Welcome to the first podcast of 2020 and I’m delighted to introduce you to Anna Blackwell a 26 year old adventurer who got bitten by the adventure and travel bug just a few years ago when she undertook her gap year in South America.
She has since taken this passion to the limit pushing herself further and over greater distances completing a series of adventures over the last few years: trekking across the wilderness of arctic Sweden with just reindeer for company, walking 500 and 1000 miles across France and Spain along ancient pilgrimage routes, summiting the highest peak in North Africa, and hitch-hiking to Morocco (amongst plenty of others!)
During 2017, her focus was on how to live an adventurous life while working full-time. As a result, she successfully summited her first 4000m mountain in North Africa, had a slightly less successful adventure in Arctic Norway, and learned the joy of sleeping in bivvy bag under the stars on a hillside in Oxfordshire!
In 2018, she returned to full-time adventuring and set off on – and completed – the Kayaking the Continent expedition, a world first journey tandem kayaking 4,000km from London to the Black Sea in Romania with her friend Kate.
2019 was another exciting one: in September she completed the latest expedition, The Green Ribbon, a 1,000km solo trek across Arctic and Northern Scandinavia.
In part one we discuss the Kings Trail and the Green Ribbon in more detail. In part two we go onto discuss the Kayaking the Continent expedition.