Join The Adventure 26 - 28 April 2019

I’m an endurance adventurer and pretty familiar with pushing beyond my physical and mental limits… and I love encouraging others to do the same (in their own ways).

Trailblazing events like Durham Adventure Festival give the adventure community a great opportunity to come together and hear some fantastic stories, quiz speakers about their training, their motivation, and experiences. Personally, I’m looking forward to sharing some of my own endurance insights, my experience as a woman running alone in some of the most remote mountain regions of the world, and how it feels to reach the very limits of your physical capabilities.

I hope you can join me and the rest of the fabulous adventure crew for the jam-packed adventure weekend in Durham. Take the plunge, explore your own limits, love the natural world, and protect our wild places. Go find an adventure!

Jenny Tough
Adventurer | Writer | Speaker | Film-maker

It’s a pretty surreal feeling. Sitting by the campfire on the banks of the River Wye, in the very same spot that a few years ago, I put the final plans and dreams for a canoe adventure with my dad into action. I couldn’t have known, or dreamt, that now we would have a feature film touring the UK, a tour kindly supported by Yukon Tourism, and that it would be showing at Durham Adventure Festival in such esteemed company!

Authenticity was all important for us. We didn’t want to show contrived adventure just for the sake of it. It was important to us during the expedition, that we didn’t compromise the unsupported and remote nature of a wilderness venture with big camera crews, helicopters etc. As a result, the on location crew consisted of just me and my dad and a couple of cameras. We had to get inventive for getting the angles to try and showcase this pristine majestic landscape. This sometimes involved lashing a GoPro to a paddle or spruce tree, or running ahead with the main camera, setting it going, then running back to look natural canoeing past, only to then come ashore, sprint back before we drained the batteries too much, and check we got the shot. The hardest part was getting the camera out when we were really tried and cold, but this is part of the expedition experience, and part of the narrative we wanted to share with the audience. It was a real privilege to paddle through the Yukon and see the wildlife that calls it home, not to mention lucky not to be eaten by inquisitive bears!

We have been touched and delighted at the reaction The Yukon Assignment has garnered from audiences. We sincerely hope Durham Adventure Festival goers enjoy our film. It has been a labour of love, sometimes driving us mad, and always pushing us forward. We want people to see The Yukon Assignment and feel the urge to contact their family and close friends and commit to quality time together, whether it be on a grand adventure, or closer to home. Much like an expedition, in the face of adversity, it can seem impossible. However, with amazing support from people around us and by keeping on chipping away, one solution at a time, the dream has become a reality. We hope you too find a dream; and then dare to believe!

Thank you for having us Durham,
Chris, Niall, Charlie & The Yukon Assignment Team

In one of our blogs last year we noted that “since we first started planning the event, it’s amazing how you start to notice adventure everywhere”. And that has definitely become the case these last 12 months.

At least two TV celebrities have successfully climbed Everest (with documentary crews in tow, of course!), the extraordinary climbing film Free Solo has been nominated for an Oscar, and a new mother made international news when she smashed the record for the 268 mile Spine Race along the Pennine way.

It’s great that adventure and endurance now feels like part of the mainstream. But the downside is that this has made our choice of who to include in this year’s programme a tricky one. As I write this, we finally have a main programme confirmed, which we hope captured the spirit of the challenges – both big and small – that are happening everywhere.

But for every household name, there are other speakers in the programme who you may not know, but who are doing equally extraordinary things. One of the joys for the team in pulling the event together is to discover these adventurers and their stories, and want to pass these onto you. I would urge you to take a chance on some of these sessions, as there are amazing stories to be discovered.

So if you are not yet part of the adventure family, we hope we can tempt you to dip your toe in the (freezing!) water, and share in our adventure.

Robin Byers
Service Manager for DCC

As a local outdoor enthusiast, dog walker and mountaineer of several high altitude world expeditions, I think the Durham Adventure Festival is long overdue. The North East has so much to offer in terms of outdoor activities, and we need an annual focal point to advertise the wonderful environment in which we live.

This is a fantastic opportunity to showcase and shout about the great outdoors in and around Durham. For the walker (with or without a dog), jogger, runner or cyclist, the Durham area has a variety of terrains from Shincliffe or Houghall Woods, to Hamsterley or Kielder Forests, to the delightful River Wear or River Tees. Slightly further afield we have higher more challenging terrain in the Pennines, Cheviots, North Yorkshire Moors, Yorkshire Dales, and the Lake District.

If playing around in, on, or near water is more your forte there are Derwent and Kielder reservoirs, and one of the most beautiful coastlines stretching to the Scottish Border.

This type of event is perfect for hearing about the diverse experiences of people who have completed extreme challenges from around the world, and watching unique films with beautiful photography. I know the Durham Adventure Festival will help inspire people to get out there and create their own adventures… no matter how small or large!

John Robson
Fire and Ice Expeditions

I love Durham, honestly I do.

My love of the city began when I was 17 years old and took a trip ‘up North’ (it was a long way from London at 17) to spend time with one of my best friends, Jessica Eddie and her twin sister Alex, who grew up in the city. Jess is now the pride of Durham, having managed to bag herself a silver medal in rowing at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

As a centre of excellence for rowing and a top-notch place to study Psychology, at one point Durham was my first choice for a university, but it narrowly lost out to the University of London. The two university rowing clubs both compete in purple as their club colours, but the shade of purple is slightly different between the two – which led to a fierce rivalry through my university years. Still, I would make the trip north often to train with older, more experienced athletes at Durham University, and usually return exhausted, having been shown what hard work really looked like. The mornings on the river were cold. The training sessions were long, and I was always happy to be able to slink back home to the comfort of London afterwards.

As for the city itself… I love the river. I love the cathedral. I love the bridges and cobbled streets. I love ‘heart attack hill’ which leads up to the University’s psychology department, and the fact that there are more pasty shops than you can shake a stick at. I love the soft Durham accent (which my friend Jess reminds me ‘is nothing like the Geordie accent’). I love that you can walk around the city easily, and find new nooks, crannies and hidden treasures on every visit.

Given that I spend so much time away from the UK, and having spent winter this year in Canada exploring the national parks there (which are deserted at that time of year!) – it’s always nice to come back to a place so familiar. One that taught me about hard work, and has such a British feel to it. I’ll take any excuse to visit Durham, and the fact that I get to coincide it with telling stories at the city’s first adventure festival? Well that is just the cherry on top of the cake.

Anna McNuff
Adventure Queen