Inspiring Adventure by Vertebrate Publishing

Welcome back to the Inspiring Adventure podcast by Vertebrate Publishing! We kick off our 6-part Mountain Walks series with Girls on Hills Co-Founder Keri Wallace. Keri discusses her personal journey from encountering a medical emergency on Ben Nevis to becoming a mountain guide and co-founding 'Girls on Hills' in 2018. She shares stories from her mountain experiences, the motivations behind her Running Challenges and Mountain Walks book, and the importance of encouraging more women to partic...

In the summer of 2012, a team of six climbers set out to attempt the first ascent of one of the great unclimbed lines of the Himalaya – the giant Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth highest mountain. At ten kilometres in length, the Mazeno is the longest route to the summit of an 8,000-metre peak. Ten expeditions had tried and failed to climb this enormous ridge. Eleven days later two of the team, Sandy Allan and Rick Allen, both in their late fifties, reached the summit. They had...

We are all climbing where we are and with the gear we use in no small part due to Tony Howard’s quest for adventure. Tony Howard rose to fame in 1965 as a member of a group of young climbers from northern England who made the first British ascent of Norway’s Troll Wall; a climb described by Joe Brown as, ‘One of the greatest ever achievements by British rock climbers’. Tony went on to design the modern sit harness, now used universally by every climber in the world. He founded the company Tro...

‘When an accident occurs, something may emerge of lasting value, for the human spirit may rise to its greatest heights. This happened on Haramosh.’ The Last Blue Mountain is the heart-rending true story of the 1957 expedition to Mount Haramosh in the Karakoram range in Pakistan. With the summit beyond reach, four young climbers are about to return to camp. Their brief pause to enjoy the view and take photographs is interrupted by an avalanche which sweeps Bernard Jillott and John Emery hundre...

'Even the most casual reader among you will by now have worked out that the whole thing is little more than a delightful ruse for having a very good time.' Experienced climber Charles Sherwood is on a quest to find the best climb on each continent. He eschews the traditional Seven Summits, where height alone is the determining factor, and instead considers mountaineering challenge, natural beauty and historical context, aiming to capture the diverse character of each continent and the sheer v...

‘It’s a preposterous plan. Still, if you do get up it, it’ll be the hardest thing that’s been done in the Himalayas.’ So spoke Chris Bonington when Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker presented him with their plan to tackle the unclimbed West Wall of Changabang – the Shining Mountain – in 1976. Bonington’s was one of the more positive responses; most felt the climb impossibly hard, especially for a two-man, lightweight expedition. This was, after all, perhaps the most fearsome and technically chall...

This week's episode features a chapter from the award winning Tides by Nick Bullock. Winner: Mountain Literature Award, Banff Mountain Book Festival 2018Shortlisted for the 2018 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain LiteratureNick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second book, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut Echoes. Now retired from the strain of work as ...

In 1986, the legendary fell runner Joss Naylor completed a continuous circuit of all 214 Wainwright fells in the Lake District, covering a staggering distance of over 300 miles – plus many thousands of metres of ascent – in only seven days and one hour. Those in the know thought that this record would never be beaten. It is the ultimate British ultramarathon. The person taking on this superhuman challenge would have to be willing to push harder and suffer more than ever before. There is No Ma...

The wonderful John D. Burns reads an extract from Wild Country - The man who made Friends. In early 1978, an extraordinary new invention for rock climbers was featured on the BBC television science show Tomorrow's World. It was called the 'Friend', and it not only made the sport safer, it helped push the limits of the possible. The company that made them was called Wild Country, the brainchild of Mark Vallance. Within six months, Vallance was selling Friends in sixteen countries. Wild Count...

Helen Mort is a writer, trail runner and climber who lives in Sheffield. She teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and her published work includes poetry, fiction and non-fiction, with a particular interest in women and mountaineering. Her first poetry collection, Division Street (Chatto & Windus, 2013), was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize, and won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. In 2015, Helen was chosen as one of the Next G...

Martin Boysen reads a short extract from one of his contributions to climbing classic, Hard Rock, followed by compiler of the new edition, Ian Parnell, reading his favourite essay from the book, Great Wall by Ed Drummond. We're still shipping books out directly from our office in Sheffield so head over to our website and enjoy the 30% site-wide discount: www.v-publishing.co.uk

This week we're breaking from the normal structure in light of the changed working environment we're faced with due to the current global Coronavirus pandemic. So instead of an interview based episode here we have John D. Burns reading an extract from his book Bothy Tales. Bothy Talesis John's follow-up to The Last Hillwalker and contains tales from remote glens deep in the Scottish Highlands – some dramatic, some moving, some hilarious – from the isolated mountain shelters called bothies. ...

This week Rae is again joined by open-water and wild swimmer Suzanna Cruickshank. Suzanna’s book Swimming Wild in the Lake District is published on Thursday 2 April and provides a definitive guide to open-water swimming in the Lakes. Suzanna is a qualified guide and has her own business leading swimming sessions in her beloved Lake District and beyond! If you have a wild swimming story you’d like to share drop me an email at rae@v-publishing.co.uk and I might just feature you on a future epi...

This week Rae interviewed Nick Cotton, Mountain Biking guide author. Vertebrate’s Mountain Biking Guides are one of our most popular series, with over a dozen titles and more on the horizon. Nick Cotton has contributed four titles to the series, with a further title in our collection of Cycling books, Traffic-Free Cycle Trails. Nick is a seasoned guidebook author, and the five titles he’s produced with Vertebrate only represent a small portion of his forty-plus guides from the last twenty y...

This week Rae has been speaking with two authors; Paul Webster and Deirdre Huston, who've both written for the highly regarded Day Walks series. Paul Webster co-founded the UK’s busiest walking website; Walkhighlands, with his wife Helen in 2006. This year they will publish Day Walks in the Cairngorms and Day Walks in Fort William & Glen Coe. Paul is an award winning photographer and responsible for most of the stunning photographs found in these books. Deirdre Huston is an award winnin...