Misadventures is back! Featuring: Cycling the coast of Wales, trail running around Chamonix, Tom’s unlikely love affair with volunteering at Reading Festival, Ben’s debrief from the Berlin Marathon. Throw in some parkrun tourism, a pinch of the Isle of Wight, a dash of indie sleaze nostalgia, and a ridiculous story from the Great British Misadventures jar – and trust us, this one’s guaranteed to make you laugh.
Get a whopping 65% off your first Gousto box at: https://www.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=TOM42277653
Mentioned in the podcast:
The Garlic Farm: https://www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk/
Trailside Coffee: https://www.instagram.com/trailsidecoffee/
Become an Oxfam festival volunteer: https://festivals.oxfam.org.uk/
Amy Harris: https://www.instagram.com/amythepoetcelebrant/
Eden Project Reel: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJWU5iCiw0b/
Indie Sleaze Podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/p0lcqp00
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
02:28 Ed Sheeran Shopping?
06:18 Coming up
07:20 Amazing summer of sun
09:12 Wanderlust trail running in the alps
17:00 Marathon training block vs. having fun
21:47 Berlin Marathon
24:44 Know your fitness
31:01 Ben & Toms running adventure
32:23 Cycling the Isle of Wight
37:41 Love Trails Festival
39:17 Volunteering at Reading Festival
47:25 Amy Harris at Glastonbury 2027
48:45 Eden Project again
52:23 Insane world of parkrun tourism
56:23 Coffee Corner
01:05:47 Cycling the coast of Wales
01:28:59 Substack
01:30:01 Men’s mental health
01:36:41 Indie Sleaze
01:40:26 Great British Misadventures
Whilst this lamb was on my paddle board, I knelt down and I started doing chest compressions on this lamb and I was pumping and I know I’ve done some basic first aiding. I know you’ve got to like press quite hard like it doesn’t matter if you break a rib or whatever. You got to get that blood flowing. And I was like pumping so hard like come on l don’t die on me. Oh god. No. No. And as I was pumping for like a good minute a thought suddenly came to my mind. I was like this is only half of CPR. M the other half of CPR is getting air into the lungs and that’s doing mouth to mouth. This summer I took on this grand adventure by cycling the entire coast of Wales. My god, the Welsh coastline is some of the best coastline in the world. Yeah, it was breathtaking. I have had moments on those beaches that I’m still struggling to put into words. I spent 4 days just running up and down all the mountains. It might not necessarily be conducive to running optimal marathon times, but at the same time, but it’s fun. It’s fun. They did sell garlic ice cream. Yeah, it was black. Yeah. Just arrived there. It looks like the Amalfi Coast. The Amalfi Coast. Yeah. A little bit of the Amalfi Coast. Like a little bit of the Amalfi Coast has moved north onto the aisle of white. They shipped a little bit of it. Y, you know, it’s not the Amalfi Coast. Okay, keep bringing it back. A little bit. A little bit looked like the Amouth Coast. Hey, look. Britain is amazing. And you find these places that you’re like, “Wow, I live a nomadic lifestyle and I’m never in one place for too long. So from time to time, I find it very convenient to order groceries in the form of a Gusto box. I’ve been using Gusto for nearly 5 years now. It’s a delivery company that sends you fresh food and all the ingredients you need to cook delicious meals at home along with very easy to follow recipe cards. They have over 90 recipes every week. So, there really is something for everyone. And so many of their recipes I’ve tried, I’ve returned to again and again because their meals are just delicious. I’ve got a referral code. I’ve shared it with so many of my friends. It means they get cheap groceries on their first few boxes and I get credit in return. I’ll link it below. Use it to sign up and you get a pretty hefty discount off your first box. There’s no subscription required and you can order just one box whenever you want. [Music] I am so glad that you are here. I’m glad to be here. I think I need Benny P in my life more than ever right now. Not just as a friend and a great coffee host, just for the vibes as well. It’s very nice to be back, Tom. We It’s been quite a while since we last did this. Um, and I don’t think I’ve ever had someone mention me in such affectionate terms right here. I’m quite quite taken back. Stop it. Well, I woke up this morning feeling really groggy as well. So, it’s a particularly bad day, but we’re going to push through. Um, and I welcome you back. Yes, it has been some time. We didn’t do one in the summer. It was quite busy. I think that’s my fault. There’s probably one day when we could have done it, but um, that would have been really squeezing it in. So, we’ve got a lot to catch up on. Um, but before we do, let me introduce my uh my listeners to the man who can turn coffee beans into pure happiness, pulling espressos smoother than a jazz sack solo. He is someone who will make a marathon look like a casual Sunday jog. He’s equal parts charm, chaos, and great conversation. So, you’re in for a treat. It’s Benny P. We like Thank you very much for that intro, Tom. Uh that’s very nicely done that one. I’m very impressed. Uh pressure’s on now for a great conversation. Uh before we actually get into it, I have to just um state an observation in my life. There is a direct correlation between the length of my hair and the number of people who call me Ed Sheeran. [Laughter] And my hair is particularly long right now. And I’ve noticed it in the last week or two. There’s just I come out of a shop and two school kids walk by. Ed Sheeran just like that. Just just passing or I cycle past a group of people and they go Ed Sheeran as I cycle past. I think that’s a great great comparison though, is it not? Do you want to be called Ed Sheeran? Um, not all the time. I would like to get through my day. I would like to go to the shops. Oh my goodness. Is that Sharon? Hey Sharon shopping in Sainsbury’s. Oh my goodness. Um, it used to be a long time ago now, um, I would be getting on a bus going into into Wolves, my old hometown, and a group of old ladies getting on said bus would be like, “Oh, you look like Prince Harry.” And that that was what I commonly got. And obviously in the as the times have changed, Ed Sheeran’s become globally popular and now um, people just see ginger hair and think that I am him. I hadn’t really thought about it to be honest, but now that you’ve brought it up, I the resemblance is uncanny right here. So, you think? Yeah, a little bit. I can’t see it myself, but as you said, there’s worse people that I could be called. It’s the sort of the I’m not going to say the chaos of the hair sort of thing, but it’s the unruly look that you have going on. So, I can see that. Yeah. He’s a cool guy, respected all over. So, I can only take it as a compliment. Incredibly successful. Yeah. Which you both have in common. Well, is it is it weird for me to say that one day I hope that there’s some ginger kid out there who gets said, “Oh, you look like Tom Bryan.” It’s going to happen. I don’t think it will. I think whilst Ed Sheeran is as globally popular, I will never ever be as popular as as Ed. I will make sure we will find somebody who will drop a mention be there in the when you are there in the shops and he says, “Oh my goodness, is that Tom from the Great British Adventures podcast?” And there you go. It’s going to happen. Maybe I can dream I can dream high. Um but uh for now I’ll have to know my place and live in Ed’s shadow for the rest of my life, I think. Um but uh let’s get into things. Coming up on the podcast, I’ll be sharing stories from my cycle ride across Wales uh as I uh aimed to cycle the entire coast of Wales this summertime. A trip that turned out to be a real test of mind and spirit. Uh we’ll also be catching up on everything that’s been happening over the summer, including your epic adventures in the Alps and your marathon feats as well. There’s been multiple of them. Uh we’ll be talking about mental health, especially men’s mental health, having an open conversation about what that has looked like for me recently. And of course there’ll be another tale pulled out of the great British misadventures jar. A story which I have um forfeited to the world to that is embarrassingly shameful and hopefully funny in equal parts. Um but I don’t know what it will be. You’ll be pulling that out at the end of the show. We’ll also be talking about indie sle era that we both grew up in. So it’s going to be a good one. Settle in. There’s plenty to talk about, including an amazing summer that we’ve both had. How has it been for you? Hectic, busy, but also wonderful at the same time. You know, when you’ve had a summer where actually for once summer actually arrived in the UK and having months and months of good weather just meant that there were opportunities galore, both from a work perspective, but also clearly from traveling, the running, all of that side of things. So, I had a very busy summer, but a lovely one. Thank you. and went off to Greece on holiday. Had a good couple of weeks out there at the start of summer and then followed that up with as has been mentioned with a lot of training for both running around in shaman and also eventually the Berlin marathon at the end of summer. So, I sort of ended up booknoting, booknoting, footnoting. Is it book ending? Book ending. Book ending. Thank you. There we go. Goodness me. Good to know. I can’t I know my words. Book ending my summer with uh running at the start or when I say at the start in the end of towards the end of spring and then finishing it off with the Berlin Marathon. So, it’s been good. We can’t complain about the weather we’ve had this year. Um, the spring was phenomenal to the point where people were like, “Oh my god, if the spring is this good, how good’s the summer going to be?” And I was telling people, “No, no, no, no.” Like, you cannot judge the weather now and what it would be like in a month’s time. And let’s wait for August when the school holidays come and it’s probably going to be horrible. But it wasn’t. We had overwhelmingly great weather. You know, I spent all of August um cycling around Wales and saw incredible views that I don’t think Welsh people have seen for some time because you just don’t get that that kind of clear sky and and and great weather. So, um you have to take stock of that and recognize um that it’s not all that bad Britain, is it really? Yeah. When the when the sun is shining, there are few things more wonderful than traveling around our dear little aisle. So, tell me about uh one of your amazing adventures. So if we talk about Shaman, your adventures over there. Yeah, I feel like Sham is a good place to start with that one. So earlier on in at the start of September, I went off to Shaman with several of my friends. And so this is in the Alps in France, right? This is a really popular ski resort in the winter and adventure place in the summer. Precisely. Very popular in the winter for skiing. Um and very popular and renowned in the summer for Ultra Trail. Mont Blanc is hosted there. Right. So it’s very big. It’s also incredibly accessible in the sense that you can fly to the you can fly to the airport, you can fly to Geneva and from there you are talking about 45 minutes to get from the airport on a bus into the center of Sham. So it’s wonderfully accessible in that regards as well. And I’ve never been there and I’d heard many of great things about it and I can take absolutely no credit for the initial organization of this. So, shout out to my friends who literally booked a chalet, invited several people along, and I was fortunate enough to be one of them. And effectively, I spent 4 days just running up and down all the mountains surrounding Shaman. So, we’re talking places like the Grand Balcom, we’re talking about the Balcon Nord, Aguided De Medi, although I didn’t actually manage to get there in the end. and effectively just getting my best mountain legs on and having a wonderful time doing it. And the weather, much like Britain, was also fantastic when I was out there. And it was also the week after UTMB, so there was still essentially a bit of a buzz still going on with the place. It was obviously a lot calmer than what UTMB week is, where all the brands and all the athletes and all the tourists are there. It’s a very much a It feels like a very livedin city town, sorry, mountain town. Um, it feels very local, but also has a wonderful touch of internationalism with lots of Brits, Americans, people flying in to to run what are some iconic trails and with absolutely stunning views and vistas. So I was absolutely spoiled when I was there uh to be able to run for several days with my friends doing more vertical elevation than I have done for the last several months. In fact, if you look at my Straa, I think we accumulated somewhere around bit over 20,000 ft of vertical elevation over the few days that I was there. I need it in meters. I don’t Yeah, I was like I can’t I can’t even I don’t even know what that is in meters. There’s a few thousand meters for sure. Yeah, there was a fair few and that was more than I had done for my entire training block um for the This is pre-blin as well. So, you’re getting some strength in your legs. Exactly. Just getting those mountain goat legs going. Um getting some strength in the legs and just having a good time. You know, it’s it might not necessarily be conducive to running optimal marathon times, but it’s also at the but at the same time, but it’s fun. It’s fun and and it’s and it’s and I mean I saw some of the images and the videos that you had over there. This like you talked about the visitors, it just looked like everything was a postcard. It was just unreal. It was the mountain backdrop just looks and and having spent some time in the Alps last year cycling through it was my favorite part of the cycle trip. It was just being surrounded by mountains. Everywhere you looked was just an inspiring view. Yeah, it’s the kind of place which is just ultimately incredibly good for the soul. You can wake up in the morning, you take a step out the door, you just have to look left or right because Shamy sits within the valley and you are just surrounded by these mountains and rather than seeming like at this at this point in the year seeming quite dark and ominous, they just feel full of life and excitement and adventure and I was just in my absolute element to be there and to experience uh the delights of Shaman and you know I’ I’ve definitely bitten by the shaman bug and I will be going back there at some point within the next year. So, I I I thoroughly recommend it for anyone. Uh to be honest, you don’t even have to be a serious trail runner. There’s plenty going on over there. Uh you can run down through the valley itself. There’s a lovely river and that’s, you know, we’re not talking like you having to climb much or anything. But even if you’re not into that and you want to just go hiking and uh exploring the nearby area, it is just fantastic. And there’s plenty of other activities to do over there. So, it’s not just a running Mecca. It’s so much more than that. Definitely inspired me actually. Um I do want to spend more time in the Alps as the years go by from from my you know that they our closest kind of like adventure playground neighbor basically outside of you know Scotland being you know some incredible experiences. But unfortunately Scotland in the summer you you can find yourself riddled with midgetes uh or bad weather. Um and um and there you do you do actually get mountainous terrain so you can kind of tick a lot of boxes for any kind type of training out there. Um and it is highly accessible like you said it is you know France is our neighbor you can fly there in the shortest amount of time you can get trains down there as well from the Euro Star. So um yeah I’d love to I never actually really considered it much of a of a summer thing actually. I think I know I just knew Shaman growing up as like the ski place, the ski resorts and I forget that these places are incredible in the summertime and they actually just come alive when actually you can see a lot more. You can spend a lot more time in daylight. Uh I I suppose um you’re someone who is very focused on getting a marathon time and you are very dedicated to a training block when you do you go into a marathon and you were in the Berlin marathon block. So what kind of balance did you give yourself or allowance did you give yourself to come out of that kind of quite rigid block and say actually you know I don’t care a little bit for a couple weeks if I’m going to have fun with some mates. Yeah that was effectively it at at this point when I went to shamy I was about 3 weeks out from uh the Berlin marathon. Um, so we’re effectively in that crossover period where the majority of the hard work is done in terms of what you can actually physiologically improve on. And this was just a perfect way to finish off what had been a very long uh but very rewarding training block. And admittedly, you know, you’re running in the mountains. Time is completely relatively speaking is utterly irrelevant. It’s just spending time on feet, running with your friends. Sometimes you’re going fast. 50% of the time you’re probably walking up hills because you know they’re mountains at the end of the day. Um, so I just decided that regardless it was be great. It’s great for the mind. It’s just simply refreshing. It’s good to be somewhere different, somewhere new. And that in itself, I think, is adds far more value than slogging just continuous miles on pavement. And I I was okay to do that. I was accepting of it. And in my because of that, I don’t think I necessarily lost anything by doing going to the mountains and doing all these very steep runs and hikes and things and just b giving my legs a bit of a battering because I had two weeks after that to effectively wind down on the training um to taper to essentially get my legs into the best shape possible for Berlin. And yeah, that’s what that’s what I did. So I don’t regret doing anything like that and it’s it’s something that I would happily do again and again. I have my own personal opinions I suppose with with marathon training blocks. I do find that they are quite um intrusive to your own actual kind of life. You can become a little bit obsessed with certain um certain schedule uh and and feel like you have to tick all those boxes. And I think they’re they’re there as a guide if you you know get your traditional marathon training program. I mean I can’t speak from too much experience. I’ve only actually run one official marathon and I didn’t train for it because I got on a last minute place with just I think just nearly 3 weeks notice. So I couldn’t have done any training for it in the time that I found out. But what I had done over the months before that is done a heck of a load of trail running. just had fun out on the trails with absolutely no pace other than just sometimes walking some some lengths of distance but just being inspired by where I was and having fun that way and that ultimately gave me a really really good base. So when it did come to race the marathon although I wasn’t particularly attuned to a certain marathon pace because I hadn’t actually ever had to think about what my marathon pace was or run at it. So, I kind of definitely lacked um experience in in running at a certain pace, but I still had the legs to get me the to do the distance at a decent pace. And um and I had fun and I didn’t have to like tell my friends, “Oh, I can’t do this cuz I need to do this run.” Yeah. You know, and um you know, I do have uh I Well, I know a lot of people in the running world who you know, when their marathon training block comes out, that’s their their one focus. And if that’s for you, great. and if that gets you what you want. But I also know you can put in a lot of effort and a lot of time, a lot of commitments into a marathon training block to rely on one day and everything coming together. um which more often than not I would argue that it doesn’t all come together on that particular day. Um and it’s interesting that you ran Berlin cuz I heard it was a very particularly hard day for everyone who ran that marathon. A really really hot day this year. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you you make a really good point. I think marathon training blocks regardless of what people like it’s incredibly selfish endeavor. There’s no way of getting around it. If you are committed to a marathon training block, that is a lot of time that you’re going to be spent running away from partners, friendships, and sure, you can do those things with your partners and your friends, but it is an incredibly selfish thing to commit yourself to. And it does teach you obviously great things like discipline. Um it’s it’s very good at sort of you teaching you to show up day in day out and to be consistent but there is ultimately a part where it can become borderline obsessive and I think that is the difficult nature with marathon training um that when does it go from being disciplined training into a full-blown obsession where people are where you’re looking at your straggraph and thinking oh I just need to get a few more miles in here. It might not even be necessarily conducive to running a better marathon, but unfortunately because you have you are so into the training and because you’ve become so effectively um you’ve been looking too much at the numbers and actually not realizing what’s happening to your body as well because you could becoming obsessed with oh I need I I have to meet this target this distance this week but actually your body just might not be in a state where it can be welcomed. Yeah. The obsession, the obsession of a training block and trying to hit mileage and things is absolutely counterproductive to being a good marathoner, at least in my opinion. And as you said, you come to Berlin, you put all of this pressure on yourself because you keep saying that you’ve done the training, you should be in this state to run these sort of times. And it it it’s as you say, for the most part, you’re more likely to fail than you are to succeed. And I think there’s become a horrible normalization within particularly social media that normalizes marathon running in a really emphatic way. And people seem to also in part uh set very unrealistic times and people set themselves up to fail. But it’s also simply that for something like Berlin, the day was set up in such a way that it was going to be very difficult for anyone to run a personal best. And it was a in the end it was 10° higher than the average for that time of the year. So it topped out at 27° Celsius. Now naturally we’ve had a fantastic summer. So we have been doing some heat training. Uh well I say heat training. You’re just simply running in the warm weather. It’s not heat training. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve been running a full marathon distance at pace in that sort of temperature. And ultimately, if you’re not used to it, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to sustain that sort of pace and to get enough fluids and liquids and stuff like that in you. So throughout I would say about 90% of the people that I saw who ran the Berlin Marathon probably missed their goal target time. myself included on this, but I was equally incredibly proud of my performance there and I felt that I couldn’t have actually given any more on that day. There was nothing that was left out there that made me think if I just pushed a little harder here or if I just eased back on this bit maybe I would have done better. It was just no roll of the dice. And on that day, the best I could manage, which I was incredibly happy with. By the way, I might as well just give you the numbers. I was aiming for a 235 to 236 and I got a 241 in the end. So, I fell about 5 minutes short of my target race time. It’s still an astonishingly fast time though for so many people. And and in the end, I was I was happy with it. I was disappointed initially because when you have measured tried to measure yourself against the cold hard statistics of numbers it’s rather demoralizing and as you say set yourself up for failure in certain aspects but equally uh I was really proud of that time given the the sort of weather that we had during that day and because I am well known for basically cramping up and sweating profusely throughout a marathon run. So, I did very well. Uh, managed to hold my cramps at bay until about mile 23 and then I had to uh pull up a little bit, but other than that, it’s an incredible run. It’s an incredible race with an incredible experience. Um, so yeah, I I think it’s from a timing wise tough, but as an experience overall, you just can’t knock it. Um, well, congratulations and well done, especially for it being a a really tough day out for the office. I have so many friends who ran that um ran that marathon and said how just incredibly tough it was. Um, I wonder what this means about when to acknowledge the fact that everything is against you. So, I I talked about how more often than not it’s you’re likely to fail at a marathon, but I don’t want to kind of make that too negative of a statement. But what I mean is in order for you to achieve your best, so many things have to come together. Yeah. And that in your and just the chances of all that happening of you feeling good on the day of you having good weather conditions of having a good wind or a good starting pen or just like your body just being in a good place. So many things have to slot into place for that for you to like really get your best that it it will more likely happen less than it will actually happen. And that’s not to dis discredit anyone, but um I think it becomes more apparent over the marathon distance. Whereas, you know, a half marathon distance, anything that you know, you can probably just get by and push through certain things and it doesn’t affect your time too much. But as soon as you go into marathon distance and you especially that second half, any problem that you do have will be exacerbated, especially in that second half of the marathon. So that’s why I think it’s a really incredible distance and I incredibly hard distance and I have a full respect for anyone who completes it. I should should complete more of them myself, but I don’t. Um because I know how hard it is. Um and I know how much effort you have to put in and it won’t always give you the reward you give. Um but I suppose in my own running, I’ve not been at my kind of anywhere near my fitness in the last year or two. And I noticed that last year when I ran the big half. Um, I came back from my adventures in in Europe on my bike and I was like, I’m not I haven’t run much over the summer, but I raced a 10k in Berlin and I managed to get a sub 40 and I was like, wow, really surprised myself. So, I was like, it was like a month later, I was like, I’ll I’ll race this and to see what I’ve got. And then from like the first kilometer, I was just in agony and then the whole experience was just not fun. And I didn’t get a great time. I got a decent time, but it wasn’t anywhere near my best. And I remember walking away from that race being like, why didn’t I just reframe my mindset from the start and be like, okay, I’m nowhere near my best here, so I’m not going to push myself. I’m just going to enjoy it and ease into it. And that’s what I did at the the Hackne half earlier this year in spring. I knew I was nowhere near where I wanted to be. So, I was like, you know what? I’m just going to I’m just going to jog it and enjoy it and take in the crowds. And my god, the crowds at the Hackne half are some of the best crowds in London. And I’d missed it in previous years because you’re in the zone or you’re just too fast that you’re you’re not there when all the other spectators are there. And my god, I got the wall of like noise from everyone. And I So when I did the big half again this year, it was again like acknowledging, okay, I know where I am and I’ve got nothing to prove here. I’m just going to enjoy it and it’ll still be tough, especially the second half cuz I’m not particularly fit and don’t have that endurance. But if I just knock everything back a little bit, just I was able to enjoy the run so much more. Agreed. I think it’s it’s very easy though, I will say to to to mention that that to say that what we need to do is reframe our outlook. Um I will say that especially when it comes to the marathon training because so many people dedicate such a large amount of time uh to something that regardless of the conditions uh people will still they will still they won’t adjust themselves effectively. They will still go out because they’ve been targeting something for so long and they’re like I will just go for it and if I blow up I blow up but I want to do this because that’s what I owe to myself to give it a And you never actually know what race day will bring you, you know, with the with the with the support, with the adrenaline. Yeah. With the will. But I’d argue that over a marathon distance, which I tried to push when I did my first ever marathon, you know, too fast I could have done, you know, I did fall apart in the last five miles and and and that is really painful. And and when you feel like you are literally falling backwards and everyone’s getting faster than you, it’s um it’s a really hard place to be. And then suddenly the last 5k of a marathon suddenly becomes the longest hard the hardest 5k of your life sort of thing. And that’s that’s what makes the marathon such a wonderful such an interesting and awful and compelling distance because it will take you into places that you probably never been before. Didn’t think you would go. And I think that’s why the marathon deserves so much respect. And there was an there is an element uh to marathon running at the moment that’s makes it incredibly sexy uh that it’s very cool and trendy uh to do it but that they deserve more respect and they deserve sort of the understanding and knowledge that uh it’s tough out there. But also as you say it only takes one good race. It takes one one good race and you might achieve the time that you never thought possible and then you have to go through that whole cycle again of thinking is that it now or could I could I go a little bit faster? Could I do something more? I don’t know. Where do you stop? Where do you stop? Yeah. It’s important issue. Yeah. Um well interestingly I I now realize that I’m I have no idea that my kind of peak fitness I haven’t raced as in like ran fast continuously for some time. So, I don’t even know where I am. Um, and I’ve started to think, I don’t care. Uh, as long as I show up and enjoy running, that’s all that matters. And I don’t have to be at the best that I have been in the past. But, you know what? One day I might just get there naturally just by showing up. Or or maybe I’m in a place at the moment where just things aren’t slotting together. So, I’m just not getting that consistency. That momentum is not building, but I’m still turning up. And that’s important. That’s what where I am right now. And I don’t need to put pressure on myself to be like, I just really want to, you know, get this, you know, get that upward trajectory and get these faster times. But I I’ll just have some patience and wait and one day I’ll I’ll get there. And then I think I might need to bring my run streak back in again. That might be it. Did think about this this this week actually. Um just cuz I have some weeks where I do run a lot and then I’ll have a weeks when I don’t. Get the wellworn trainers back out again, Tom. I think you know. We’ll see. Well, I’ll be there for you, okay? When you need it. Okay. I We’ll go for a run together. Oh, well, you’ve often mentioned how we uh in private actually how we should go and do a fun race together. Yes, we should. Um not a marathon. Um or at least a road marathon anyway, but something on the trails. Trails. Yeah. Any any ideas what that could be? I think we we did discuss uh offer the idea of doing a Maverick race actually. So, we’re going to potentially look at that. If anyone’s got any recommendations for um any particular Maverick races, we’d love I’ve never done one. A lot of my friends have. I haven’t either. I know they’re incredibly fun and accessible and Yeah, it would be fun just to have I think dark ones as well or something ones. Oh, yeah. This time of year. Yeah. You get the head torches out. Yeah. I would like to see where I’m running through though, you know? That’s that’s always been my kind of um point about like UTMB and things like that. It’s like didn’t decide to run together so we can actually see each other for the whole race. Well, but also I want, you know, the trails inspire me and I want to see them. I don’t want to not see them and be like, I have no idea where I am in the world, you know. Um, but yeah, we should watch this space. Um, we should book ourselves onto doing something like that. Just enjoy it. Join be on the trails. Uh, I also want to talk about um some of the things I did over the summer if I have a bit of a roundup. Um, first of all, I went on an incredible um little mini adventure u with a bunch of friends cycling around the aisle of rights um early in the summer. Have you been to the whites? I have been a long time. Great great little place though. Yeah, expensive to get to. I think it’s renowned for being the most expensive ferry crossing per mile of water or something in the world or something like that. Although I can I can rival it cuz I did a ferry crossing across a river in Cornwall with a bike and it cost like 20 quid or something which was dafted. Um but yeah, I’d never ever been. Um it’s, you know, living in the south, it’s the one island that’s there that um just has been calling to explore. And I would highly recommend if anyone is listening is go and find out what your nearest island is in the UK because there’s a lot of them, okay? not not many of them in the in the south. Um, but go go and explore your nearest island, whether that’s Lundy or the island of man in the aisle of white or a myriad of of of islands in Scotland. Um, which I’d love to go and explore as well. Uh, I had an amazing pl amazing time there. Uh, great weather, great like views on the south coast. The the old military road is amazing. Um, I also went to the garlic farm, which I didn’t know much about. Have you heard about the garlic farm? Never heard of the garlic farm. Well, it’s it is what it is. It’s a garlic farm. They sell pretty much every single condiment you could want in the world. So, if you’re a condiments person, this is the place for you. It is full of just amazing sauces, all of which have got garlic in. Who’ have thought it? Uh, I brought back some ketchup and some barbecue sauce. My friend’s got some hot sauce called Vampire Slayer cuz there’s you just a hell load of garlic in there. Um, it’s it’s one of those kind of brands that you they need to be in the in the UK stores. I would I would love to see Garlic Farm in in a sainsburries. I would buy all of their stuff. It’s amazing. But they probably only sell like five items in like a sainsburries, but in this store there is just hundreds of stuff. It was I can order online as well. So, actually, I might actually focus on Christmas gifts, get like a few. Was it busy? Yeah. Um, it wasn’t too busy. Um, but we only just kind of like slightly Yeah. They did sell garlic ice cream. I didn’t try that, but um Yeah, it was black. Yeah. Don’t knock it. Doesn’t Doesn’t make it doesn’t make it any more appealing. You got to try it, I suppose, if you’re going to be the greatest person. Sweeter. I think it probably wasn’t vegan. That was my excuse. Oh, sorry. Oh, goodness me. Yes. If it didn’t have dairy in there, you’d be all over it. I’d also shout out to um Freshwater Bay, which is uh on the southwest coast of the aisle of white, which um just arriving there. It looks like the Amalfi Coast. Stunning. The Amalfi Coast. Yeah, a little bit of the Amalfi Coast. It’s like a little bit of the Maui Coast has moved north onto the island of White. They just shipped a little bit of it. Y, you know, it’s not the coast. Okay, keep bringing it back a little bit. A little bit. look like the Amalf. Hey, look, look, Britain is amazing. And you find these places that you’re like, by the next tourist tourist trip or something, information board. It’s a bit like it’s the Amalfi Coast. Well, this is this is an important thing. When I cycled in Europe last year, I was in various parts of the Alps and there was quite a few cases where I was like, “This looks like Scotland.” And I thought that was just my, you know, kind of um loyalty to the UK. And then I recently I’ve been recently watching um you McGregor’s and Charlie Charlie Borman Joy Borman’s Long Way and I did that one and Long Way Down Way. I I can’t believe I’ve gone so far in my life without watching them. They’re amazing. It’s everything in my That is what inspired me to start going off on longer travels. Long way round. Okay. Yeah. Well, you McGregor being uh Scottish was came out with the same phrase, just looks like Scotland and it makes you appreciate what we do have in the UK. Absolutely. Or in Scotland. Yeah. Yeah. No, but my argument is we do have these amazing places and sometimes they’re covered up with terrible weather, but when you see them in great weather, you’re like, “Wow, don’t need to go to the Amalfi Coast cuz I can go to Freshwater Bay on the aisle of white.” That’s I will I would say it’s cheaper to go to the that river crossing. There it is. Yeah. And that’s all the comments that came from that um that reel I put out about um Britain being so great. Everyone was like, “Yeah, but it’s expensive.” Ah, and I I I kind of agree actually. It is a little bit expensive. I’ve noticed that a little bit through my own travels when cycling around Europe, Wales as well this year as well. Um but it’s here. We have it here. Mhm. And a lot of stuff isn’t expensive. Some of the stuff is free. Just jumping in briefly to say if you’ve got this far, you’re probably a fan of the show. And it would be great if you wouldn’t mind confirming that love by following or subscribing to this podcast. It takes just one click from you, but it really does make a huge difference in getting more people to find this show. Thank you. Uh what else did I get to? Oh, I did a few festivals this year. Um the the kind of the gold standard actually I think for three years in a row now I’ve done Love Trails Festival, Glastonbury and Reading. I’ve volunteered all three of them. So they’ve kind of been like little working weekends away. Um Love Trails Festival. We’ll come on to this later on because it was kind of a suppose a difficult time for me um at this particular festival. It was an amazing festival. Great weather. Really really hot like 30° I think on the Saturday. You know I In Wales. In Wales. Yes. In Wales. Y um I remember doing the um the run to the sea and running back. That was on the Saturday and then typically you’d go and do the beer mile, but I just collapsed in the shade at the end of it. I just I just didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t even do the midnight runners runs cuz it was just too hot to do anything. I had to really like um reduce the amount of activity I was doing because it was just so unbearably hot. Um but a fantastic year. Really great to see them going from strength to strength. Absolutely love that festival. It’s still keeping that kind of community vibe even though it’s growing each year. Um they get more and more numbers, but it doesn’t still doesn’t seem like it’s kind of like, you know, selling out in any way or like or being too big. I did notice there’s a lot more little campsites now actually, which actually is good cuz I think we all just kind of crammed into one field years ago when I when I met you there. But now I think they’ve got maybe like four different fields. So you’ve got so much more space now around your tent as well. So, um, and that’s and even I noticed one of the fields that we ran through had like half of it was empty. So, it’s still got a lot of space for for growth for growth going forward. Yeah. And then Glaston Glastonbury and Reading. I was volunteering with Boxham, which I’ve been doing for three years in a row, which is a fantastic way to get a free Glastenbury ticket, but I have to do two festivals a year. So, I do read Reading. Um, which was a which was a weird year. Tell us about Reading. Uh, Reading um is a place where I go to look after 16 to 22 year olds. Yeah. Many of which have left home for the first time and are drinking alcohol. You know what though? It Reading Festival has got a lot of bad rep in the last decade. I suppose it was renowned for being the place that you saw in the news where people were setting fire to tents on the last night for instance. And I think 3 years ago I volunteered there for the first time and I was doing one of my shifts was the graveyard shift on Sunday night into Monday morning. So this this last night when everything you know typically kicked off and I was volunteering at a campsite in a welfare place where basically I was there to help anyone who needed me. And I was really apprehensive about the shift the whole weekend. I just did not want to do it. I thought things are going to be kicking off and I sat there and I had a security guard next to me as part of that shift. It’s just the two of us and this little hub and a lot of people came up. Some people were like lost, lost their friends or their phone wasn’t charged and technically we weren’t allowed weren’t meant to charge people’s phones cuz then everyone would use it. But if you saw someone who was in distress, you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got a charger. Let me just give you some juice for so you can call your friends.” you know, these people with like, you know, 17 year olds who are just like in absolute tears because they’re just completely lost. And you find that your role there is literally just welfare of them. It’s looking after them. It’s being a parent figure. And it’s and it’s amazing that that the festival have people like that. But this year and and sorry and on that particular shift, I saw that any problems that were happening because I was listening to the radio. I had security radio on. any problems that were happening, the security was just on it straight away and they stamped out any problems. And it was amazing watching. I was literally had a view of this whole campsite and you just see security men like running from one side to another basically trying to like um trying to stamp out any kind of problems and uh I felt really safe and um I noticed this year they’ve made a real real push in trying to make it more inclusive, make it more safe, making spaces um for people who might be very nervous about going to a festival. So they’ve categorized a lot of the campsites now. So whereas before it was just like camp anywhere and whoever you are. So you’d be mixed with people who want you to have a massive party. But if you want to have a chilled out time, you might not find it. But now you have a place where if you’re on your own, you can go and camp with people on your own. If you want a quiet place, there’s a quiet campsite. If you want a wellness place, there’s a place where you can do yoga in the morning. Only people who are staff are doing it though. I don’t think any of the teenagers really want to do that kind of stuff. Um, and then if you want a party field, there’s a party field where there’s a big football five side place which is on all the time. Um, so kudos to them and they’re trying to make it greener as well, encouraging people to take their tents home. So whilst it is a festival that you know has been spoken about in the press quite negatively over the years, they are making big steps to change that and I saw that from inside. So real credit to reading and I suppose a lead festival as well uh for doing that because ultimately I’ve learned from my time there three years there that you’re getting the most vulnerable people at this festival. People who are just either underage or just super young who’ve never left home who are doing something massive. They’ve just celebrated their GCSE results. It’s usually on that weekend and they’re coming to the place with their mates but ultimately things go wrong. You know, last year we had stormy weather in Leeds, so like lots of one of the the stages was shut and lots of the tents were wrecked and I just I felt I was we didn’t get it that bad in Reading, but I just felt really really horrified by all of these young kids who probably just didn’t know how to act in when suddenly everything went wrong for them. Um, so I have a huge amount of respect for Reading for putting so much focus on welfare at a festival when people need it the most because yes, you can go and have a great time, but also you can go and actually have a bad time. And once you’re in a place which is all about highs and you’re not feeling well, you need to also recognize that that happens as well. So, there’s some amazing charities that help work with them, like the um the Sally Army do a tent where they do really affordable soup and bread rolls for a few quid, that kind of thing. Um and there’s loads of those little places where if you need help, you can find it. Ranted on about Reading then for for more than I felt I needed to. Can’t go wrong with reading. I’m I’m so passionate about it. I think I like that though as in it’s Yeah, it’s just don’t judge it until you until you’re there. And yes, it is weird. It’s very easy to say to for somebody like me to look in and be like, “Oh, here we go.” All a bunch of young kids who are just they’re drinking too much. They’re causing chaos. They’re there to literally just vandalize everything. Um, and yes, granted there are kids who do that, but it’s an absolute pathetically small number of people that unfortunately take the headlines when actually the majority are actually, as you say, experiencing like a festival for the first time, the full effect of it, the sleeping arrangements, the go partying, the how do you look after yourself basically when you probably have had one or too many drinks or something as well. and it’s important to have somebody around who can they can actually turn to and help. So, I think it’s uh yeah, I think it’s it’s good to know that it’s making improvements. Um and yeah, you get a free ticket out of it as well. Yeah. So, I took it really to get my Glastenbury ticket, but there’s no Glastonbury next year. So, I have to try and work out what festivals I do next year to get my free Glastonbury ticket for 2027. I think I’ll do the art of white maybe although that’s quite expensive because getting the ferry cross and then I really like the idea of doing shambala I good things about it I don’t think it’s big for music but it’s big for vibes it’s good good music but reading festival actually as much as I kind of might criticize that it is all for like 18y olds when they have a good lineup it is amazing cuz it’s actually it’s one of those arena festivals where they kind of like they they check your bags before you go in which I’m not particularly a fan because Glaster doesn’t do that. But once you’re in the arena, everything is all quite close together. So you can go literally from one main stage to the next within like 2 minutes. Yeah. So it’s not like Glass where you’re having to like, you know, take out your hiking poles to trace from one side of the of the festival to the other and it will take you an hour. Everything is all quite contained and I love that about it. And when you do get a good lineup, it is amazing and like the music is amazing. This particular year, the line it wasn’t for me. The one day I wanted to see bands was the day that I had to do my shift, which was a bit of a shame. So, actually, I left early on the Sunday after I finished my shift in the afternoon. I was went home early Sunday afternoon. Didn’t regret it cuz nothing I wanted to see in that evening. But that was just, you know, sometimes you have good festivals when you volunteer. Sometimes you have not so great festivals, but I think when you volunteer, you always have a compromise anyway because you have to work some shifts while you’re there. So I find that my advice for people who do it for the first time or or or interested in it is don’t try and make your festival experience around one year. But if you do this consecutively over several years like now I’ve done Glastonbury with them three times. I feel like I’ve had a much more fulfilling Glastonbury experience by going over three years than I would have done just by trying to put it all into Yeah. one event to one. Yeah. Because there will inevitably be bands that I wanted to see at this year’s Glastonbury which I couldn’t for instance. Yeah. And likewise, but over the three years, you’ll have amazing experiences. Then it’ll feel a bit more whole. So yeah, I hope I can get my glass me ticket for 2027. Um, interestingly, actually, um, a little shout out to Amy Harris, who was on the podcast, the poet, who whose poem I read at Glastenbury. She got it published in the postcards um, shop, and you can buy her poem on the postcards. Every year I go now, I go into the postcard shop and I point it out to people. I’m like, “This is my friend Amy. Read this poem. It’s the most beautiful poem ever.” I don’t think she’s been to Glastonbury since that got published. And and she’s never been invited even though she has some published work in Glastonbury. I know this year that Emily Evis um who now is the the the head of Glastonbury Festivals uh put um shared her postcard in on on social media. So Amy got in contact with her and Emily got in contact with her and I think now they’re going to make it happen so that Amy can come to Glastonbury in 2027 and I hope she will perform her poem at Glastonbury Festival and I I’ll do my best as long as I’m not working a shift I’ll do my best to be there and help film it for her because that’ll be an amazing experience full circle about this amazing poet being been performed by by the person who wrote the words. So yeah, best of luck to Amy for that. Uh, so I I I had some time off. Um, even though I’ve just come back from a summer of adventuring, I did have a little week in Cornwall. Went back to Foy. I talked about it at the last podcast. Amazing place. Told my parents this time. Had a wonderful experience with them. Um, and went back to the Eden Project to do their park run to get in for free. Um, which they were really excited to do because they’ve never actually been to the Eden Project. And so we had an amazing day there. It actually was um uh it was raining in spells on that day and we were inside the big bubbles, these big biospheres and when you hear the rain in the it’s it’s a noise like nothing else. It was really really unique to be there. Yeah, it was like it it it felt amazing. I would I’d highly recommend going to the project on a rainy day for that experience because you’re going to be indoors anyway most of the time. Most of the good stuff is inside. Um, but yeah, it was it’s kind of one of those things where you just kind of like, wow. And it it’s, you know, when you’re in a tent and the rain actually sounds louder than it actually is. It definitely was that, I think. But it definitely felt like it was like a storm or something. It was really really cool and you felt like really smugg. Uh but we should talk about how the success of our eating project reel that we put out um and how that has been spread wide around the running community. So a friend of mine um spoke to me a run a few months ago being like my friend sent me a reel that you’re in about the Eden Project. And I was like I run with that guy every week. Um and I was like yes great. I’m glad that that is being shared that people are sending it to other people, especially people who are into park run tourism. Um, are you bringing that up now? I am having a look to see this reel and where it’s at, right? Like h how it’s done so far. Yes, you did very well on that one there. What is it at now? What’s our what’s our view count? We are on 204,762 views or over 44 days of watch time and 23 hours. So, actually we’re shortly coming up on 45 hours of watch time. Oh, you got all the stats of you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. And I don’t know how many times it says it’s been shared. I think we need to I need to look on my phone. shares. We have over um well shares not so sure but at least saves we’ve had over,00 saves which is great. So if you look on the actual main grid it will tell us the number of shares. Uh oh only 28. Oh that’s not that popular. Um at least your shared privately. This is what this is what’s important. I don’t don’t get those stats. I think people have clicked that button and then sent it to their parkour friends. Wow. Been like, “Oh, there’s this park. Should we do this in the UK?” And great. I’m I’m glad that we’ve had some kind of influence. Um it was a busier parkin actually when I went the other week. I feel like that’s that’s you know, there go perhaps some of our some of our doing. Um I’d say you take some commission, but it’s free. So, uh nothing going on there. Well, I did in the in if you listen to the full conversation, I did say make sure you buy your food there just to help support the charity in that way. Um, delicious food. I did buy coffees and cakes and food when we were there this time around as well. Um, but still as true today as it was back then as well. So, um, yes, what a great thing to go and do. Eden Project for free. Well, this um I got exposed to the world of parkis park run tourism to the absolute extremes recently through my friend Josephine in my running communities who um who shared me who showed me the her spreadsheet that she’s in uh of all of the people who were going to Germany a few weeks ago when they had a a public holiday on the Friday. So there were a lot of park runs happening on Friday. So if you went to Germany for that long weekend, you could do two park runs in that weekend, a Friday and a Saturday. She shared this spreadsheet with me where people listed all of the different German park runs they were doing because there was quite a few that were happening on the Friday and people were also listing what they’re doing on the Saturday. They also listed their flight details from from UK and then return. So if you were also going to Germany to do these two park runs over this weekend, you could match up with people who might be on the same flight as you or be going to the same park run with you. And then there these uh and you could you share your contact details. There were hundreds of people on this spreadsheet. Hundreds of people who were going across Europe to do parkourism parkin tourism. It’s a big thing. It’s a genuine thing as well. I mean, I think the idea of going off and actually doing one in Germany on the Friday and then you could potentially go off to another city and then do do it another country as well as well. Yeah, that would be absolutely insane. But yeah, I don’t think I’m I’m obsessive with the whole tourism thing as some people. But if that’s for you, great. Go for it. Like what a way to to see the world as most people do anyway with their running. They go all over the world with it and a great way to experience new places by running in them as well. Yeah. I mean, I think when you go on the little map on Park Run and stuff and you can see all the different places that they operate and things, there’s definitely an opportunity there to meet up with fellow park runners and go and actually experience a park run in a part of the world that you would never never consider. But yeah, twice in one week. Very impressive. I still remember the days when on New Year’s Day you could do two in a day. Do you remember that? No, I never experienced that. Uh, so they would a bit like Christmas Day as a special event, New Year’s Day, there’d also be a park run, but because it’s New Year’s Day and everyone’s obviously partying New Year’s Eve, some park runs would start at 10:00 a.m. So, but al also others started at 9:00. So, if you had like two local parkins, one started at 9:00, one started at 10:00, you could do two in one day. I never did it, but I did complete one park one on one of those days. I did the 10:00 a.m. one cuz I just I had actually driven back from some friends literally overnight from a New Year’s Eve party and then back to London. So, I got back at like 2:00 a.m. in the morning. I I regret now not getting up an hour early to do that 9:00 a.m. one and then a 10:00 a.m. one because now they’ve stopped it and they said it’s too much uh pressure on our local parks because there’s only not not every park does one. It puts pressure on the ones who do and there’s too much travel happening on New Year’s Day when people and and fair enough, you don’t want you don’t want people to be too obsessed with with that kind of stuff. But now I think they all start at 9:00 a.m. I think on New Year’s Day. Those were the glory days. So technically, if you wanted to I suppose this is the thing like how many park runs you can do in a year. It used to be that you could do well your traditional 52 Saturdays in a year but then an extra two New Year’s Eve. No. So, New Year’s Day and Christmas Day. So, you could do 56 Parkins in a year. Some people have that tally. 5 52 54. Sorry. 54. I got my 54 park runs. I think my most I’ve ever done is like 30 or something in a year. I think I won about half a dozen to be honest with you. In total, I think in I think in total I think I’ve only done about half a dozen. Um it’s just always on it was always on a Saturday and you’re a busy man. I was just you know well I wasn’t that busy. I was probably hung over to be honest when it first started and now I am a busy man. So with the joys of Trailside Coffee. Well, should we talk about Trailside Coffee? How has it been this year? We had some great weather so that must kind of translate into good business. Yeah, it’s been a good year to be honest. We’ve had a uh it’s been a good year, good summer. I should Well, before we kind of go into it, um you have a coffee business called Trailside Coffee. You make incredible coffee out on the trails. In Tooting Common. Yes. Tooting Beck common. Just Tooting Common. Is that Is that a different common? Tot. Okay. Yeah. I’m not local to the area. So I did see a sign saying Tutting Beck common. Is that the same one? No. So it’s Tooting Common. Yeah. Um you are on Google Maps. I am indeed. And also you are on commute. On commute. There you go. Uh, and so if you know where to find Ben, you can see he’s got a little red dot on Kimoot. I did try and actually search for you on the search feature, like type you in on Kimoot. That doesn’t work yet. I’ll work out how to get that get you on that. But if you know, you are now a red dot on Kimoot. So you can plot your activity, your run, your cycle, your walk. You can plot it to Trailside Coffee as a point of interest now. Excellent. We’ll uh we’ll chat to the engineers over at Kimoot and see if we can get them to bump bump my profile up a little bit. You know, it’ be absolutely fine. Get some more runs in there. But yeah, it’s uh it’s all been going very well over the summer. It’s been lovely weather. So fantastic opportunities to be outside, trading on the regular oning common, but then also having several private events as well. So moving around a little bit both in London and outside. Couple of nice weddings, some private events. I was at an art gallery last week in Shortorditch and just ultimately just taking my little van to different spots and adding a bit of variety because as we all know variety is the spice of life. So really can’t complain. And then moving here into autumn it’s been it’s been lovely. It’s perfect weather for coffee drinking isn’t it really the falling of the autumn leaves and everything else. So it’s not too cold at the moment as well as people still getting out. Exactly. It just ticks all the right boxes for coming outside and getting a nice autumn walk and having a nice coffee. So, I’m absolutely loving it at the moment. I’ve had a few coffees from you actually in over the summer. I’m very lucky to have had those experiences because I would argue and I I’ll happily claim that you are my favorite coffee experience in London. And that’s a big claim for London. I think well for many reasons. One, your coffee is fundamentally delicious. You make an incredible cup of coffee. You clearly are, you clearly know your stuff. You are a very fine barista. So, you get that down to a tea and you do coffee proper and well, you’re also highly affordable. You where coffees now are touching on nearly a five or a coffee, you’re getting there and it will be there soon. Uh, all of your prices still have a three in the in it. Yep. Yep. I just uh still to this day consider I do think I am probably the most affordable cup of specialty coffee in the well definitely within the Balum area Balamin Tuting area. Um, yeah, I just haven’t I just haven’t put my prices up. And don’t get me wrong, coffee prices have gone up or the cost of coffee beans and things, they have gone up, but I’ve just chosen to absorb those costs into my business for the time being. Um, well, I still can. And the simple stuff as well is I don’t charge extra for all those other bits like having decaf and I don’t charge extra for having if you want oat milk or an alternative milk to dairy. I just whether or not it makes financial sense, shall we say, because yes, oats and alternative milks do cost a little bit more than dairy. Um, but I just don’t think you should be able to put a price on somebody’s preference for deciding that they they either have an allergen or they don’t they don’t want to they don’t like dairy or they have an intolerance or something. It’s like, no, I shouldn’t have to I don’t think the consumer should have to pay for that side of things. Um, so I don’t do it and I’ve just kept my prices the same for the last year and a half, I think. Well done. Uh, and thank you for someone who drinks oat milk and not dairy. Um, cuz really the price of dairy should be, you know, extortionately more expensive because so much more energy and effort goes into, you know, feeding an animal to milk an animal. But, you know, you just blend some oats together and you get oat milk for instance. So, it’s where subsidies, this is a bigger topic here about, you know, the price of dairy um, and why it is so cheap. is because me and government subsidies are allowing that. Um, but thank you for not uh for not passing that on to the consumer and letting us have free range of whatever we want. I suppose also you you’re you make great coffee. It’s really affordable. Also, you are a focal point for your whole community and I’ve witnessed that by standing next to you watching you serve customers uh and just having amazing conversations with everyone that you know and see regularly who go through walks into the park. you have such a great relationship with all your customers and it’s they’re not just coming for your coffee, they’re also coming for a little slice of you as well. Thank you. No, that’s that’s lovely. That’s lovely to hear. I think I make I do make an effort to try and yeah get to know my customers and I think the word community is these days has become a bit of a buzzword and is a bit of been sugarcoated and covered up as a term used for like consumption and capitalism and every single every single like shop or anything has a calls themselves a community of some description. But I genuinely do believe that with my little business that those that come to get coffee from me, we build a relationship and I get to know them. I get to find out what their orders are. And I love doing that. I love being able to know people by faces. You know, don’t get me wrong, I still don’t know half the people’s names probably who come to my fan, but I do know pretty much all of their orders. Um, I know what they told me from the previous year, previous year, previous day or something. And I I I absolutely love that and it’s a huge part of what I think separates my business from all the other businesses that are available to to to people really out on the streets. So, um, yeah, I’m really proud. I’m really proud of that and I’m really proud and I’m really glad you mentioned that because, yeah, I did I was very conscious that when you were over, you were just having your coffee and just listening in. But there was, you know, plenty of customers come along and you could see firsthand that it was simply like I do know all of these people and uh, I know what their orders are. I know how to have a chat with them and I I really enjoy that. It’s a massive privilege to be able to do that and to share share that with people. So yeah, thank you for saying that. And it’s such a contrast to other coffee shops where you get different staff in um who are perhaps just working because they want a job um and might not have the time to have a chat. And there’s something about your space where you allow that to happen. Um but I suppose as as a soul trader, what does that mean in kind of like the grand scheme of things where you are also the brand? Um but you do need to you know go and do private events for instance or maybe you also want to expand and and and have other ventures as well because you know you can’t always be in one place at one time. Yeah, precisely. I think it will be it’ll be a really interesting journey when uh potentially take that next step because as I am attached to my brand and I am part of it sort of thing is how do you separate yourself from it and what does what does that mean in terms of your business and people coming to buy your coffee because if they’re coming for to see you as well as much as anything else then if you’re not there then that’s that’s removing half of the um half of the joy but I guess part of it is just simply I I I have always tried to bring people along with me in this journey. So whether or not I’m there or not, they always know what’s going on with me and the business as well. So I think that’s really important thing to distinguish. And I’d like to think that at some point in the future be able to have some staff who would be, you know, granted uh people going into coffee for different reasons, but I’d love to think that I could hire a small team or something in the future that would be just as passionate, be just as sort of driven to be chatty with their customers to get to know them as well as I have and just ultimately provide an an exceptional experience that can’t be replicated in many other places. So yeah, that’s that’s somewhere which we’ll look at, but ultimately we’ll we’ll tackle those hurdles as we have done with anything that comes along our way uh head on when it finally happens. What if there’s someone out there who’s like, “Yes, I I I want to I want to help you out. I can be that that chatty coffee person. I’d love to.” Well, then just drop me an email. Honestly, we’ll we’ll be getting to that at some point, I’m sure. But uh yeah, just follow along on the journey for the time being. find us on our social medias and then uh uh we can always have a chat on there. Okay. Well, I wish you the best in whatever journey you decide to go on with your next step of your business. Let’s now move and talk about uh my adventure cycling the coast of Wales, which I did this this summertime. I’m excited to hear about this. Um I haven’t really spoken too much about this in public. I haven’t even posted any um pictures of um other than what I shared on my stories during the trip. Um I do need to post about it. I just haven’t found the right words the right words to say. I’m currently also trying to write a little um Substack blog about uh a bit about my experiences as well. So I think until that’s done, I don’t really want to kind of post pictures about it. I suppose why I’m saying this is because that for a lot of people who know me closely who followed on my stories you will have seen that I took on this grand adventure by cycling the entire coast of Wales starting in Chepto on the south coast following the coast keeping the sea on my left all the way until I got to Chester uh which took me 3 weeks and I had the best of the British weather the best of the Welsh coastline and it looked epic and amazing and it really was it was this phenomenal adventure. Um but there was also um things that were happening privately which meant that my mental health was in a bit of a turmoil on the entire trip. Um and so I don’t exactly know um how or I want to talk about this, but I do want to talk about it. Um, and I do want to talk about the the amazing adventure of the Welsh coastline is, but I do also want to frame it around my mental health, but also trying to keep certain details of what happened to me private. I don’t know how this conversation will go, but let’s try. And I think, let me sum it up. I’ve got something I’ve prepared um that kind of sums up a little bit about um what I was going through and and what the journey really meant for me. So this summer my mental health was thrown into troubled waters by a few people who tried to bring me down and it worked. I had a serious breakdown and I was left feeling abandoned and betrayed in spaces that I’d otherwise felt completely safe. I’m now receiving help and feeling much better. But this was all happening at a time when I was due to set off and cycle the coast of Wales. But as I was on the train, I broke down again and I didn’t know if I’d make it through the first day or two. But I’m so glad I left the house because otherwise I’d have been trapped in a spiral of crushing thoughts. And I didn’t know it then, but it turns out the coast of Wales was the medicine that I needed. Every night of my journey, I would take my bike down to the beach and I would cook the same simple meal of pasta and pesto. For 19 nights in a row, I ate the exact same thing. And I did not care cuz it wasn’t what I ate, it was where I ate it. on some of the most stunning coastline that we have in the UK. I had views of beaches that no restaurant in the world could could ever come close to. And I had it to myself just sitting there letting life breathe around me with the flow of the waves of the ocean. And I started to find bits of peace. And I would often strip off and force myself into the cold Welsh sea. And I would instantly feel everything wash away. Not only the grit and the sunscreen and the sweat that I would be accumulating from a tough day on the bike, but also the weight of everything I was carrying back at home. It was if in that moment everything in here just went. It was a baptism, a reset, and I never wanted to get out of the water despite how cold it was. And I on every night of that tour, I have had moments on those beaches that I’m still struggling to put into words that were so profound. Like frolicking in the waves of Marlo Sands, giggling like a little kid, having the entire beach to myself, but not feeling alone cuz I was there in nature. or when I arrived in Abodaran after having an incredibly tough time off the bike to find that the sea was as flat as glass and when I went for a swim it was crystal clear like you could drink it. So every night I was able to find some sense of calm and despite what you might think about Britain, our politics, our culture, our society, the state of things either here or in the rest of the world. Our coastline reminds us of what is pure and where we can find peace. and I’d argue it’s what Britain does best. So that is a bit of a summary of the three weeks that I spent cycling around the coast of Wales. I mean, I think uh you obviously touch on like several different things here with your both your your physical journey and actually cycling and exploring and and experiencing what the coast of Wales has to offer. Also, I guess in certain aspects, it’s the exploration and adventure of your your mental health as well and how it’s so uniquely tied in with nature and the spirit of adventure and its healing qualities or its healing properties along with things like the sea, the mountains, and how you would take that dip into the sea, feel reinvigorated, but also in many ways it’s it’s it’s a rebirth. earth each day, right? Like it’s it’s the ceremonial process of get being ready and stripped down and then going again the next day to face it. And as you say, I think nature and the outdoors has those healing properties and those healing aspects. And so, yeah, it seems like it was a uh an incredibly tough time for you, but also clearly uh one that needed uh one that being on such an adventure or being on the Welsh coast could help you with. So, yeah, sorry to hear that, though. I I began to understand that I this was the journey that I had to be on. Um, and that whilst I was struggling along the way across these three weeks, I was in a place of of of most support in some sense. And I knew how much the sea and being on the beaches in the evening meant to me that it just be it just became this daily ritual. And my god, now I want every every one of my bike journeys to finish at the sea every every night through a swim. is the best way to finish any bike tour every day when you’re, you know, it’s a struggle on the bike anyway, you know, and the things you have to deal with about trying to find your food and your water and your shelter and and then dealing with the elements as well and the hills and then the mechanicals, you know, all that in itself is a is a is a is a tough um journey to go on. So having this place where you could reset and unwind and find a sense of calm and and company as well. And I didn’t I think I briefly talked about this in one of our earlier conversations about my tour last year and I went into Europe and I did suffer from a bit of loneliness and it’s cuz I was basically ending my journey in like some random place. I didn’t have time to go into the town and I’d just be sitting at a campsite cooking a meal and go to sleep and I didn’t speak a lot of of the languages there so I couldn’t really have many conversations but when I did I really really did cherish it but here okay yes I was in Wales and I did I was very close to home and they did speak English and I was very there was a lot of familiarity but there was also I didn’t need company when I had the ocean as my friend and these incredible beaches which I went to in the evening when they were much quieter and there’d just be a handful of people on them and you’d be there and it would still be fairly warm and because I learned that, you know, I’m self-supported so I had everything on my bike that I needed. So most often I would go to a campsite and I would put my tent up and then I’d throw a few bags in there like my sleeping bag and stuff, but then I’d leave everything else on my bike and I’d cycle it down to the beach. I would still be in my cycle clothes. All I wanted to do by finishing that ride was to have a shower and relax. And but I was like, I can sit at a on in a in a random field of a campsite and cook myself a meal or I can sit on the beach and cook myself a meal. And always, you know, if the weather was good, it was always the beach every single night. And they were the most fantastic places to to to have that experience. And so often actually people kind of saw me and I think a lot of them thought I was camping on the beach cuz I just had all my my bike with all my bags there, but actually I was usually camping like half a mile away in a campsite. Um, but it’s made me want to now get a tent set up that I could sleep on a beach. I don’t have a tent that that enables me to do that cuz it’s not freestanding because you have to peg can’t peg it into sand basically. So many beaches I was like when as soon as it came dark I was like why am I leaving? Yeah. You know the tide’s not coming in. So, I’ll be safe to camp here. It’s profoundly peaceful, I think, isn’t it? I guess that’s the experience that people have when they’re like people talk about when you’re on the sea uh floating and you can hear the sound of like ultimately the sound of running water or crashing water of anything of any description is a profoundly peaceful moment. And I think you picked up on like a really interesting point in that. I think it, you know, everyone’s experience is different, but I could imagine being here if you’re in your house in a city, it’s very easy to feel, despite being surrounded by people, it’s incredibly easy to feel uh so alone, um so lonely, and to feel sort of like slightly lost. And naturally there’s there’s nothing to connect you to the natural world. And then on journeys like this, yes, you spend a lot of your time in in solitude and on your own. And you are you are alone but you’re never lonely as such because there is an element there where the sound of crashing waves and nature around you, the rustling of leaves, the wind passing through, the whips, uh the cracks of of a fire and things, they are all really profound and like elemental parts of of nature which you can connect to and they have an ability to just ease your soul and to help you unwind, to pick things apart in ways that ultimately we just are relatively unable to do so here in congested busy cities where we are completely overstimulated. Um, so I could see why that would help you so much um during this process and also giving you ultimately the opportunity to to process your emotions and things because that is something which uh I know we’re getting better at as men but it’s still something which uh I think you would agree it’s something which is just not talked about enough. Yeah, I will come on to that in a minute. Actually, I want to talk about my my own personal experience. Um, but now I do now see when so many people talk about what the sea gives them for their for their own mental well-being and their health, who people who live by the sea, who swear by it. I now I see it. I felt it. I’ve lived it. And boy, do I want that now in my life. I I need the sea in my life. I I I think I probably was aware of it in of of a much more of a seagoing dweller than a than a river dweller than a lake dweller for instance. I just feel more comfortable in the sea. Perhaps it’s it’s the buoyancy you get from being in salty water perhaps or it’s slightly less polluted I suppose because it’s a bigger body of water than a river. But man, I even though it was sometimes cold and the the the the sea temperatures were colder than I’m used to in the south and noticeably, but I didn’t care cuz I knew how good it was for me if I could just get through that first like 60 seconds, you know, and suddenly you become quite not I suppose a little bit resilient to it, but you just you get used to knowing what that feeling is. You’re like, “Okay, this is maybe as cold as it was yesterday, so that’s fine. And I know I can be in it for 15 minutes, you know, and I I won’t be shivering at the end of it. It’s just it’ll feel cold now. But but I had to be in the in that water as well for, you know, a while cuz there was times when if the beach wasn’t great for me, if it was too too shallow or something or too windy, I would only be in for, you know, a minute or two just to have a dip. And that wasn’t the same experience. If I could be playing around like like a child just reliving the youthfulness that we sometimes forget as adults, then they were the best experiences when I was just doing tumble turns in waves and and shouting out with laughter when no one else was around and just being like, “Yes, this is why I’m here. This is why I’m doing this. I don’t need to be anywhere else in the world.” Well, it’s a lovely thing to um yeah to experience and to to to finish uh each each day uh taking taking a moment on the beach and by the sea. Um however, there is also just ultimately there isn’t there was a large large cycling element to this as well. So, how far were you actually how far were you actually cycling and and whereabouts were you were you going? Was it you say the coastline of Wales? We’re talking about the whole coastline. This is a really important point actually. What how do you define the coastline? Right. And for me on a on a bike that had a road tire setup, I had to stick to the roads. So I stuck as close to the roads as pos as I physically possibly could to the coast on roads. I probably skipped maybe there’s two sections I consciously skipped. One was trying to go to a headland when it was really really cloudy and I was like there’s nothing at a headland other than a view and there’s no view for me this morning so I’m going to skip that and carried on. And then another one whereas I was constantly adding to my route. I had this very um basic route that I plotted like like midnight before I’d left my tour of the coast of Wales as close as I could get to. But obviously that’s allowing a computer to not know exactly what you wanted it to do. So on the day as I was looking at my maps, I’d be constantly looking to see if there was a road that took me even closer to the coastline. So I had this rough route that was I think 1,200 kilometers, but because I added so much more on getting closer to the coast or dipping down to a beach, which would be a one-way journey to then come back again and I added so many of those on. And also you lose like you could be at like if you were like 60 m elevation, you go down to zero, then you have to come back up. So that’s an extra 60 m of elevation gain on that day. If you did that like five times, then it’s like 300 meters of elevation gain you’re adding on to already a hilly day. And some of the most hilly days were in Pembrookshire when I was constantly adding in these extra beaches. I every time I went downhill, I was like, I’ve got to come up this hill. Got to cycle up this hill. I didn’t care though because I learned that you could never judge a beach from just the map. And so I was looking about, okay, it looks like there’s a beach there. I want to go see it. And sometimes they wouldn’t be that great, but more often than not, there’d be these little secret gems and you’re like, wow, this is spectacular. Like, why didn’t we know about this? And I’m so glad that I had that kind of explorer mentality within this journey to be like, okay, I’m here to explore the coast of Wales. So, I’m not going to be able to spend too much time in each place that I go to, but I’m going to explore it and find these places. And then hopefully I might return back and then like now I know all the amazing beaches to go in Wales. You named a Welsh beach. I 99% the chance that I’ve been there as long as it’s accessible by road. I might not be able to remember it because a lot of them are named in Welsh. Um and now I want to do all my The Welsh coastline is some of the best coastline in the world. Yeah, it was breathtaking and it’s so unassuming. It doesn’t shout about it. And so there’s parts of Pemrookshire where obviously that’s the closest bit to Cornwall and so much of it was like Cornwall, these rocky shores. And you’re cycling around and be like, “Wow, this is a lot like Cornwall.” And I met a cyclist who was like, “Yeah, we used to go to Cornwall, but we go here now. It’s just so much more chilled.” Yeah. It’s so much quieter when in especially school holidays when corn can get really really jam-packed like in Wales they had like space to breathe and that was such a beautiful thing. I’d almost I’d almost argue though that it’s um uh that Pemickshire relatively speaking is a well-renowned uh area for effectively the coastline. people know it and as you say it’s like that’s where a lot of people go who are you know who used to go to Cornwall they now go to Pemrchshire and rightly so because it is stunning um but it’s also the rest of that Welsh coastline going up north like you go to Kerdigian you go up towards Aberistwith in that area in the mid almost up towards the middle just outside of what would I I would deem as like the more popular touristy parts there is an element there which is just it still feels incredibly raw and untamed and like beautiful and and and hidden. This feels secretive. It feels it’s in need of exploration, adventure, and when I was following your like looking at your straa and things like that, it’s just like thinking that there’s some incredible places that you must have passed uh a little bit further up as well. Yeah, I could I could have stopped this journey like a week in and I’d have been like, “Yeah, this is enough. I’ve seen enough of Wales to know that it’s amazing.” But I I did the entire coast, so I had so much more to add to it. And it got got to the point at the end on like the last few days I was like, “Oh yeah, another beach.” Like, “Okay, I’ve seen it all now.” And that was kind of doing disjustice to where I was cuz it was spectacular, but I just so was so immune to it by then. But yeah, there are these different sections of Wales, but there’s one section that I just knew nothing about. I didn’t even know it existed. And it’s the Kllin Peninsula which is in the northern part of Wales just below Angles and it’s right on the border of Snowonia. So it sees the Snowonian mountains from it. And I had Horatio Cla on the podcast um recently who is um was brought up in Wales. is a calls himself um identifies as Welsh and um I was telling him about my journey and he’s saying how the the the two amazing places that he knows of on the Welsh coast are this um Martins Haven in Premshire which when he said to me in the conversation I I couldn’t kind of pinpoint but I knew I must have been there and I Googled it afterwards and I had been there. I didn’t spend too much time there. kind of just kind of passed into it, saw it and and went and then he said Abu Darren and I talked about Abdaran and I arrived there and had the most spiritual like experience in this place and that was on the Clint Peninsula. So it’s the bit of headland that sticks out south of Angles and just to the west of of Snowonia. I would argue it’s a forgotten part of Wales because it’s not really celebrated in any way. And you’ve got Holly head as well, which is up above, isn’t it? So, which is a little bit more wellnown. Yes. I’d be honest, I didn’t think that part of Wales existed. If you, if I was to draw Wales, I probably wouldn’t draw that bit of Wales on it. I’d actually completely forgotten it’s there. Well, it’s not that celebrated unless it unless you know of Abasotch, which is basically a place where a lot of rich affluent people go with their Range Rovers and jet skiis, and it’s kind of got a bit of a bad reputation on that. But um going further deeper into the Clint uh you get to Abodaran and that is the most beautiful place I think I I went to in Wales. I mean I went to I I it’s hard to have a favorite place because there are so many amazing stretches of coastline and I had such beautiful experiences in all of them. But for for whatever reason and one day I’ll write about it. When I arrived at Abadaran, it just was it gave me everything I needed and I had the most wonderful swim in those waters and it just felt like a place of refuge. And if you read about the history as well, there’s actually a little bit further on from there, there’s like an island that people used to pay um pilgrimage to. Um, so it’s got this kind of this historical kind of importance of people who went there for places of refuge and it felt like it it it kind of it gave me this kind of like spiritual hug that I needed in that in that moment and that will always be a special place for me. Um, but yes um I was away for 3 weeks 19 20 days in total. Um, I think I covered about 1500 miles, no 1500 kilometers, so nearly 1,000 miles in total. Um, and I’m now incredibly inspired to make um the coast of Wales a future holiday destination. Yep. Um, because it’s got some of the best beaches in the world. That sounds amazing. I I will um write my Substack article, a little blog post about it. Uh, and I will go into a bit more detail of some of the beaches that I I had these beautiful experiences on. So, anyone wants to read it, they can go to my Substack. I’m trying to push the Substack at the moment um into a place where it could be potentially a podcast mailing list. So, there’s not actually a mailing list. So, if you don’t want to be on social media, but you still want to have updates on on the guests, then I uh have been writing little pieces about the Substack of them. um and also using it as a way to explore things I want to say about my own life and my own experiences and the coast of Wales will certainly um have a piece published on it. And dare I say, I was journaling along the way and I’ve got a little notebook now full of my experiences and adventures. And I’d love to actually write about that entire experience framed through my own journey with my mental health as well and maybe talk a bit about more about go into the detail of that, but save it for that kind of publication which will be somewhere in the future. I want to go back to mental health. Yeah, let’s go for it. And I I’ve I’ve got a lot to say which I don’t want to about what I’ve been going through in the last few months. Um but I will say this. If you are going through your own mental health problems, ask for help. Tell your friends, tell your GP, and do not feel ashamed and do not feel like you are a nuisance. just get help because that’s what happened to me. Um I didn’t exactly know what help would be in that moment but I knew I needed it. Um breaking down in public um at Love Trails Festival, which was when I I suffered uh the greatest. Um I knew that something wasn’t right. And um on the Friday of Love Trails, I I’d been breaking down a few times in the morning and I then went on a run with some some friends and I wasn’t didn’t communicate with them what was happening. But I knew in that moment as I was breaking down whilst running that I needed to ask for help and I just called my GP in that moment literally on the trails. Had to leave a few messages and get them to call me back for an emergency appointment. And then a phone call came when I was at an aid station um on this front and spent a good 40 minutes talking to a lovely doctor and told them everything about what I was going through. They’re really understanding. Um despite me thinking that probably what I was going through seemed a bit weird. Um but it doesn’t matter that a true amazing health professional like the one I dealt with will not be judgmental in any way. And of course what I went through was horrible. Um, but it was just weird for me to understand it at the time. Um, and what I also did because this was a festival and I was around thankful to have so many amazing friends around me. I just confided in a handful of them what that I that I was feeling really bad and I just admitted to them my mental health is really struggling right now. And I was breaking down while I was telling them that. Um, because it’s never something you want to admit or talk to. Um, but I felt it was so important to do that because then I could have eyes on me and it just felt like I was sharing a problem rather than keeping it to myself and not letting I didn’t know what help my friends could be or what help my GP could be. But I knew I just needed to include someone else into this. And so I’ I’d highly recommend anyone who’s going through any hardship is to is to open up and speak to whoever you can around you. and and yeah, I am getting help. And I’d love to talk about that as well because um I uh have felt incredibly angry that I feel like I’ve been forced into getting help from people who tried to bring me down and crushed my confidence and mental health. Um and I didn’t want that to be the way in which I got therapy. Um but I’m so incredibly proud that it has happened. um because uh it is helping me become a much stronger individual with a much tougher mentality with a go yourself attitude to anyone who will ever try and bring me down again in the future and I wish everyone could have the same support that I have been getting um in in in in whatever way. Um I think that’s all I want to say. Yeah, that’s sums it up. Did it come across too angry? No, no, it just sums it up perfectly, I think, doesn’t it? I think at the end of the day the most important thing is that it’s okay for people to go and get that help and actually one of the easiest things that you can do as Thomas suggested is to just call up your GP because that is as much as you might feel that you are wasting somebody’s time, it is never a waste of time. Okay? And it you might feel the fear is that in a very British way because we’re all very stoic and stiff upper lipped as British men and we don’t talk about these things. You also therefore think that you are an absolute nuisance upon that person and that actually your mental fragility and mental health is is fairly futile and unnecessary and that actually your GP and doctors would have has far more important things to do like some bloke who’s broken his arm or something like that rather than talking to you about your feelings. And we, it’s just ultimately something that we as men need to be more aware of, address uh address before it gets before it goes too far, before it gets too difficult. Um, and one of the easiest ways of doing that, as Tom has suggested, is to just reach out to your GP and they would be able to direct you and point you in the right direction and where you can go for this. And like almost anything that happens whether or not and I’m not going to use running as as the same thing but ultimately it’s about the first step. The first step is always the hardest and that is in this case it is often it isn’t the admitting it to yourself because that will probably slowly creep up on you but it is admitting to that the best thing to do is to get some help is to get help and doing that and Tom here is just a well it’s just a perfect example here of somebody who’s recognized that and overcome certain like uh prejudices about ourselves. about yourself and what you think you can handle, what you don’t what what you think you can handle and you’re coming out on the other side, all the better for it. And you’re right to to frame it around um around men’s mental health as well. We are as men um typically less likely to call our GP for any reason, whether we are feeling um uh bad in our head or in our in any other part of our body as well. Um, and it is just about, like you say, taking that first step and knowing that you’re not a nuisance. Um, that that these systems are there to help and support us. And if we don’t use them, then they’re not going to support us. Um, let’s move on. Yeah. Um, and thank you for anyone who’s helped who has listened to this part of the conversation and help and um, been patient with me sharing my story. Do you want something fun? I think we need to. Yeah. Let’s lighten this up a little bit, shall we? Have you heard of the Indie Sleeves podcast? Oh, the Indy Sleeves podcast. No, I haven’t. Tell me more. Uh, is his full uh name is The Rise and Fall of Indie Sleeves, hosted by Kate Nash. It’s an incredible uh podcast that documents the entire era of indie music, which we are of the generation that we live through. Why is it called SE? uh um it’s it it’s kind of got given this name and look I I don’t want to spoil too much of the podcast of of of the of the audio experience. Um it does go into uh if I could give um a bit of a a bit of an insight is that rock and roll had cocaine where but indie they took it a step further. They went deeper into into much darker drugs, much darker times. What? Um, but also it was it represent it recognizes the sleeves that happened within tabloids. Okay. Right. Indie people were just all over the top like Johnny Bell and um Yeah. Pete Dockati. Yeah. Uh who had their whole like like their whole lives were just like documented in the newspapers like every single week. They were like the rock stars of the era and the press loved it and the public loved it and it was just so different to see that like music before like they came around was quite dull and boring and quite kind of quite conservative and then suddenly the strokes kind of got released onto the scene and just like everything just got kicked up and then and and literally up the racket basically which is one of the um the Libertines albums. Um, and then suddenly like it just inspired like a whole load of like bands to come out of like out of nowhere and just know that they could take control of their own music. Um, and they reference also the Arctic Monkeys being a massive influence to other further bands. But it just became a point where it was just so saturated that record labels were getting like 16-year-olds to try and form bands and like put them out into the world and and it just it kind of documented how it kind of got a little bit out of control. It’s a phenomenal listen. Anyone who’s grew up in that era, it’s I mean it’s shameful now to know that I’m an age that I’ve like passed through an entire musical era, but I’m so glad I did it through Indie. I loved it. I was I was the guy wearing purple skinny jeans from like the girls section of Primark cuz that’s the only place I could find them. I can imagine you wearing that. Like they talked about how like girls would like dive into their shoes. They they dive into their grandmother’s like wardrobe to like just wear their grandmother’s clothes because that was what was fashionable back then. It’s it’s brilliant and I’m so I feel so passionate cuz I I adored that industry. Music was so cheap back then. You could go to gigs every single night of the week and you often did as you was a teenager because there’s nothing else to do back then. And man, I’ve had some amazing times growing up in the world of indie and now to kind of have it kind of documented and to see it from like from outside now that that era has passed and to realize what was happening and and and and having that kind of behind thes scenes look of that world is amazing. It’s I kudos to Kate Nash and the entire production team who put that together. It’s a phenomenal audio listen. I I I highly recommend it. Okay, that sounds lovely. I’m going to have to go and download that one because Yeah. Yeah. the Indie Indy Sleeves podcast. Yeah. On BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcast. All right, let’s go and have a look. Not to not to um to promote another podcast like this one, but I I just feel like it if you’re from the generation of of you and I and you grew up as a teenager in the naughties, then then there’ll be something in there for you. Yeah. Something you recognize. Lovely. All right. I think it is time for a great British misadventure. um where I will well I have written um certain um stories that I have partaken in life that are either funny, embarrassing or both. And you’re going to have drawn out of the the jar and I will have to tell that story. Um I did put in another one from my Welsh trip actually. So okay, it’s it’s in balance actually. All right. So but I’ve completely forgotten all the stories that are in there. So, this is going to be a little bit um a little bit little bit frightening actually. Little ruffle. If it’s the whales one, it’d be amazing. I can tell that story in in this, but let’s see. All right. I don’t think it is a different color. That’s the That’s the one. Oh, I read it out, don’t you? I forgot about this. So, okay. So, this one is lifesaving lamb. This is my favorite story. You and I know this one. Yeah. You you I love this story. Oh god, this takes me back. Let me work out how to tell this story. I dreamed of telling this story when on on this podcast when I when I first told it to you. Okay. I was dogsitting for my sister in her amazing house um that she had that was right on a river and I was there for a few weeks and I was working and I love the fact that I could shut my laptop and be on my pallet board on a river within like 2 minutes. It was phenomenal like just having that access to the the outdoors. And I was on a dog walk with this dog and we’re walking up the other side of the river and I noticed when we got to the river edge, I could hear some lambs that were like bearing in a different kind of tone than I’m used to. And I was like, “Oh, it just seems like there’s something a little bit arai on the other side of the river.” And there was obviously this field of lambs over there. And I spotted that one lamb had fallen off the river bank and were right on the side of the water in a kind of like it seemed to have some kind of purchase that it wasn’t kind of like swimming yet, but it didn’t seem like it could get back onto the bank. And on top of the bank there was the mother lamb who was yelping at this this poor lamb trying to help, but obviously it couldn’t. Yeah. And I saw this and I was like, I need to help in some way. And my first instinct is, can I swim across and save this lamb? But I know so much from just basic life-saving skills that you do not get in the water to save another animal if you can cuz you’ll end up getting into trouble yourself. And I just did not feel com comfortable or safe swimming across this river. But I was like, if I go back home, I’ve got my paddle board and it’s it’s probably I could run back in maybe like five or 10 minutes and get my paddle board. Then I could paddle board upstream and save this lamp. So, I was like, I’ll do that. And I rushed back. I ran back home. But then I went to get my paddle board, but I was like, I need to get my my water outfit on, my paddle board outfit, my water clothes. So, I got my like kind of swim shrimp shorts on and my kind of rash vest and my um and my buoyancy aid. And then I was about to get my paddles. I was like, “Oh, I should get my GoPro cuz I should film this cuz I’m going to I’m going to save a lamb and like this could go viral. This could be an amazing story.” So, I went back and I got my GoPro and then I got on my paddle board and I set off upstream. But unfortunately, I was like I was facing like a a really horrendous headwind. So, I was like having to really battle to get up upstream. I was like, “I’ve got to save this lamb. It’s going to be spectacular. I’ll film it.” I was like, “Oh my god, I might even make it on like local news.” And the local news in that area, which I grew up in the Midlands, is Midlands Today. And if you know anything about Midlands today, it was it’s hosted I don’t know if it’s still hosted, but it’s hosted by Nick Owen, just a really famous news presenter. He’s been hosting it for decades. He’s like seen me through the good times and the bad times and growing up. And I was like, I’m going to be sitting in the studio being interviewed by Nick Owen. This is going to be amazing about how I saved this like lamb’s life. So I paddle upream and it takes me longer than I thought it would get there. But eventually I get to this point where the lamb I last saw was on had fallen off the riverbank. But no longer do I hear the blurring of the lamb. The the just the you. And I spot that this lamb had now fallen into the water. And it looked like it had drowned. And I was like, I’m too late. But I was like, it must have only fallen in the last few minutes. So I was like, it might it might still be alive. And I was like, I could save this lamb’s life. I could still make content. I could still get on the news. Not only might I be rescuing this lamb, but I might be saving this lamb’s life. So, I paddle board up to this lamb and and I I reach over and I grab this little lamb and I pull it onto my paddle board and it is it is drowned. It is like there’s there’s not much life left in this lamb. But I’m like, there could still be hope. I was like, what do you do if a human is like drowned in this way? Well, then you clear their their airwaves. You try and get the water out of their lungs. You do some CPR. And then I was like, I’ve got to do CPR on this lamb. I’ve got to at least try. Like, I know it was alive about 15 minutes ago. There’s still a chance. I can’t let it die on me. So, whilst this lamb was on my paddle board, I knelt down. I started doing chest compressions on this lamb. And I was pumping. And I know I’ve done some basic first aiding. I know you’ve got to like press quite hard, right? It doesn’t matter if you break a ri. Yeah. Yeah. you got to get that blood flowing. And I was like pumping so hard like, “Come on, lamb. Come on. Don’t die on me. Come on. Oh god, no. No.” And as I was pumping for like a good minute, I suddenly a thought suddenly came to my mind. I was like, “This is only half of CPR. The other half of CPR is getting air into the lungs, and that’s doing mouth to mouth.” And then I had this thought. I was like, how how far am I willing to take this to save this lamb’s life? After pumping its chest for a minute, I now know I need to breathe air into his lungs. How much do I have to do to get on to the Midlands today with Nick Owens? Right. Yeah. All this time I I have a head cam on my GoPro filming of me doing chest compressions to this lamp. Oh, is it on your Is it head? I need I need handsree better. Yeah, of course. And so I had to really really dig deep and work out how far how far I wanted to go. And I was looking at this dead lamb and a a dead lamb with its teeth showing at you. It’s not the most attractive of sights. And I know how disease animals could be. And I was like, I cannot I cannot bring myself to to do the kiss of life to a lamb. So, I just carried on pumping. I was like, “Come on. Come on.” For a good five minutes, I was sweating buckets. It’s like, “Come on.” Like, it’s like those moments in films where like just when you’re about to give up, that’s when they suddenly start coughing. And like the fact the fact you entertain the whole like I I should give it mouth to mouth. Oh, it just gets me every time. So, about 5 minutes later, I looked at my clock and I called it time of day. Um, and I knew I’d done everything I could do in that moment to to save this lamb’s life. Um, but sometimes in nature just this is just what happens. Things are meant to be. Y and in this case that was just the destiny of that lamb and I couldn’t intervene in time at least to save it. And I felt a bit ashamed but I accepted that that was what um what happens. That’s what nature intended. But now I had this dead lamb on my paddle board and I was like, I need to now put this back in place. Um, but the problem is when you’re on a paddle board, it’s actually really hard to get purchase onto like the river bank and to kind of get yourself back on. But I needed to get this and I was like, where do I put this lamb? I was like, I I need to maybe put it back on the on the river bank, but the river bank is higher up. I can’t physically put it on. I can’t get there. Um, so I’ll try swinging it. I’ll I’ll try swinging it. And I’ll try swinging this lamb, this dead lamb, while sit standing on my paddle board. Try and get the momentum. Grabbing it by like his front legs and his back legs. Give it a bit of a leg and a wing. Yeah. Two in each hand. Yeah. No sumo. Uh no sort of hammer thrower style round. You are You are on a board as well. A bit of respect for this lamb. Yeah, fair enough. Um, and so I’m swinging this lamb and I get some momentum and then I let go. And I don’t know if you know Newton’s third law of of motion, which is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And if you don’t have anything to push against, you’ll you’ll move in that direction. Um, so um what happens when you’re on a fluid um environment like the water is that um when you do release a certain weight, it pushes you back in in the equal and opposite direction. So the two movements canceled each other out. So the the the momentum of the lamb didn’t actually give it any distance and if anything it just pushed me away further. So this lamb just plopped into the water basically where I found it and I was like oh I I can’t I can’t do anything more. I was like I think I’m just going to retreat and make my way back home. Yeah. And I I felt very um very confused about the situation. I got home very confused, very disappointed that I didn’t have this um this viral clip of me no saving this lamb’s life and and mother you was up on the bank just been watching you go like what is he doing to my poor baby? I feel I feel sorry that poor lamb felt violated in many ways. Um, and then I got home and then I realized I had this footage of this lamb uh on my GoPro, which um I’ve never seen since. Do you still have it though somewhere? It’s on a hard drive somewhere. All right, we need to petition this. Okay. Um, leave a comment or something in the description to let us We We need Tom to bring this footage out, okay, at some point. I’m not sure whether or not I’m not sure where we’re going to put it. I just got to see this at some point. Yeah. And then I was just like, what am I? I’ve got now this footage of me basically frosting a dead lamb on my paddle board and then chucking it back in the water unceremoniously and there’s no interview with Nick Owen. So, but there is GoPro footage somewhere, people. So, yeah, I think I’m still traumatized by it by that view. I just love it’s ingrained in my mind. I was going to say like I love the good I love the good intentions of it. I also love the fact that the good intentions though was intended with the purpose of being like this would be great way to make me go viral as well though if I save this lab’s life. So it’s just karma. It’s just all things adding up. Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps it’s a story that should have stayed out on the river but but now it’s out in the open. No. And there we go. I’m so glad that I picked that one out. I’m so glad I didn’t get married to mouth. That I would Yeah, I would have instantly regretted. I would never I I would never tell that story. No, I was about to say I would never doubt. The fact though that you entertained it for a short period of time though is absolutely brilliant. If I had had some kind of device that might have helped me get air into the Yeah, I would have. But while I wasn’t touching those lips. Yeah, there we go. That’s I’m glad that one came out. Well, thank you very much for sharing that story because um yeah, that is one of my favorite stories that I have of you and um yeah, it’s uh absolute gold dust. I hope I did it just this. Um yeah, tune in next uh Great British Misadventures for our uh our next story. Do you have any misadventures that you want to add to the jar? Nothing. Nothing that I feel nothing I can share. I think the people want to know they want to know. They want something from Benny P. Not on this level, I tell you. We’re not there yet. We could flip a coin next time. Which draw? Oh my goodness. Yeah, is there too many? Yeah, I was about to say we’ll never make it through them, honestly. All right. Um, I think that’s enough time. Thank you so much again for everything. We covered quite a lot, actually. I really hope you’ve enjoyed it. Um, if you have, do let us know. Um, we will see each other, I suppose, maybe in the new year. Yeah. Um, but I’ll be seeing you anyway at your coffee store at Trailside Coffee. Love that. Can’t wait. um for delightful chats and even more delicious coffee. Um yeah, that’s everything. I feel sad to to end this. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. Um but there will be another time. Look forward to it. Thank you so much, Ben. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you want to find out more information about any of the guests, please check out the show notes where you’ll also find links to things mentioned in the conversation. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please take a look through the past recordings. There’s so many more incredible stories for you to find, and I can’t wait for you to enjoy them. Thank you. [Music]