If you haven’t come across Uncharted with Ray Goggins on RTÉ One yet, it’s worth a look.
Each week Ray takes a pair of well-known Irish faces somewhere extreme and uncomfortable. Last week’s episode brought Angela Scanlon and Kyla Cobbler to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Six days. Sheer limestone cliffs. Snow on the higher ground. A shared fear of heights.
We leave for those same mountains next week.
It was genuinely helpful to get a visual sense of the terrain. Arid. Vast. Unforgiving in places. Beautiful. It confirmed what I already suspected. This is going to be a proper adventure.
There are eight of us heading out. We’re led by Paul Gleeson, the man who pulled this whole thing together. Paul has rowed the Atlantic, led an expedition in the Arctic, cycled across Australia, and taken a group like ours up Mont Blanc. He has forgotten more about endurance than most of us will ever know.
And then there’s Jason Black. Ireland’s foremost mountaineer. He led the Irish expedition to Everest last month. We will have a lot of questions for Jason around the campfire.
On our final kit call last Tuesday, Paul said something that stopped me in my tracks. He said he fully expects that at some point in the latter half of the expedition, his mind and body will want to quit. Paul Gleeson. The man who rowed the Atlantic. F#ck me…
I’m glad I know that now, I can prepare for that challenge. This is the value of mentorship.
We’ll be on our feet for up to ten hours some days. Fourteen hundred metres of elevation gain. Basic camp. No running water. No fridge. No No signal, and no devices really, not even audio books or podcasts downloaded. Our battery packs can recharge the essentials (watch and headtorch) multiple times, but phone recharges take too much power.
What there will be is time. Real time. Meals with our local guides. Conversations with the group. Jason picking apart the Everest expedition for anyone within earshot. A book I’ve been carrying around half-read for weeks. A journal Paul has gifted each of us for the trip.
And stillness. There’s a version of stillness that sounds romantic. Then there’s the version that arrives when you’re completely wrecked on the side of a mountain with nowhere to be and nothing to do. I suspect it’ll be both, at different points.
It’s a long way from Nico asking us last week “how many Sainsbury’s there are in East London”, quickly followed by “why did Cathal (his pal) go home at half time last night?”. These, apparently, are the kind of questions that occupy his mind on a Tuesday morning. I’ll miss them.
Next week’s newsletter will hit your inbox when I am in the air.
In the meantime, a couple of things worth mentioning.
Last week we wrapped up a really demanding programme with a brilliant client. It finished exactly as those things should. On a high, with real momentum, and with the people involved clearly in a different place than where they started. That kind of work doesn’t get old. I love it, and value the client enormously.
We’ve more wrapping up in June, others kicking on and another one starting.
And separately, something I’m very proud to be part of. We’re raising funds for the Andrew Brennan Trust through the Atlas Mountains expedition. If you’d like to support us, the link is below and any contribution is genuinely appreciated.
For Andrew, every day at the moment is Unchartered Territory. Click here to watch a powerful 3 minute video.
The Trust is also hosting a fundraising lunch on September 19th. I want to be clear about what this is and what it isn’t. It is not a drawn-out snore-fest. It is going to be a serious party. Great entertainment, brilliant people, a raffle with real prizes and a short auction of two or three unique experiences you won’t find anywhere else. Tables are moving fast, thanks to some incredibly generous support from people in my network (thank you!) and beyond.
If you’d like to be in the room, get in touch.