Decided I needed a break after 6 months of no holiday (what with the marathon training and everything) and so took a trip up north to tick off a visit to Leeds (Beflast now remains the last major town I haven’t visited in the UK according to my list). Needed an excuse to go and happened upon a lecture in Halifax (never been there either) that interested me. After a quick glance at some tennis at the Roehampton Wimbledon qualifiers, I set off about 2pm. Finally reaching Halifax a whole hour before the 7:30pm start. The lecture was by Ed Stafford, the first man ever to walk entire length of the Amazon river! It took him 2.5 years – 860 DAYS! to do and he saw Piranahs, Anacondas, waded through head high water, thousands of mosquitos, was called Pela Cara (face peeler – some Amazonian tribes think white men steal people’s faces and body parts and will kill without hesitation) and even sat on the back of a motorbike driven by a 5ft tall Peruvian lady one time whlst holding her miniture dog! It was pretty interesting, along with the various slides, maps and video of the trip he showed us, there’s going to be a 2 part doco on TV too. Following the lecture was a Q/A session and I got to ask Ed what kind of physical training he’d done to prepare for the trip – ‘Not a whole lot to be honest’ was his reply 🙂 Also bought his book Walking the Amazon and got to meet the man himself, can’t wait to read it – a really good bloke – a true adventurer and explorer.