My name is James and there is nothing extraordinary about me. I’m not some sort of super-human all-action adventurer.
I have no idea how to abseil down a precipice, or forage for berries, or navigate in mist. I’m scared of most animals and my legs go wobbly if I stand too close to a cliff edge. Oh, and I can’t even grow a rugged beard. Rubbish credentials for an explorer. There was nothing that adrenaline-fuelled or extreme about my adventure, either.
I didn’t wrestle a bear, or dodge bullets in a war-ravaged country, or survive a near-fatal accident. There were no poisonous spiders or hostile bandits. All I did was put one foot in front of the other on my days off from work.
But that ordinariness is exactly why my adventure was extraordinary. It proves that you can integrate something truly adventurous into your everyday life, and that you don’t need to be rich, or take 12 months off work, or travel halfway across the world, or be Ranulph Fiennes to do it. You don’t need technical skills or expensive kit. With a little outdoorsy grit and adventurous spirit, anyone can go on a big adventure – yes, including you!
In 2017 I climbed all four hundred and forty-six mountains in England and Wales above 2,000 ft (609 metres). I wanted to reach the peaks of all the so-called ‘Nuttalls’ in just six months – the fastest ever time it had been done. Solo and unsupported, I walked over 1,000 miles, ascended five times the height of Everest, slept wild under the stars and explored some of the wildest places in Britain, from the Lake District to Dartmoor and from Snowdonia to the Brecon Beacons. And I did it all while holding down a steady job.
The mountains taught me a simple but transformative lesson, too. If you disconnect from technology, you reconnect with something innate and natural. In an internet-obsessed world of Instagram likes and bursting email inboxes, we all spend a lot of time staring at screens. But if you turn off your phone and go climb a mountain, life is just happier. Priorities realign, everyday worries dissipate, and a closeness to nature and landscape is rekindled. Your reality becomes humble, uncomplicated and fulfilling. It is joyous and liberating. You learn to savour the simple pleasures in life – the pitter-patter of rain on your tent, a hot drink on a summit, the stillness of a forest and the crunch of the rocks below your feet.
Simultaneously, you become immune to the stresses and anxieties that plague everyday life. And spending time in the mountains is meaningful and fruitful. Every walk I’ve completed has been time well spent – time for wilderness and solitude, for self-reflection and quiet, for escapism and nature. Every mountain has brought me boundless happiness. Why? Because, in the poetic words of the great fellwalker Alfred Wainwright: ‘I was to find... a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains – and a tranquil mind upon reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindnesses of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world.’ So what are you waiting for? Grab your boots, turn off your phone and go explore that better world.
Mountain Man: 446 Mountains. Six months. One record-breaking adventure, by James Forrest, is available for £16.99 from Bloomsbury publishing.
