a really healthy thing for me as an individual to, to tackle something very, very much more real.
Speaker B:And then there's got the added complication that there's real people, these are real lives.
Speaker B:And you've got to do justice to their stories because, because, because it's real and you know, you're not, they're not, you're not making this up.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I know, I really, really enjoy doing it.
Speaker B:But yeah, the 60 day format, it's not brilliant for why 60 days always comes up in my life.
Speaker B:60 days on an island, 60 days of this, six days.
Speaker B:It's not great for having kids.
Speaker B:Like, it's a long time for the kids when you're going away for 60 days and, and for Laura, actually.
Speaker B:So, yeah, completely similar stuff maybe, but condensed to like a day or a couple of weeks.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Tends to be about three weeks that I go away for at the moment.
Speaker B:And we.
Speaker B:You can get two weeks.
Speaker B:You can get two, two programs filmed in six weeks, in three weeks.
Speaker A:Does it help them with filming being that you now live in Costa Rica with travel?
Speaker B:No, no, it doesn't really help.
Speaker B:It's just, it's just not a negative.
Speaker B:I think post pandemic, all meetings end up being on zoom anyway.
Speaker B:It doesn't.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:I don't think I could have done this in the world prior to the pandemic because you needed to go down to London, you needed to be in front of people, you need to be having drinks with certain people.
Speaker B:But that's not really the case anymore.
Speaker B:So we just thought, let's go to Costa Rica.
Speaker B:And actually that was the one.
Speaker B: ment producer at who made the: Speaker B:Pitch into the Jungle to Channel four.
Speaker B:So actually it earned me more work than being in the UK would have done.
Speaker B:But I mean, it's, it's, it's not about that.
Speaker B:It's purely a lifestyle thing.
Speaker B:And, and for the kids, really, what was it like?
Speaker A:Was there a trigger for that?
Speaker A:Like, for, for you leaving the uk?
Speaker A:I mean, it's a huge move, isn't it?
Speaker A:You've left everything behind, I think.
Speaker B:Yeah, okay, yeah, there was definitely a trigger.
Speaker B:Laura walked into the kitchen in our house in Leicestershire and said, am I really cleaning this effing kitchen for the next 40 years of my life?
Speaker B:And it was just a question that kind of went, what are we doing?
Speaker B:Yeah, what are we doing?
Speaker B:Like, both of us, on the face of it, got quite adventurous careers.
Speaker B:Laura's slightly poised because of kids, but, but, you know, you fall into the same school runs and nappies and, I don't know, IKEA and none just, there's just a humdrum domesticness of it.
Speaker B:I said, well, why, why don't we have an adventure as a family?
Speaker B:Because we've got to do it as a family.
Speaker B:We're going to do it because, you know, Laura and I can't go off an expedition and expect my mum or somebody to look after the kids.
Speaker B:So let's do it as a family.
Speaker B:What should we do?
Speaker B:And, yeah, I think we started at living in Argentina for a year and it ended up being, oh, why don't we try and do five years in Costa Rica?
Speaker B:And I, you know, who knows what we're going to do at the end of that?
Speaker B:I mean, it's, I think we're trying to make all decisions based on giving us the flexibility to decide what we're going to do.
Speaker B:But, I mean, you know, you only have to dip into the British newspapers and feel very, very pleased that you're not there.
Speaker B:You know, there's so much negativity surrounding the British press at the moment.
Speaker B:Well, global press obviously but, but you know, Britain, Britain does seem to be unravel, unraveling somewhat.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And this country is just.
Speaker B:I don't know, I don't know whether as a policeman this would have really appealed to you but you know, everyone just does what they want.
Speaker B:It's quite, quite.
Speaker B:I, I wear, I wear shoes to go to the bank because they, they insist on shoes because they're quite traditional but other than that you're just knocking around without any shoes on this it's brilliant.
Speaker B:And like the kids are feral and.
Speaker B:Yeah and like I said before it's like going back in time 20 years because.
Speaker B:Don't know, it's just less, it's less all about your phone.
Speaker B:It's, it's far more about spending time speaking to people in the day than it is about being hectic and busy.
Speaker B:And that suits me down to the ground because I get very wrapped up as soon as I get into a stressful environment.
Speaker B:I kind of absorb it and become it where.
Speaker B:But equally coming out here it's just de Stress just, just takes the tension off somehow.
Speaker B:So I think it's been a good move.
Speaker B:And Costa Rica's super open to, to people coming out.
Speaker B:They give very long six month tourist visas and, and yeah, you just have to leave every six months and come back in and super happy.
Speaker B:So it's quite an easy thing to do as well.
Speaker A:It sounds awesome.
Speaker A:Do you have a friend, like a friend network out there now did that?
Speaker A:Was that something you had to build up or.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean we didn't before we got here but yeah, invariably, invariably you meet people and, and there's a completely complete spread.
Speaker B:We've got Argentinian mates, we've got Costa Rican mates, we've got British mates, we've got American mates and we.
Speaker B:Because we've settled by an international school deliberately because the kids at first couldn't speak any Spanish.
Speaker B:You've got quite a mix of people.
Speaker B:So yes, there's an element where you're dealing with expats quite a lot but they're quite forward thinking expats.
Speaker B:They're the kind of expats that felt that their home life wasn't enough for them back home and so they tend to be quite like minded but it, but we're not right in a tourist area so there are a lot of tecos that the locals are called and, and so for example that I do Brazilian jiu Jitsu as well and we do it with my little boy and yeah, 80 of the classes as local Teco's.
Speaker B:So, you know, there's mechanics and there's surf instructors and all sorts and we're all just in together.
Speaker B:You know, I'm zero stripes, white belt, right at the, right at the bottom of the pile.
Speaker B:And it's the most humbling thing that I have in my life at the moment because everyone's better than me.
Speaker B:But yeah, making, making great mates and, and it's all, to be honest, it's, it's, I'm sure if you do it Jiu Jitsu as well, yours will be the same.
Speaker B:But it's just a completely ego free environment.
Speaker B:Everyone just wants to help and everyone wants to help, help you get better.
Speaker B:So it's, it's not kind of embarrassing even though you're the worst.
Speaker B:It's just like everyone's got to go through this, everyone's got to go through this stage, haven't they?
Speaker A:Yeah, completely.
Speaker A:Completely.
Speaker A:I'm very much aware of time, man, and I know we're sort of getting to the end at this point.
Speaker A:Yeah, so much I could have spoken about.
Speaker A:But I appreciate, you know, times always of the essence.
Speaker A:As we look back, there's two things I'm quite curious about.
Speaker A:You're already now in Costa Rica.
Speaker A:You know, you're, we're all getting mature as we're looking at our futures.
Speaker A:Is there anything about being in Costa Rica now that maybe is like an enabler for you to start something else?
Speaker A:Whether that's, you know, you talk about the expeditions or maybe an experience that you could bring together for people in Costa Rica.
Speaker A:Is that something you'd be interested in?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think potentially there's a lot I've dabbled when he's in the Trekforce days of expedition leading and leading trips.
Speaker B:But it is something that I really enjoy.
Speaker B:So potentially leading expeditions in Costa Rica might be one thing.
Speaker B:Um, I think I also though do recognize that it's like I'm not, I've never been into pretending and like people have said to me, oh, you should start a survival school.
Speaker B:I don't have the depth of knowledge in Bushcraft to start a survival school.
Speaker B:I make things up as a go along, you know, and I think that became very evident to me when during the lockdown, Stephen Hanton and I did these master classes and it's like a lot of the stuff hit like immediately I, we were out of work, so we're not filming.
Speaker B:So we decided during lockdown we were going to film these masterclasses in, and firelighting, shelter building and use of knives and axes and stuff.
Speaker B:And like, first time I picked up a knife, he's like, ed, please tell me that's not how you hold a knife.
Speaker B:What's wrong with that?
Speaker B:And, like, I'm using it in areas where my femoral artery could get cut and all this sort of stuff.
Speaker B:And, and, and yes, I learned a lot at the time, but I also recognized that I've got a kind of unique set of skills, and one of them is, Is sort of connecting to an audience and filming and stuff, and another one is, Is the survival elements.
Speaker B:But I've only got to be good enough to get things right half the time.
Speaker B:And actually, when I get things wrong, it's probably more interesting because it's, It's.
Speaker B:It's more entertaining for the viewer because they're watching the outcome of somebody messing up.
Speaker B:And so, and so the concept of actually starting a survival school, I just, I don't think I qualify, if I'm honest.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Expedition leading, I'd say I'm good at survival.
Speaker B:I make it up as a gunner.
Speaker B:So, So I think, I don't think it would be a survival school, I think.
Speaker B:But, but, but in terms of taking people into the jungle, having experiences, potentially visiting a tribe or something like that, then, yeah, that would be more, more down the line of what I think I would like to do.
Speaker A:Awesome stuff.
Speaker A:Is there, Is there a waiting list?
Speaker B:It's all theoretical at the moment.
Speaker A:I can.
Speaker A:You probably can't hear because you have your headphones on, but I can hear your little one crying in the background.
Speaker A:I'm feeling very.
Speaker B:Yes, she is.
Speaker B:Laura's there.
Speaker B:Don't worry.
Speaker B:She's not just crying into, into an empty room.
Speaker A:Laura's wearing shoes down at the bank.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker A:Yeah, I suppose the only other thing I was going to touch on quickly, because I know it's quite important to you, is the sort of relationship you've got with the Scouts.
Speaker A:I know you're an ambassador for the Scouts, and I think I've read that Scouts play quite a sort of significant part when you're younger as well.
Speaker A:Is that right?
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely, I think.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I grew up in the countryside and the Scouts, to me were.
Speaker B:I mean, you only learn how to navigate once.
Speaker B:You only learn how to pack a rucksack once, you know, once you done it was put up a tent, whatever, you now know how to do it.
Speaker B:And a lot of those skills were learned in the Scouts.
Speaker B:And you know, I think my Scouts was the opposite to sort of the dip, dip, dip, slightly geeky connotations of Scouts that, that existed in, back in, when I was a kid it was, you know, we would play Murder ball which was quite a violent game with two balls and we would, you know, if it was someone's birthday, you'd peg them out so they'd be on their back on the grass and you put two big, of the big wooden stakes in the ground, tie their hands to them and two big stakes and tie their feet to them and then, and then they just get covered in everything that was in the camp kitchen from tomato sauce to eggs and then invariably it would go too far and they'd get a few boots to their ribs and stuff like that and then most of the time they'd end up crying basically.
Speaker B:And so it was, it was, it was quite brutal.
Speaker B:But I absolutely loved it.
Speaker B:For me, you know, as I said, I'd been put in a posh school and it was, it was the opposite.
Speaker B:It was, it was quite, it was quite raw and real and, and, and gave me the skills that I have then used for the rest of my life in terms of being more comfortable outdoors and enjoying spending time outdoors.
Speaker B:So yeah, the Scouts hugely, hugely beneficial to me and obviously the person that has done the most poor scouting is, is Bear.
Speaker B:He's, he's just literally taken it to the next level.
Speaker B:I think that's the waiting list for the Scouts is still about a hundred thousand strong for Cubs and Scouts in the UK that would like to be Cubs and Scouts but can't because there's not enough troops and there's not enough adult volunteers.
Speaker B:So it's been an incredibly successful few years.
Speaker B:Obviously he stepped down.
Speaker B:Dwayne Fields is now, is now the Scouts chief Scout.
Speaker B:But yeah, I would always give back to them.
Speaker B:I think it's, yes, just an absolute no brainer.
Speaker B:They were an amazing organization and, and yeah, I very proud of being, got my Scout necker here pop on for.
Speaker A:Videos just like now.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, I think we touched on.
Speaker A:Something as something that you recently started supporting was a charity, wasn't it?
Speaker A:Man and Boy.
Speaker A:That was one thing.
Speaker B:Yeah, there's two, there's two actually that I've started supporting quite recently.
Speaker B:One was man and Boy which is essentially a charity that recognizes especially for young boys, the importance of the relationship with their father.
Speaker B:And if they haven't got a dad it can be a significant male in their life.
Speaker B:But lovely charity.
Speaker B:As soon as I basically did enter the jungle and they saw what I'd done and reached out to me and said, look, I think this resonates hugely with our charity.
Speaker B:Would you be a patron?
Speaker B:I said, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:Um, so.
Speaker B:So that's one of the things I've.
Speaker B:I've affiliated myself with recently.
Speaker B:And the other one is Men's Minds Matter.
Speaker B:Um, and again, this is.
Speaker B:This is, I guess, a little bit more serious in the fact that, you know, I think, as all of us know, sadly, in the UK, under the age of 45, the highest cause of death in males at the moment is suicide.
Speaker B:Above cancer, above heart attacks.
Speaker B:Extraordinarily, it's.
Speaker B:It's suicide.
Speaker B:So, yeah, again, again, it's one that resonates with me hugely, having gone through mental health issues.
Speaker B:Not.
Speaker B:Not straight jacket ones, but significant ones, if I'm honest, over my life.
Speaker B:I just thought, that's a.
Speaker B:That's a really nice one to just to continue that journey, to get people talking so that.
Speaker B:So hopefully, as a charity, they can reduce the amount of people that end up.
Speaker B:End up taking that decision.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's commendable.
Speaker A:It's so very important.
Speaker A:And we spoke, didn't we, prior to the podcast about a few things in our lives and so such a valuable course to be.
Speaker A:To be a part of.
Speaker A:So, yeah, thank you.
Speaker A:That's great for that.
Speaker A:I think we're going to wrap it up shortly, Ed.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:Really, really thankful for your time today.
Speaker A:It's been an absolute pleasure to be able to speak to you.
Speaker A:There's one thing that sticks out to me.
Speaker A:I look back at everything that you've done.
Speaker A:Is there anything at all that if you had the opportunity to go back and speak to Ed as he starts off that trip on the Amazon, is there anything that you've learned since you could pass on as a bit of wisdom to him, some voice of reason, so to speak, with a bit of maturity?
Speaker B:I think it's.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think that probably the thing that has helped me a lot that I got from the Amazon is.
Speaker B:Is not becoming too obsessed on.
Speaker B:On what you want.
Speaker B:And I partly think that I got to the end of walking the Amazon because I was so obsessive, but I also think that I made my life a lot harder.
Speaker B:So, like, I think if I was doing it today, I think who did I read who talked about holding your goals as if they were a butterfly?
Speaker B:They, like, you want to hold it, but you want to hold it in a really light way because you don't want to crush it and acknowledge that if you want to do it, you're going to get there anyway.
Speaker B:But not obsess on it.
Speaker B:Because when I walked the Amazon, every single person that I met was just a stepping stone to get to the end.
Speaker B:And every encounter that I had was an obstacle.
Speaker B:And I could have learned so much about medicinal plants.
Speaker B:I could have heard so much more from all the different indigenous guides that.
Speaker B:And learned from all the guides along the way.
Speaker B:But it almost.
Speaker B:They're almost.
Speaker B:Because I was so obsessed on this goal, I was.
Speaker B:I paid them lip service and.
Speaker B:And I wish I hadn't done that.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, it's.
Speaker B:It's a cliche, isn't it?
Speaker B:You know, it's not about the goal, it's about the.
Speaker B:It's about the journey to get there.
Speaker B:And yet it is so much more.
Speaker B:And it.
Speaker B:And I think it's Jimmy Carr.
Speaker B:Is it Jimmy Carr, the comedian?
Speaker B:He said it's actually about Neva.
Speaker B:It's not about the goal or the destiny or.
Speaker B:It's not about the journey or the destination.
Speaker B:It's about who you become along the way.
Speaker B:And that really resonated with me.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, life is throwing you challenges all the time, and it's how you deal with them and what.
Speaker B:And how you learn from each and every one of the challenges that's the most important thing.
Speaker B:So as long as you're open to that and honest and.
Speaker B:And open to learning and.
Speaker B:And being humble by situations, then.
Speaker B:Then you're heading in the right direction.
Speaker B:So, yeah, that's great.
Speaker A:That's a beautiful way.
Speaker B:Enjoy the journey.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's cliched and yet it's just so true.
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker A:And what.
Speaker A:What the final words that your.
Speaker A:Your walking partner said was it it either all is or all isn't or something similar.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Kwan do I I Kwondo.
Speaker B:No, I.
Speaker B:No I.
Speaker B:When there is, there is, and when there isn't, there isn't.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:Ed, thank you so very much.
Speaker A:I don't think it'd be difficult to find you, but is there anywhere specifically you'd like to send people on Instagram?
Speaker B:It's edstafford.
Speaker B:Sorry, dstafford.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:You heard it here.
Speaker A:Thank you so very much.
Speaker A:Thank you, mate.
Speaker A:Take care.
Speaker B:Have a good day.
Speaker B:Pleasure.
