The Girl Outdoors: The Wild Girl’s Guide to Adventure, Travel and Wellbeing

TO MY FABULOUS FAMILY – my parents,

Marina and Spencer, and my brother Matthew, for all the adventures.

A ship in harbour is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.

GRACE MURRAY HOPPER

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

SECTION ONE

ACTIVE OUTDOORS

DIRT, ROCK AND SNOW

1 Road cycling and mountain biking

2 Climbing

3 Trail running

4 Hiking

5 Snowsports

FRESH AND SALT WATER

6 Surfing and paddleboarding

7 Canoeing and kayaking

8 Snorkelling and diving

SECTION TWO

WILD ADVENTURES

ON LAND

1 Camping: Wild camping ; Bivvy bag camping ; Hammock camping ; Canoe camping ; Glamping

IN WATER

2 Swimming : Wild swimming ; Sea swimming ; Cliff jumping ; Skinny-dipping ;

ON THE ROAD

3 Bikepacking

4 Campervans

SECTION THREE

WILD COOKING, CRAFTS AND WELLBEING

FIRESIDE FOOD

1 Cooking outdoors : Four fire starters Campfire stew with dumplings How to gut and prepare a fish Campfire bread twists Bobby’s All-American S’mores Mexican hot chocolate Hiker’s banana bread

FORAGING

2 How to go foraging

3 Easy foraged grub

4 Homemade foraged liqueurs

GROWING YOUR OWN

5 Growing your own fruit and vegetables In a vegetable garden On your patio

CRAFTY FOXES

6 (Gimme) shelters

7 Crafts

8 Outdoor photography tips

HEALTH AND BEAUTY

9 Natural beauties

10 Yoga and paddleboard yoga

11 Natural health and beauty bites for wonder women

SECTION FOUR

WANDERLUST

1 Buying the right kit

2 The wild girl’s essential kit list

3 Adventures with friends

4 How to survive a festival

5 Happy travelling

6 Solo travel tips

7 Big adventures

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Welcome, my friends, to a wilder way of life. In these pages you’ll find the inspiration and the information you need to get outside and get happy. The Girl Outdoors is a bible of all the good things the wide, wild world has to offer. It’s an introduction to the crazy fun of action sports, a tome of inspiration for weekend adventures and far-flung travels, a girl’s guide to feeling fit, a cookbook of hearty dinners to chow down on round the campfire with your mates. All rolled into one lovely package – good, eh?

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

MARK TWAIN

The freedom, if not the desire, to explore the planet has been a long time coming for women. The playing field is a lot more even now than when the first female pioneers of mountaineering and derring-do were on the scene, yet when I am up a mountain peak, in the line-up or on a climbing wall I often find myself in a very male-dominated world. I reckon it’s time to change that.

I hear again and again from girls who would love to try surfing, go hiking or travel alone but feel they lack the confidence to get out and give those things a go. Perhaps because there’s still a perception of adventure as an extreme pursuit, a living-off-urine, round-the-world-on-a-unicycle tough club open only to the hardiest grizzled explorer. That’s not what this book, or the outdoors, is about. It is about being your own have-a-go heroine, embracing new experiences and the simple, low-key pleasures of camping, walking, grilling fish over a fire you built with your own fair hands. It’s about stepping away from the stresses of modern life, too. Getting outdoors is the easiest route I know to feeling happy and healthy, although there’s no bollocks about diets and calories in this book – I’m far too fond of red wine and chocolate biscuits for that.

I’ve loved a little adventure since I was a nipper, when my grandmother would take me swimming in the cold Irish sea and my dad would cart us off on walks in the woods. As an outdoors journalist I’ve followed my love for fresh air around the world, camping on its cliffs, diving its oceans, getting extremely lost on its rain-sodden hills. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that there are three steps to living a full and happy life: 1. Get outdoors 2. Repeat as often as you can 3. In the words of Bill and Ted, be excellent to each other.

So what’s our first adventure going to be? In Section One you’ll find introductions to sports that get you out in the back of beyond – mountain biking, climbing, hiking, skiing and their adrenaline-fuelled ilk. Feeling a bit sweaty? Cool off with a wild adventure – we’ll be swimming in rivers, road tripping in campervans and setting up tents to sleep under the stars in Section Two. Section Three is all about feeling good – scrumptious eats you can whip up round a fire, crafty things to make, green-fingered advice for growing your own garden goodies and wellbeing advice for wonder women. And in Section Four we’re on the road less travelled, exploring the four corners of the globe with guides to joyful travel and guides to planning trips of all shapes and sizes.

Jump on in – the water’s lovely.

SECTION ONE

ACTIVE OUTDOORS

READY FOR AN ENDORPHIN BOOST? In Section One we’re diving straight into the world of action sports, trying out eight adrenalin-fuelled ways to get fit and explore the great outdoors.

These short guides introduce each discipline, giving you an insight into what to expect and inspiring you to zip up a wetsuit or stick on some climbing shoes and try them out. Each chapter includes advice for beginners, fitness ideas, safety tips and all the essential kit you’ll need. I’ve also listed three epic places around the world where you can put your newfound addiction into practice.

The only element standing in the way of the skills you want to learn and the experiences you’d love to try is the confidence to take the first step. The sometimes elitist representation of extreme sports can make starting out feel quite intimidating, and the word ‘extreme’ is misleading, implying that only the fittest or bravest can take part. That’s not true – these sports are both safe and tremendous fun for the greenest beginner. But the only way to learn is to take the plunge, to jump into the water or hop onto a bike and get going. The more you practise, the more you’ll achieve, and your confidence in your ability will grow.

We’ll start our adventure on land, conquering dirt tracks on mountain bikes and trail runs, climbing up rocky cliffs, hiking merrily over hill and dale, and exploring winter wonderlands on skis and snowboards. Worked up a sweat? Jump into the water with a surfboard tucked under your arm, paddle your way down a winding river in a canoe or a kayak, and then dive beneath the surface of the ocean to see what mesmerising worlds wait below the surface.

Time to be your own have-a-go heroine – you have nothing to lose but your fear.

DIRT, ROCK AND SNOW

Let’s go get muddy. Make tracks on a mountain bike, clock up the miles on a racer, climb a cliff face and hike or ski into the hills with my guides to five active sports that turn planet Earth into an epic playground.

1 ROAD CYCLING AND MOUNTAIN BIKING

INTRODUCTION

Whether you want to speed down tarmac on a slick road bike, take on a remote forest trail on a rugged mountain bike or just ride around town on a sit-up-and-beg Duchess with a baguette tucked into a wicker basket, owning a bicycle will open up a new world in which you can travel far under your own steam and get fit while you do it. Be careful – cycling can quickly morph from just a sport into an intrinsic part of your personality. You’re a cyclist now – welcome to the club of bike-loving keenos. You’ll recognise us by the helmet hair and the chain marks on our legs.

In this chapter we’re exploring fast-paced road cycling and adventurous mountain biking. Road cycling as a term also includes commuters on two wheels and bikers-about-town. Road or racing bikes, with drop handles and myriad gears, are specifically designed for cycling for fitness, in a race, say, or up a painfully steep hill, as opposed to trundling to work along a canal path.

Mountain biking is essentially off-road biking with added thrills and spills – it takes cycling into the great outdoors, on rugged-wheeled bikes that can eat up bumpy terrain for breakfast.

STARTING OUT

Switching up to a smart road bike from a run-around hybrid is a big step, and one that can feel like graduating from riding a Shetland pony to a racehorse. Road bikes go fast. They want to eat up miles. They want you to keep up. And you will, eventually, but don’t push yourself too hard at first. You need to get used to a lot of new feelings on a road bike, including your newfound speed, wobbliness and the rather scary move of dropping down onto low handlebars when going downhill. When you’ve chosen your new bike and brought it home, head out on a dry, sunny day on the quietest road you can find and put your new steed through its paces.

Mountain bikes are far more forgiving for beginners to try, and feel really comfy when ridden around town or on flat dirt roads. The best way to see if mountain biking is your thing is to head to a trail centre and rent a bike to take out for a session (mountain bike trails, like ski pistes, are usually colour coded, with green and blue for beginners, red for intermediates and black for the insane). Trails call for a different riding technique to road bikes. When climbing, keep your weight towards the front of the saddle. When descending, try standing off your pedals and hovering above or slightly behind the saddle. When you aren’t pedalling, keep your feet parallel to avoid catching a pedal on a rock or a protruding root. Look ahead at where you’re going and keep up a good speed – as tempting as it is to inch at snail slowness over a rocky bit or a drop, you’ll be much better balanced if you ride at a brisk pace. Keep practising and see if you can find the ‘flow’ – that feeling when everything suddenly clicks into place and you and your bike are tearing down a hill in perfect sync. It’s pretty addictive once you get there.

What the hell are cleats?

The little twist-locks on the bottom of cycling-specific shoes clip into pedals and are theoretically a great idea, as they mean that when you cycle you’re pulling up as well as pushing down, and thus much faster. They can be tricky to master, though – get used to riding your bike first, and then invest in cleated shoes and pedals and try clipping in and out somewhere quiet, like an empty car park, as you’ll inevitably mess it up and slowly fall over sideways the first few times.

You’ll often see cyclists kitted up in matching shiny Lycra, but all you really need to try road cycling or mountain biking are a helmet and well-padded shorts, on their own in summer and worn over leggings in winter. Add a waterproof jacket and you’re good to go. If you get serious and want to go for the Tour de France look, short-sleeved cycling jerseys and long-sleeved cycling jackets are a good place to start – pick ones with roomy pockets on the back for storing water and jelly babies – and bib shorts (the dungarees of the Lycra world) are a comfy option to wear underneath. Lycra is tight, so pick kit designed specifically for women. Mountain bikers get to look a lot less geeky than cyclists, and usually wear big baggy shorts (best to still stick padded shorts underneath) and T-shirts, plus base layers and leggings on cold days. Wear knee and elbow pads to save your extremities if you’re prone to falling off. For both kinds of cycling, a bottle cage is the easiest way to carry water – avoid taking a backpack if possible, so you don’t feel weighed down.

Both road and mountain cycling can feel quite male dominated at first glance, but don’t let the boys’ club put you off. There are plenty of women out there taking to the road or getting muddy in the woods – you might just have to seek them out. Look around for a local ladies’ cycling club (britishcycling.org.uk lists clubs in the UK) or check noticeboards at bike shops – my local trail centre, for example, offers weekly ladies-only rides. Let’s get more women out in the saddle – liberty, equality, velocity!

PICKING THE RIGHT BIKE

Bike money burning a hole in your pocket? It’s hard to resist the urge to pick the shiniest, most badass model in your local cycle shop, especially if there’s an eager shop assistant whispering lovely words like ‘titanium’ and ‘carbon fork’ in your ear. But resist, and do your research. There are always myriad new models on the market, but