 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. And there was no one. When you're out in the middle of the Atlantic, the closest people to you are 230 miles above you in the International Space Station orbiting the Earth. But what was probably the most amazing thing that I remember from that trip was actually the wildlife. It was just stunning. And one morning a whale came under my boat and just gently surfaced and my entire boat slid off the back of this whale. It was unbelievable. So I got up to the top and we got the summit photo. When I got to the top of the world, it wasn't a moment of sheer joy going, yeah, yeah, I was so exhausted. It's to another level exhausted. I knew where I was, but I was struggling with the lack of oxygen, you see. And as we got a little bit lower back down towards camp four, I saw what I thought were some empty oxygen cylinders. And as I got closer, I realized it wasn't an empty oxygen cylinder. It was in fact this, this poor Japanese guy who been, he was older than me. He'd been climbing a few days ahead of me. And the poor guy had a heart attack and he died. And at the time, his team were unable to bring him back down. I couldn't get this thought out of my head. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be a great idea to cycle around the world? I cycled 100 miles a day for half a year. And it sounds like a lot, but it's not that big a deal. Once you get out there. Yeah, in India, I had a guy point a gun at me. But for me, when I saw that, it was probably the biggest kick up the arse you can ever get. Let's go. Today's guest, we'll get James Ketchel. How are you, brother? Yeah, great. Thank you ever so much for having me. I've been following you for a while and it's good to be here. Yeah, it's good to have you on. It's phenomenal stories. Now, I have a lot of people from crime and sports, but to claim Everest and fly around the world in a gyroplane and you've been trying to be caught out in the Atlantic Ocean. You've had to get rescued countless occasions. I've been rescued twice. Once in the Indian Ocean, I remember clinging to the side of a 100,000 tonne crude oil tanker climbing a tiny little rope ladder in that storm force winds. It was very scary, if I'm really honest with you. We'll talk about it. But yeah, I've had a few things go my way, a few things not go my way, but I'm lucky. I kind of fell into this quite a few years ago. I had a very bad motorcycle accident and actually, that was great because it gave me the kick up the backside that I kind of needed, to be honest. And here we are later and I'm somehow supposed to be a professional adventurer. Life is funny, right? That is funny, but you went around the world, you thought the one and the biggest triathlon, the biggest triathlon in the world. Yeah, I didn't come up with that. I felt guilty because I'm not a very good runner. First of February 2014, James Ketscher became the first and only person to have rode across the Atlantic Ocean, successfully summited Mount Everest and cycled 18,000 miles around the world. How long did it take you to do that? I think it was a couple of years. I think it was over a period of three. It wasn't all back to back. And that has never been done before? The whole thing about the ultimate triathlon was that was kind of made up, if you like, by the media. So I got back from cycling around the world and the media, it was the first of February 2014. There was very little going on. So the media came out and said, hey, do you know what? We did some research. There's no one on this planet that's rode an ocean, been to the top of Everest and cycled around the world. It's a bit like an ultimate triathlon. And so that didn't come from me, but that term, the ultimate triathlon, just stuck. And I felt guilty because I'm a terrible swimmer and I'm a very poor runner because I have bolts in my ankle, but no one ever challenged it. And that was the thing. I wanted to call the book It's All Mental, but I wasn't allowed at the time. So we called it the ultimate triathlon. Where can people get this book? Let me just plug it straight away. Yeah, thank you. So they can get it on my website, jamesketchall.net, and I can sign it for people if they want to. Good stuff. All the stories that actually, probably sometimes I can't always share, especially when I'm out on a stage, on a public event, a corporate event, are in the books. I'll always go back to the start for my guest, James, you're boy, we only grew up and how it all began. Okay, so I live not too far from here. I live in Basin Stoke in North Hampshire. And I grew up there really. I was a very normal young lad. I didn't really have a huge amount of confidence. Bizarrely, I was always quite fit, but I was very skinny. So when I was young, I was quite a fit guy, but I didn't have any confidence. And going into my sort of teenage years at school was quite difficult. I had a face full of very, very bad spots, and I had these massive round glasses. And I would get called pizza face and stuff. And I just didn't really, school was a very difficult time for me. I left school without one qualification. I still don't to this day. And the best thing about school was, well, probably leaving if I'm honest, but something happened. I was very lucky. I was about 15, 16. So it was kind of like my last years at school. And I found the gym. I don't mean Jim's calf. I mean the gym. And that kind of got me into doing something that I could focus on. And in the evenings, I would go to the gym. I was still very skinny. I was very lean and ripped, but I was a skinny little boy. But over time, I worked out how to get stronger. I was eating better. And I was I had this silly goal. When I was like 15, I wanted to bench press 100 kilos. It was way more than I could lift at that moment at that moment in time. But every week, I would keep going and going and going. And at school, I never really hung out with cool kids as such who would go out and get pissed and smoke and drink. And they chatted with girls. And that was a thing to do. But I was I had a few friends, but not that many. I was quite quiet. But I kind of really fell into the gym. I really enjoyed it. And over time, I actually started to change physically quite considerably. The spots eventually cleared up. And I started getting beer and stronger. And I would I never really was one for going out into town drinking a huge amount going way. But I did go out in town with my friends. And it was funny because people when I was sort of 18, 19 and kind of left school people that I saw who were the kind of cool kids were like coming up to me saying, Hey, Jay, is that you? You know, I've got contact lenses. So I didn't need to wear glasses anymore. And, you know, the girls that I wanted to speak to that would like to say go away. Well, now it was odd. They didn't know it was me. They were coming up to me saying, All right, how's it going? And I'm like, Yeah, good. It was very, very strange what happened. But that kind of developed a little bit more confidence in me. And I'll tell you this one crazy story, right? It's true. I was I think I was about 19 at the time. And, you know, I'd left school for a few years. And I changed quite considerably by then. And I was out in this bar kind of club. It was called Chicago's real cheesy. But it was fine, I suppose. And there was this girl who was quite an attractive girl at school. And I remember I tried to talk to her once. And I never never really got anywhere as such. And I was out one night. And there she was. And I was with a friend of mine. And I said, you know, let's go and chat to these these girls. And I went up to her. And I was like, Hey, how's it going? And and she was like, Yeah, cool. I said, Listen, I knew that she couldn't recognize me or she didn't. So I said, By the way, I can do some magic tricks. And I can read your mind. And she was like, What are you talking about? Now, she didn't know that I knew everything about her. And so I remember saying to her, looking at her saying, I think your name is it begins with a K. It's Kelly, isn't it? And she's like, Yeah, it is. How'd you know that? And I told you, I could read your mind. And then I remember saying, you know, you, you went to, to her, her Harriet Costello, right? That's the name of the school. She's like, Yeah, I did. And I said, Oh, that's really interesting. Do you remember a guy? I think his name was James. It may have been Ketchel. She's like, Yeah, he's a dick. It's true. This is true. He said, He's a dick. Why would you why would you say that? And I said, Well, you're looking at him. And she was like, she looked at me and she was like, Really? No, I'm not. And I pulled out my driver's license thing. And she was like, It is you. And so it was funny, things changed a lot in my teenage years. I never really school wasn't bad. I wasn't bullied as such, but I really, really struggled. It wasn't until I left school that I started finding things that I enjoyed and things. And and what happened from that was I actually got a used mention that you work as a personal trainer, I got a job in a gym as well. And I really kind of enjoyed it. And that was kind of my thing. I did that for for years. But then I got made redundant. And then I had to had to get another job. So I remember I started working in a in some warehouse, just shifting stuff around. And and and all of a sudden, the guy who run the company said, we've got an event like an exhibition that we'd like you to come to because they sold folding bikes as a sideline. But I was I was really interested in bikes and stuff. But no one in the warehouse was interested in 40 ones when they came back. So what I would do is I would put I would take two or three 40 bikes and put them together and and then and put one good one back into stock. And the owner said, that's quite a quite a useful thing to do. You know, if you come to this exhibition with us, you can a will pay you and yeah, something for you to do. And at the time, all I really cared about was just earning money because I could buy my food and my supplements and things. I was big into that at the time. And I went to this show without even trying, I sold like three or four times the amount of bicycles to people who were actually there to sell them. And I didn't do anything special. I was just asking questions and very similar to yourself. I just like being with people, believe it or not. I consider I've spent a lot of time on my own. I do like being with people. And I remember I thought nothing of it. And I came back and and and he said, listen, I'd actually got another job in a gym. And I said, listen, I've got to leave now. I've got another job in the gym. And he said, well, actually, we would like to offer you a job in the sales team, which was like moving up to the second floor above the warehouse. It was like a promotion. They were going to pay me more money. So I took that for a while. And, you know, it was it was kind of okay. And then over time, I started gaining an interest. And I always kind of had it ever since I was young in sort of adventurous things. And I became aware that it was possible to row a boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Right. Not many people may think that. And then a few years before actually quite a few years before I tried it, James Cracknell and Ben Fogel did it. And I like followed them. And it kind of really hyped me up. And I thought, I would like to do that. And I made all these different inquiries. I looked into kind of how much it would cost. But there was like something just kind of holding me back. I didn't want to do it. I was worried about what other people thought. I didn't know if I could do it. It just seemed totally impossible to me. And I just kept putting it off and off and off. And so, you know, a few years rolled by and I was messing about with motorbikes for fun. I was doing a little bit of racing at the weekends. I was actually quite good at it. It was funny. I never had a huge amount of confidence when I was young. But everything I seemed to pick up at, I was quite good. And despite that, I still never had that much confidence. It's funny how the brain kind of works. And I had this quite serious motorbike accident and ended up in hospital with broken legs. And it wasn't that big a deal. You know, a lot of people lose arms and legs and are in a real bad way. How did you crash? I accelerated. I had the bike lent over. I was accelerating out of a corner. I put a little bit too much power down and the rear wheel span up. So the back of the bike came round on me. It was a high side. So it threw me over the handlebars. And I tell you something. Yeah, when you hit concrete at over 100 miles an hour, it can be problematic. And I remember actually, I can remember a clearest day. I was flying through the air looking back at the bike. And I just had this thought going through my head thinking, shit, this is going to hurt. And it didn't hurt. I impacted the ground quite hard. And I was just knocked out instantly. But then when I came to, I had this incredible throbbing, this pain running through my right leg. And a doctor, he was there pretty quickly. And I'll never forget this. The doctor, he was it was a very hot day. And I had a blacked out visor on the helmet because it was very sunny. But when my head had hit the floor, the visor had been ripped off. And he was stood over me and he calmly looked into my eyes and he said, are you all right, son? I was like, I was gasping for breath as well. I had the wind knocked out of me. And I said, my leg, my right leg hurts. And he looked from my eyes and he looked down, he went, oh, now when a doctor does that, it's never a good sign. So then he then looked back up into my eyes and the guy was like, whatever you do, don't look down. And of course, what's the first thing you do? So instead of my right foot pointing forwards, I snapped my ankle. So it was pointing backwards. But I was quite pleased. I had a sense of humor in the face of adversity that day because he took the boot off very gently. And I had a white sock on and I had something called an open fracture. So the skin had split. So the bone had come through. So it was bleeding heavily. So my white sock was now red dripping with the blood. And I don't know where it came from. It was the first thing that came into my mind. I said to the guy, have you got a camera or a phone? Wouldn't that make a great picture? And the guy was like, stop being so stupid. I said, okay, I'm sorry. And the next thing I know, he started injecting morphine into me, which is actually quite an amazing thing. You just drift away. It does take the pain away. But I don't know, some people react differently, but it was almost like I was drunk. And I was saying, when I arrived at the hospital, I was saying things that you wouldn't ordinarily never say you might think it. And I remember rocking up on the bed and they were pushing me into the operating theater because my leg was in a bad way. And I just randomly looked at someone and said, I hope there's some fit nurses here. And I thought, I would never say something so stupid like that. But it's funny. And of course, all these women just turned with this kind of frown thing. Who is this silly boy? And then, yeah, and then it was a little bit of a wake-up call. I remember. Were you potentially going to lose your leg? No, not the leg, but the lower ankle was, yeah. So I broke something. It didn't just break. It shattered. And that's the bone called the talus bone. So the foot articulates on that bone. It has a particularly poor blood supply. So if you rupture it, it's not necessarily a good thing. You can develop something called a vascular necrosis, which is basically where the bone is not getting enough blood supply. And it's slowly dying. So anyway, I was very, very lucky. I had a very good surgeon bowled it all back together. But it was a bit of a wake-up call because he said to me, listen, mate, I don't know if you're going to be able to walk properly again. This is quite serious. I would imagine we're going to have a lot of problems. Well, you're going to have a lot of problems with this. It's not, it's not just six weeks recovery, then you'll be fine. So I was like, right, okay. And I was probably a bit naive then. I just kept saying to the guy, no, it'll be all right. I've got a feeling. And I could see it. It was probably frustrating him because he said, no, no, I'm telling you, this is a little bit of a problem. It's not, you're not just going to be okay. And it was a bit of a reality check because I was in that, I was lying in that bed for quite a long time. And when you have something that you do every day that you don't think of anything of, you get up and you walk around, when all of a sudden you can't do that, you realise what you have, you only realise what you have when you haven't got something anymore. And it was funny because it was like a light switch moment because then and there, I mean, I thought to myself, it became very clear very quickly that I needed something to aim for. It took two years to make a complete recovery. And I thought, you know what, I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I know what I want to do. I'm going to row a boat across the Atlantic, because I've been wanting to do this for years, but I kept putting it off and off and off. And you know, sometimes when something feels right, it felt right. So I didn't have a clue what I was doing. But I managed to kind of make it happen to a degree. I remember I went off to a boat show, Southampton boat show, and I was still on crutches at the time and I was hobbling around with a big cast on my leg. And I said to, I was going up onto the different stands, like touting for sponsorship, saying, look, this is what I'm going to do. This is why I'm going to do it. This is what I want to do for you. So does that go about then, if you want to do something, somebody can sponsor you? Yeah. I mean, the only way I was going to make this happen was to try and get funding because I didn't have that much was it to do it? There's it varies on the type of boats that you want to buy. I couldn't afford to buy a brand new boat. So I bought a second handboat and I wanted to do it with someone. But for some reason, no one would have the place. Well, if you got them on, do you know what I mean? They pay half, you pay half. Yeah, I mean, so long story, I'll tell you how much it I was able to secure a second handboat, but it was a two-man boat. So I had to row a two-man boat on my own. But the guy wanted £22,000 for it, which doesn't sound a huge amount, but it was at the time for me. And so I kept going out touting for sponsorship and stuff. And I wasn't really getting anywhere. And I thought, I need to take a bit of a risk. I need to do something to get this project real. So I went down the local bank that I banked with Barclays. And I said, listen, I want to buy a new car. And the guy was like, yeah, how much do you want to borrow? I said, well, I think £15,000 will be good. And he said, well, computer tells me you can borrow 22. You get a better car. I said, yes, that's going to be perfect. I'll take that. Now, I didn't want to tell them that I was buying a second hand rowing boat to cross the Atlantic in in case they were like, mate, computer says no. So I walked out of the bank with this money. And I still had to make the repayments. So I bought this second hand boat. But when I had this boat, the project became real. That I could say to people, this is this is the boat that I'm going to row across the Atlantic in. That's where you sleep. This is where you row. This is how you make your water. That's the toilet. It's called bucket and chuck it, you know, and this is and now by the way, you can have your company logo here. And sure enough, it paid off. I remember I towed it on a trailer to a rugby game at Twickenham just down the road and and you know, I was shaking a bucket and you'll be amazed at what will happen when you just put yourself out there and you start telling enough people what you're going to do. You you will inspire someone to help you. But it takes quite a while to get to that point. So I managed to get all the funding together. And I shipped the boat out to a little place called Lagomera, which is in the Canary Islands just off the coast of North Africa. And so I'm rowing to Antigua in the Caribbean. So that's it's about 3000 miles. So it's quite a long way to row. And it's actually the same route that Christopher Columbus used back in the late 15th century, I think, when he discovered the Americas. And he usually has about 80. I think he had about 80 crew on his boat. And there was just me on my own. I can't remember. Yeah, I think he was. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it was. But it's interesting because something happened quite quickly. I remember unloading the boat and stuff. And I was out looking out at the Atlantic one evening. And the waves was a particularly rough day. They were smashing up against the harbor wall. And I thought to myself, Oh, dear, what the hell am I doing? Is this really a good idea? Because like, although I made the decision to do it when I was lying in hospital, I was in my comfort zone. I was in a safe environment. I had people around me that I knew I was in my comfort zone, right. And that's when a lot of people quite often make decisions to do something. But I then all of a sudden was out of my comfort zone looking out at the Atlantic thinking, How the hell am I going to row this boat 3000 miles to the Caribbean? I don't know if I can do it. And it was interesting because I got chatting to an old boy who happened to be knocking around the harbor. And he said, you're nervous. And I'm like, Yes, I am. And he said in this guy, he'd sailed around the world, I think three or four times. He was a real old sea dog as well. You could just tell by looking at him. And I remember he said to me, if you can get through the first three days, you will be able to survive three months is all in your head, the whole lot. And I thought, All right, okay, so I just I remember I never let those words go out on my head. It's three days, three days. All I've got to do is get through the first three days. And remember, I set off. And the reality will hit you quick, that you're trying to row this little boat, which is about 20, I think mine was 23 feet long training for that. Believe it or not, you don't have to be as fit as you might think to do this. It's really all in the mind. I rode a lot, like on indoor rows, and I got fear and was already fit to a degree. But here's the thing. There's no point in training like a maniac and turning up at the start line, the fittest guy there, but you've overlooked all the important stuff, which is the funding and actually getting the boat. So I had so I was juggling loads of different things. I was juggling the funding, the technical aspect of the boat, making sure the boat was all fitted out with the correct kit. So I did train like hard. Is it more mental? Rowing across the Atlantic is 99% in your head and 1% physical. The boat was 23 feet long. So I had a two you couldn't you can get a smaller boat now. Any dodgy waves or anything? Yeah, so you're gonna Yeah, you're gonna get I'll come on to that. You're gonna get some pretty serious waves. So I remember I'll take you on a little bit of a journey across the Atlantic. So the first day was like running on adrenaline. I was all hyped up. But that I remember that evening. It was, yeah, it was the reality was starting to kick in because you can get seasick quite quickly and that can be quite debilitating. Luckily, I wasn't seasick. I was very, very lucky. But you're looking at the you have like four intensive purposes. It's a speedo. It's a chart plotter. And it tells you how fast you go in. And I was expecting to be rowing at a certain pace. And I was like, I was rowing hard. And I wasn't even I think I was like getting one knot, which is really, really slow. I was expecting the boat to move at least two and a half to three knots. And so the reality hits you will hang about, if I can't get the boat moving much faster than this, this is going to take like half a year to get across. It's going to be crazy. I can't do this. And so your brain will start playing tricks on you very, very quickly. And you'll start looking for a way out. You'll start telling yourself, ah, you know, maybe we're not ready. Maybe let's come back another day. Let's do this another day. And you'll be surprised to how the brain will really try and mesh you up like that. But I kept these guys words in my head. And I thought, I've just got to get through three days. I've got to get through three days. And I got through the three days. And then I got eventually I got to the halfway point and something just clicked. I thought to myself, hang about, I'm somehow going to do this because you can't grasp just how big a feat it is to row about 3000 miles. So your brain won't comprehend that. But once you get to the halfway point, all of a sudden I thought, I'm going to do this. And it became real. And so every day I was hyped up. I was rowing harder. I was rowing faster. Got to try and row faster and longer and there was no one. When you're out in the middle of the Atlantic, the closest people to you are 230 miles above you in the International Space Station orbiting the earth. So it's pretty remote once you get out there. Having said that, you do pass through shipping lanes. So I was almost run over by a bulk carrier. But I had a like a radar system on my boat that would tell me if anything was coming because you have to get out of there. What's it like at night time? Beautiful stars. Yeah, yeah. Just incredible. It really is. And I'll come on to the waves and stuff on you get areas of high pressure. So that basically means high pressure is good weather. And so what will happen is when the wind drops, the water will go like a sheet of glass, just beautiful. And that's when you can get out the boat and you can swim around, but you have to remain tied on because the boat will surprisingly quickly drift away from you. So you've got to be pretty careful in that sense. But at night it was just magical, especially on a clear night as well. But what was probably the most amazing thing that I remember from that trip was actually the wildlife. It was it was just stunning, like huge, thin whales. Okay, they're the size of a bus. They would swim right up to the side of the boat. And I remember looking eye to eye with a thin whale. And they would sometimes sort of scrape the side of the boat. But you don't want that to happen because they're so big and powerful. They smash the boat up. And one morning, a whale came under my boat and just gently surfaced and my entire boat slid off the back of this whale. It was unbelievable. So the boat is designed to self right. So if it does roll over, it will come back up again. The safest place you can be is inside that boat. Because they're actually quite safe. There's layers of foam in between the carbon fiber. Mine wasn't a carbon fiber, but some of the other boats I had was. And so you could cut it in half and it will sit and float on the surface. They just don't really sink. They're incredible. So that put you on the ease at my age? Yeah, to a degree. But here I'll tell you something interesting. So I thought that I had this sort of call it a radar. It's called AIS, Automatic Identification System. It's a bit like a radar that's keeping watch on you. So if a large vessel comes close to me and alarm will go off. So I thought that that was working. And I found out so every night I'd go and you would sleep so well. Trust me, when you row in 12 hours a day, you have no problem sleeping. And it was very weird dreams when you're that tired. It's funny what happens. And I got to the end and I did get to Antigua. And I found out that that AIS system was never working. So when I was sleeping at night, thinking, oh, okay, I've got this safety net working that never worked once. But I'll tell you something crazy that happened. And I'm not really a religious guy, perhaps I'm quite spiritual. My grandfather passed away a couple of months before I was about to row across the Atlantic. I mean, it was very unwell. He was going to die anyway. But I wanted him to stay alive long enough to see his grandson complete this kind of feat, which I believe he would have been quite proud of. And so I thought, well, that's a real pain in the ass that he's not here to see that. So I put his name on the boat. And his name was Rocky Rochelle. And so then I'll put my other granddad's name on the boat. And it was, it was crazy. There were time, you ask about at night, there were times at night when it was very, very still, but sometimes it could be quite eerie, especially if it's quite cloudy, there's wind, you can't hear, you can hear the waves, but you don't know where they're coming from. They're smashing over the boat, you're getting wet. And at night it's quite cold. And it can just be, it can be quite an intimidating place. And this happened twice. I was rowing. And all of a sudden it was like someone was sat next to me. All of a sudden I had this feeling of warmth. I was really happy, like I'd just taken an amazing happy pill. And it was like someone was there next to me, keeping watch on me. It was difficult to explain, but I do believe someone was looking down on me when I was out there because loads of different things happened that were just, it's a hell of a coincidence. And did you ever get scared? No, I was never once scared because when I did go through those times of potentially feeling a bit scared, it was almost like this reassuring presence just turned up. Protecting you? It was. It was crazy how it happened. It really was. And at night it was, I mean, I don't remember much about the night. I mean, I rode till about one o'clock in the morning. So I got to see, I mean, and it got dark. I brought sharks. Yeah, I'll come on to that now. Actually, it was fascinating. I had some oceanic white tip sharks follow me and I wanted them to come closer so I could take pictures. Just for photos? Yeah, I wanted to take some pictures and I wanted to do some underwater filming. I thought it'd be very interesting. So I was throwing bits of food in to get them to come closer, but they're remarkably intelligent. They wouldn't actually come that close to the boat. They would just stay that little bit back and they were swimming around it. And I had this kind of mindset that I could probably just jump in, but I didn't. I did swim a lot though, but I was aware that there were sharks out there. But... How was the weather? Yeah, for the most part, the weather was quite good. But the sun, I'm talking about the high degrees. Very, very hot. Do you have a lot of sun coming out there? Yeah, so when I arrived in English harbour in Antigua, I'd lost 30 kilos and I was proper brown. You wouldn't recognise me. My hair was completely blonde. So it's like a watery desert. There's water everywhere. You can't drink it. Can it kill us if I have a five storey? I lost a lot of weight. I was quite a big chap when I... How much food did you have in the boat? Well, here's an interesting thing. So I expected the crossing at worst to be about 100 days. It usually takes about 70 or 80 days for a solo row to get across. But there was a lot of areas of low pressure. Now that low pressure is basically bad weather. And the prevailing winds, the route that I took effectively for the most part, blow you across the Atlantic. But they were doing the complete opposite when I was out there. It was just my luck. So instead of getting blown across, I was actually getting blown back. And it took 110 days, four hours and four minutes. No, that was counting, right? And because of that, I actually ran out of food. I ran out of food 230 miles from Antigua. And you'll never, ever hear me use the word starving. Because when you find out what it's like, it's actually not very nice. Now I was lucky I was able to get a resupply from a yacht. So it wasn't really a life or death situation, but it was quite an uncomfortable... What happened then if you'd never had that or a yacht? I would have. I would have got some support from someone. I had a satellite phone. Kelly, your own fish? Let me tell you, fish, those fish are extremely intelligent, smart little things. So I was able to fish, but it was almost like they knew I had a hook because they were picking the bait. I was watching them. They were picking the bait off the hook and then swimming off. I don't know how they were able to do that. But actually while we were talking about the wildlife, it was just a mate. I mean, I never really thought flying fish actually fly, but trust me, they really do fly. I mean, I was hitting the face with one. It was, I remember, yeah, it's true. It was one, it was one o'clock in the morning. I've been rowing all through the day. I was very, very tired. And actually that was an evening where it was very, very dark. Because when there's thick cloud and the moon isn't out, it's a darkness that most people have never experienced before. You can't see your hand in front of your face. It's proper dark. So my head torch was illuminating the area in front of me. And I've been, I was tired because I've been rowing all through the day. And I pulled my oars in and I was about to lie down in my tiny little cabin at the back. And my head torch was like, it's just illuminating the area in front of me. And this white object came flying out of the water. Bang, hit me in the face. I thought, shit, what was that? And I think where I was so tired, my brain wasn't working. I thought I'd just been hit by a golf ball because it was like, it was that quick. I thought I'd just been hit by a golf ball. Fuck. And of course it wasn't. And it was this little flying fish. And it was sort of flapping up and down on the deck. And I thought, what do I do with this thing? Do I try and eat it? And it's small and bony. So I threw it back in so it could hit someone else in the face another day. But my left side of my face was covered in fish scales and it stank. But it was an interesting experience. What happens if you get injured? What happens if you break a foot or break a leg? Because obviously your leg's a bit dodgy. You're in a lot of trouble. Are you stuck out there? Have you got an radio or anything? You're not stuck out there. Do you have a radio? Yeah. So you have a satellite. I'll come on to that because I took a guy across the Atlantic in 2016 and that happened. So we'll talk about that in a bit. But yes, I had a tracker on board the boat and I had a satellite phone. And like social media had only just started back then. So I don't even think I had a Twitter account. What year was this? 2010. So it was going back a while. So social media wasn't what it was in. And it's now. So yeah, but I did have means of staying connected. And when I ran out of food, actually, I remember, I'm very close to my parents. And I would ring them up and say, hey, how's it going? And they'd say, yeah, yeah, we're out having a Chinese. It's really nice. How are you? I'm like, yeah, I'm good. But that's the kind of like the kind of just the relationship we had. And then sure enough that I was able to get back and we had one with them. But probably the most amazing thing was just actually being out there and doing it. And one of the things that became apparent to me quite quickly was, you know what? I've put this off for so many years. And I wish I hadn't. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Sure, I was tired. Sure, I was hungry at times. And there were times when it was a bit scary. Lonely? I was never lonely because I wanted to be there so badly. Welcome to be with you. Well, I didn't want to be free. I'm a very sociable person. But I was obsessed with this goal. My whole life revolved around this goal of somehow rowing across the Atlantic. And when I was out there doing it, I felt like I was achieving it. But something interesting happened when I did get to the other end, which I'll come on to. But yeah, it's not that difficult. Probably most people watching and listening to us if they decided they wanted to do it could actually do it. Don't start putting ideas in my head, man. I don't fuck it. I'm doing it. But you've got to want it. If you only want it, if you want it 99%, that other will get a better view. I would do it for the mindset of it. See, I've visualised myself doing 50 mile runs and 100 mile runs. I can smash out and I'm just over 14 stone. I can still do 15, 16 mile runs. I visualise myself. I don't know why. I always visualise myself doing 100 mile run. I watch a lot of David Goggins and absolute crackpot. I just think it's to test myself to the absolute limits. To the absolute limits that people watching think, if you had no fucking chance, that would make me go out and do it. To push yourself to the ultimate extreme, not just physical. It's all about the mental battle. It is because you can go out and do your 100 mile run. You can definitely do that. And that'll be a challenge. But when you're out in the Atlantic, it's like doing it every day. And there is no nice hotel to go home. You're just lying. You're eating your ration packs, your dehydrated ration packs, which actually become quite nice when you are hungry. And then there's your little mattress. What did you moment that say? Here's something very interesting. They initially were not very happy about it. And I don't think in the beginning, I don't think that's because they wanted to deny me of the opportunity. I think they were generally a bit concerned about their son going off on his own and rowing across the Atlantic. And then what happened over time? They saw me working to a level that I'd never worked to before. And they were like, Jesus, James is on another level. This guy wants this. We've never seen this before. You've been our son for God knows how many years, but we've never seen you this focused. Are they surprised? I think so. And then when they saw that, I wanted this badly, badly. I was working a full-time job whilst making this happen as well. And so I was juggling a lot of things. And it was quite difficult, actually. And I think they then turned from sort of being a bit antsy to my greatest supporters. They were really, really kind of behind me. And actually, I'll tell you what happened. They never got to see me arrive. Because I don't know if you remember back in, I think it was April 2010, there was a massive volcano that erupted in Iceland, chucked an ash cloud. Do you remember that? Grounded flights ran away. We were screwed up a lot of people. So I've got this tracker on the boat right. So don't forget, I was out there for nearly four months. That's a long time. So they're watching their son on the tracker. You know, they're sending me messages saying, why are you rowing backwards? I say, I'm not rowing backwards. It's the wind blowing me back. You know, there's not much you can really do about it. It's quite demoralizing. What do you do then if the wind's blowing your back? Do you just hold on or what? No. So you use something called a para anchor. You can't drop a physical anchor because it's three miles to the bottom. So you're never that far from land. It's just the wrong way. So you would use something called a para anchor and that's like a parachute. So you deploy that into the water and it's attached to the boat. So the wind will be pushing the boat back, but then the para anchor will open up and fill with water and it will minimize your loss of ground. So instead of getting blown back at quite a rate, this will like hold your position. So there are things you can do to limit your loss of ground and also in rough weather, you always want the boat to be going into the wave all with it because if the boat goes beam on, okay, so sideways, the boat will just roll straight over when a wave picks it up. And there's two types of waves. You've got the steep waves and they're the tricky ones because they'll just flip the boat over. But then you also have large waves but they're long and rolling. They're the good ones. As long as they're going the right way, the boat will surf down them and you can get some quite good speed. So, yeah. What was it like then once you completed that when nobody was there then? Well, I'll tell you, yeah, I'll come on to that now because there was someone there. What actually happened was my parents, they'd been looking forward to coming now to Antigua to see me. So they're driving to the airport and their flight out to English Harbour into Antigua's cancelled. So I'm like, okay, so that's no good. But it just so happened that it happened to be Antigua race week which is basically when all these rich Americans get together and they race yachts around the island. Now, somehow the word got out that this lunatic from Britain on his own, me, was about to row into English Harbour into Antigua. And so it was a bit crazy. Although my parents weren't there when I arrived, there were hundreds of people everywhere. Like, there were super yachts in the kind of marina, honking their horns and stuff. People were coming out. You wanted to give me beers and you can dine out on free beers a long time. Were you buzzing? Yeah, I was. It was incredible. I hadn't seen. No, I wasn't crying. I wasn't emotional like that. I wasn't crying. So that fucking achievement, wasn't it? Yeah, I suppose so. I was kind of really wrapped up in it. But I'll tell you something interesting that happened. I actually ended up sailing back, by the way, because I couldn't get a flight off the island. It was crazy how it happened. It's another story. But what do you mean sailing back? Well, I'll tell you what happened. I was... For when you started? No, I sailed back to Europe. Not to... The starting point again? Not to the starting point. But I'd never planned that to happen. So basically, I couldn't get a flight off the island and stuff. And I wasn't in a particular rush to get home. And so I'm out on my own and I'm eating chocolate ice cream. And a husband and wife came up to me and said, oh, well done on your row. I said, thanks very much. And they ended up sitting with me and we chatted for a while. And they said, how do you intend to get home? And I said, to be honest, I haven't really given it much thought. I'm just chilling. And she said, well, I'll tell you what. We are sailing back to Europe. And we're short-handed, so that means they don't have enough crew. Do you fancy joining us? And I was like, well, I don't really know. I've just spent four months on my own out in the Atlantic in this tiny little boat. And she was like, the wife. She was a lovely lady. She said, well, I'll tell you what, come and have a look at our boat and see what you think. So I said, yeah, sure. There were some really nice boats in the marina. And so I remember I walked over to this boat and it was a 54-foot beautiful. It was made by a company called Sun Odyssey, a French genoa, a French company, lovely. Half a million pounds worth of yacht. And so I walk up onto the deck and I remember she was like, we had this custom barbecue put in here. The fridge is here. This is where we keep all the beers. Oh, you can have the master bedroom at the front, which is a double bed with an en suite. And so this is quite a different experience to what I've just crossed the Atlantic in. And to be honest, it took me about 30 seconds. And I just said, yeah, I'm in. So by default, I ended up sailing back across the Atlantic. I never planned to. It was crazy. And actually, my boss... Was that what actually thought you? Yeah, it was crazy. My boss was ringing me up saying, where are you? Because they held my job open for me. And so I managed to get back. But what happened quite quickly is I thought that once I'd completed this fairly big feat of rowing a boat across the Atlantic, I'd be eternally happy for the rest of my life. And everything would be perfect. It doesn't exist. It doesn't happen. You are on a high for quite a while. But it literally... And then it'll go. It's not for years and years and years. It's not. Couple of days. If that... Yep. When I achieve goals of targets, I'm talking 10 minutes. Yeah. Boom gone. Yeah. Pain, misery, trauma. Yeah. It flicks back and I go, okay, well, I need to keep going. I need to push myself. I need to go. Yeah. But do a better fitness. Keep working. Because no matter how late you see, you've just sailed the Atlantic. You've rowed it. You've sailed it. And it's completed. Yeah. And it's done. It's in the past. Back to reality. Reality was waiting for me at home saying, thank you, you're now back. So I'm sorry. Were you trying to escape from something? No, I wasn't really trying to escape. You looked for answers just if I could. You never could figure life out about... I had, I didn't... Okay. So I just wanted to do it. I had no idea that it would end up leading on to a career in doing these types of things and taking other people across oceans and climbing this and flying that and speaking here. I didn't know that. I mean, I was probably quite naive. I didn't even really know that you could be a professional speaker back then. It was just something that I was kind of doing. But I say to kids, when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone and you do something that you haven't done before, there's got to be an action to get a reaction. Doors of opportunity will just naturally open and I only set out to row across the Atlantic. I had no desire to do anything else. But during my preparation, I met a guy who was also rowing across the Atlantic with another bloke. He found a partner to do it with. And he was a really nice guy and we just kind of clicked and we helped each other prepare a little bit. He was a smart bloke. He was older than me and he was a doctor in it. So he worked for... I remember he worked for six months flat out as a doctor and then for the other six months, he'd go away on expeditions and he was a very accomplished high-altitude climber. The guy had summited Everest five times. His name's Rob. Rob Casely, a great guy. And we just became really good friends and he said to me, look, after the row, come out and climb Everest with me. And I'm like, okay, I've climbed before, but not to that level. I don't know if I can do it. And he said, I guarantee you, you can do it. And so it was strange. I got back from the row and it was quite difficult going back into the office, I must say, for the first few weeks. But then the novelty wore off. After the first day, I was like, wow, wow, that was it. It was history. So I'm like, okay, okay. And so the next thing was, what am I going to do? But being out there and completing the process of organising this project, making it happen and completing it. Kind of. Give you about a self-worth confidence that you can not achieve anything. Well, basically you can achieve anything, if you put your mind to it. But from going back in an office to fast-run pace to the society of the sheep, 95, people talking shit, people drinking. If you were out there alone, just, did you feel a plus out there? Did you feel alive? Yes, yes. I felt very alive. I don't feel alive really when I'm just kind of going about my daily business. When I'm out doing something that I've worked towards, that's when I come alive and it makes me feel quite happy. And it's very difficult to describe what that's really like to someone who's never really pushed themselves hard to achieve something that they want to achieve. I wish I could take that feeling of what it's like and say, here you go, Mr. Joe Blogs. This is what you're going to feel like if you get your head down and achieve XYZ, whatever it is you want to achieve. You don't have to row oceans. The world would be crazy if everyone did what I did. So was that the stepping stone to do Everest straight after that? Yeah, basically it was. I found myself in this position where I got back from the row. I was back at work and I thought, you know what, I am never ever going to get the opportunity, this opportunity to go out to Everest again. I don't even know if I can do it but I'd much rather have a go and it not work out than be left wondering. It doesn't work out if you're never still dead. To a degree you could be. You could be. So there's a fairly high risk but I was willing to take that risk and again it made me feel like and as soon as I made that conscious decision that I was going to do it but here's the hard part. I still had a boat. I was in debt because I had the boat and so I managed to find some other lunatic to sell it to when I got back. So I cleared off the debt of the boat and I started fundraising for Everest now. This is where things got tricky. I thought and I was expecting it to be quite easy because I just had the credibility of rowing across the Atlantic. So surely I'll be able to get sponsored. I raised money for a great charity when I rode the Atlantic and I was raising money for a charity that helped disabled children when I climbed Everest and I kind of come from a bit of a sales background and I thought, you know what, I'm going to get on the phones and call some people and see what we can make happen. And I started off really confident and then all of a sudden no one was interested. They wanted to talk to me about the Atlantic and they're like, yeah, that's a good effort but no one would back me and this was all kind of quite last minute as well. So I didn't have that long to get the money together to go out and climb Everest. So I got very proactive and but it didn't, nothing was happening. And so I remember Rob called me up and said, listen, you know, how are you getting on with the funding? And I said, well, to be honest, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this because I just can't get the funding. Nothing was happening, right? But I didn't really have the heart to say I can't go. I don't know what it was. There was something inside me that just said, keep trying. Can you send another email? Send another email. And one day I got lucky, right? I pinged an email off to a company called Ben Sherman. You know, they make shirts and the guy came back to me. I spent like three hours on the phone with him and he was like asking all the right questions. You know, what can I do for the sponsorship? How does this work? How does that work? And I'm thinking, great, great. And then literally three hours passes and the guy's like, I can't sponsor you. I was just interested to know. You know, we've just wasted like quite a few hours of our time here. And I bit my tongue. I didn't say what I wanted to say. And just before he hung up, he said, oh, hang about. I think I might be able to do something for you. And I was like, oh, yeah, what's that? He said, listen, I've got this spreadsheet. Within this spreadsheet, there's like a thousand different CEO, marketing director, all their email addresses and names are in this. You know, I don't don't tell anyone where you got this from, but you can spam every single one of them. It was before this GDPR nonsense and stuff. You can't do that anymore. So I got this database. I sent every single email out. Well, I thought every single email. I didn't get one reply. And so I didn't have the guts to actually bring up Rob and say, mate, I'm not going to be able to come to Everest. And I was typing the email out to him. And as I was typing the email, I knocked the mouse and the Excel spreadsheet for some reason came to the front of the screen. And I realized that I hadn't quite scrolled down. There was one guy left. Okay. And his name was Andrew. And he was the marketing director for a company that I'd imagine everyone now knows. And that's Nando's. They make great chicken burgers. Didn't see the connection between Nando's chicken burgers and climb in Everest. And if I'm honest, I wasn't going to bother sending the email. But I thought, well, it's already pretty written. All I've got to do is put the guy's name in it. And if I don't send it, then you can be pretty sure nothing's going to happen. So I pinged this email off. And unbelievably, the guy came back within half an hour. He called me. I answered the phone and he was like, James is Andrew from Nando's here. I've just read your email and it's bloody brilliant. But tell me one thing. Do you actually eat Nando's? I'm like, yes. The best thing ever. They really are great. They're great. I go to Nando's every single day. And I take my friends. It cost me a fortune, but I can only eat lemon and herb. I can't eat anything spicy. And I said that to the guy. And he was like, really, you've rode the Atlantic and you're going out to Everest and you can't eat our hot chicken. I was like, yeah, it's true. And he went, that is a bloody brilliant story. Come and meet me. So the next day I went up to Putney which is where their head office was and 24 hours later. And by this point, I only had a week left to pay the bill. Nando's had sponsored me to climb Everest. How crazy is that? That's smart. But I kind of learnt something at that point because I basically kind of embarrassed to say I'd given up. I didn't think I was going to get that money. And I didn't do anything special. I just kept sending it again and again and again. I didn't stop. The time that you can't be bothered to do something but you make the effort to do it. That's when it happens. Bingo. That's when stuff starts happening for you. I always say it's relevant. The days you're feeling you're lost, if you can get out to the gym or get out and do something, that's the days you'll find the success. That makes the difference. Indeed. So what is the process to Everest? How long does it take to get to the top Everest? So, yeah. So I got out to Everest. Got the money to get out there. How long but from, how long should it take to climb Everest? Is it three months, four months? Or is it six months? No, it takes about six weeks from door to door. Is that how long in all? Does it take to climb Everest? Well, you have to go up and down. Different stages. So there's different stages. Yeah, I'll explain. So you arrive into Kathmandu, then you fly up to a place called Lukla. Depending on if you're going to climb from the south side or the north side. So the south side is from Nepal. The north side is via Tibet. And the south side is looked upon as being the slightly easier side. Because you just go straight up. Whereas on the north side you go up and then you traverse along. So you're at high altitude for a lot longer. So generally, so from arriving at Lukla and walking up to Everest Base Camp generally takes about 10 days. So the idea is you want to acclimatize and go very slowly. The slower you can ascend, the better chance your body will have of acclimatizing basically. So then once you get up to Everest Base Camp, you're only at base camp. You still got to get to the top. And it's broken down into different camps. You've got camp, you go through the icefall first and that's quite a dangerous part of the climb. It's this huge area of mass of ice that's moving and shifting. And it can collapse. So the Sherpas will put ladders down and you have to get across them. And that's in columns. So if they put the ladders across people need to walk across them with the drop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's quite difficult to begin with because you're massively outside of your comfort zone. How many of them do you need to cross? It all depends because the ice, the icefall is moving and shifting and changing all the time. So there may only be a few ladders but then by the time the expedition's finished it may have all shifted and there may be more. But inevitably there's always two or three large ones where you're looking down and you can't see the bottom. How many is in your team? I only had a very small team. There was only three of us. There was a young girl and we did have a Sherpa. We had a couple of Sherpas as well. So I was very lucky. So we had a Sherpa. So a Sherpa is someone who lives and works high up in the mountain. They're the guide. They're the people that have the real kind of skill set to get you. I mean, I knew what I was doing to. I had climbed some other mountains before but not to that skill. To that level. How many have left in checkpoints, Oliver? So there's four different camps. So you've got Base Camp, then you've got Camp One, then you've got Camp Two, then you've got Camp Three, then you've got Camp Four, then you've got the Summit. So what you'll do is you'll make a couple of what's called like the climatization climbs up to Camp One and Camp Two. You'll stay there for the night. Then you'll come back down to Base Camp and take a bit more rest. Then you'll go back up to Camp Two. You'll stay there for a night. Then you'll go up to Camp Three and you'll stay there for a night. But then you'll come all the way back down to Base Camp and take a bit more rest. And at that point, once you've done that a few times, your body has produced more red blood cells and the red blood cells are the blood cells that carry the oxygen around the body. And it's really interesting. So you don't go Camp One, Camp Two, Camp Three, Camp Four. Correct. So you go one down, up to it, down, up three down. Correct. That's why I'm saying it's not a simple thing to just rock up and go to the top. So how long would it take for somebody to go Camp One to the top? How long? Well, I can tell you that's about four days. So you can do everything four days? Once you've gone through your process. Yes. So if you were to do everything again, could it take you a week, two weeks to do it? No, it'd still take the same amount of time because I'd still have to go for it. It doesn't matter how fit there's no... So what's the camps like then? Tell me. I'm intrigued mate, I love this shit. So the camps at Base Camp and Camp Two are all right. You will be surprised. They are very, very well equipped. There's a big mess tent that you share with other climbers and things and the food that the chefs put together will just blow your way. It's unbelievable. But as you get higher up, your body actually shuts down. So that urge to eat goes. You have to force yourself to eat. And so remember when I was on my pushing up to Camp Four and then from Camp Four, once you get up to Camp Four, you've got about a 24 hour window to get up to the summit and back to Camp Four and then back down again. And at that point you're just eating like biscuits, squeezy cheese, anything that's high in calories and you have to just keep forcing it down. And it's quite difficult to be honest but when you get up to the top, you are running on adrenaline. And it's quite interesting because from sort of Camp Three onwards you go on to using supplementary oxygen. So you're breathing the atmospheric air around you but this is just topping you up. And that makes it a bit easier. And then so when you get up to Camp Four but then what will happen is that night you'll climb through the night. So you can arrive on the summit in the morning. The sun's coming up and you can get back down in the daylight. But again, I was very lucky. In the media you might see all these pictures of a queue of people but it wasn't like that for me. It was me and my Sherpa. I stood on top of the world. No one else was there. Was there anything you had of us scaled up though? Yes, I was. I'll tell you a little bit about what happened on the descent. I didn't know but at Base Camp I picked up a lung infection. I just got tired and it was a bit unwell but it was masked by the adrenaline and the excitement that was kind of like rushing through me. So I got up to the top and we got the summit photo. When I got to the top of the world it wasn't a moment of sheer joy going, yay, yay. I was so exhausted it's to another level exhausted. I knew where I was but I was struggling with the lack of oxygen you see. So my brain was kind of numb. I didn't have any emotion. I was emotionless. But I knew I had to get the Nando's flag out the bag and take it on the page. So I'm at the top of Everest just fulfilling all my sponsorship commissions. I'm just going to tick at the bottom and just editing that. So yeah I'm just doing all that. But then all of a sudden I go and you know Dorje and myself we get a few pictures and stuff and this was on the 16th of May at 8.30 in the morning in 2011. So this is quite a while ago now. And all of a sudden on the way back down I lost the ability to breathe. I couldn't control my breathing and Dorje was going berserk saying, listen you're going too slow. If you don't get a move on you're going to run out of energy and and well you're going to run out of oxygen and it's going to get dark. It's going to get cold. You're not going to get down. You're going to die. And it was quite difficult. I knew if I kept moving I would be okay. And Dorje kept shouting at me, listen do you want to be like that Japanese guy? Do you want to be like that Japanese guy? And I'm thinking to myself what the hell are you talking about? And as we got a little bit lower back down towards camp four I saw what I thought were some empty oxygen cylinders because Everest, my experience is Everest was not a rubbish dump. For me I think it was it was relatively clean. But every now and then you do see an empty oxygen cylinder or something that's just been left there. And as I got closer I realized there wasn't an empty oxygen cylinder. It was in fact this this poor Japanese guy who been he was older than me. He'd been climbing a few days ahead of me and the poor guy had a heart attack and he died and at the time his team were unable to bring him back down. So he was temporarily left there. He was repatriated with his family eventually. It's a I think I mentioned earlier it's a bit of a myth that Everest is littered with dead bodies. So that's not Green Boots is that? Yeah he's on the North. I don't even know if that guy's still there but that's not a no. That's Green Boots is that the man? He was he's a chap that passed away many years ago. He may he was on the North side so I didn't get to see him. But the locals they will try if they can and they will try to bring someone back down so they can be repatriated with their family if it's if it's possible but logistically it's very very difficult bringing someone back down because they don't have the energy. You can't pick someone up and carry them. You just can't go up. You just can't go up. They can't go that high. Yeah yeah yeah so I remember when I saw this poor chap lying there he was lying with his arms outstretched like this almost as if he was reaching for help and I remember looking at his eyes were shut and the thing that stuck with me he's he had long hair and his hair was frozen solid and the guy was like frozen solid like a rock and I just thought I'm never you're never going to see your family. That's it. There's no second chance. That's it. Game over for you. But for me when I saw that it was probably the biggest kick up the arse you can ever get because I was so tired and so fatigued that every time I stopped I would say to Dorje give me just give me five seconds give me give me 30 second break and as soon as I stopped and was like trying to catch my breath I was kind of drifting in and out of consciousness and if it wasn't for Dorje I would have just that would have been me gone. So if you go on conscience you're dead because there's only one man there couldn't carry you down. Basically yeah unless you woke up and suddenly had the energy to get back down so the next thing I knew was this whack around the face and it was Dorje saying move move and you know it's funny because it usually takes about two days to get from the summit of Everest back down to base camp but it took me four days. I was able to sleep in some of the camps but I really struggled on the way back down. Now when I got home I didn't know at the time but I had pneumonia so descending Everest with that is a bit of a problem and that's what caused me to have a very difficult descent of Everest. But I'll tell you one thing that I learned over those few days of descending Everest and that is and I know Goggins has talked about this many times and other people said I don't want to repeat too much but I'll tell you something when you think you are at your limit that you are not even close honestly. That's the fault. I believe in that. The reason why I believe in that is because I've experienced that. When I was descending Everest I was able to when you're either going to die or you have to keep going you'll be amazed at what you can do. You will. And yeah now I keep reminding myself because I've fallen victim to this now like I've had a long day you might have been up 24 hours and you think I'm tired. But I'm telling you you've got you've got another couple of days in you before you just drop down and stop. But that's the main set isn't it? That we're loving that such a fragile world there. It's so easy to be successful because everybody's so weak. Do you know what I mean? And Goggins calls it the sexy thought yeah there's a few people call it the sexy thought because if you give 100% that's flatline you're dead. Yeah. So they say when you think you've gave 100% you've got another 60% and I'll tell you what I couldn't agree more. He is and everyone who says that is correct. That I think it's that navy seal thing isn't it where they say the 6040 and I'm no navy seal guy I'm not into any of that but I can tell you that they are absolutely correct. 100%. So it gives you that strong mindset then that mentality not to quit I couldn't quit then because I'd be dead if I didn't get if I did not get back down to base camp enabled I would be dead. What did your mum and dad say when you said I'm going to clean mavericks? They must have been like for fuck's sake take a rest go back to work. You know what they my mum was not happy but my dad encouraged me and said go for it. Do it. I think they realized because you were happy. Yes and that's all this is the thing that I try to tell kids don't if you don't like something there will be times when you have to do things that you're not that keen on that's just part of life but if you're pursuing something because someone else has told you that's the right thing to do or you think it's the right thing to do but you don't really like it but you're doing it anyway you're only going to last so long and so I'd found something that I really enjoyed and I managed to get back I mean Everest was incredible a lot of people asked me what's my favorite country and Nepal would be one of my favorite countries because I've been out there a couple of times very spiritual it's beautiful I mean I tried to climb another mountain out there and failed I didn't get to the top it's called Amadablam what is it K2 that's him I think that's him yes Pakistan that's that's the second biggest that's on another level why do a favorist is the biggest well biggest biggest is not the best it's actually okay Everest is actually very technically it's very easy it's not technical it's not a difficult climb you just need to have that ability to be able to acclimatize and just push yourself if you're someone who who's got some grit and you are able to push yourself it's not that difficult I don't think but because it's not that technical and actually I'd already climbed Everest and this was in 2012 I went out back to Nepal with a few friends to climb another mountain and blow me down I got I became unwell and Everest is 8,848 meters so Everest is Everest is nearly 30,000 feet it's a long way up and I was trying to climb another mountain it's around 7,000 meters so you know we're near as high and I got you know I became unwell one couldn't get to the top and I got to the top of Everest not because I was some bad ass hard guy I got to the top of Everest because a lot of things came together for me I'm going to discredit yourself though because to sail around the Atlantic to fly around the world on a plane and to climb Everest you've clearly got some kind of that's a bit psychotic as well but you've also got belief you've got to be fucking crazy to do it to be extreme you are extreme so I wouldn't discredit yourself and say it's phenomenal what you've done and what you're achieving as it's I've always, you see Everest and you see the films they make it a lot scarier than actually what it really is but to achieve what you're doing and especially around the world on a gyro plane it's unbelievable oh thanks mate yeah you should be proud of mine so when you've done Everest what were you thinking what was your thought process after that back to the office so I then I'll tell you a funny story if we have time there's no rush man oh cool no rush so I managed to get back to Heathrow but I couldn't breathe I was really struggling and I had to have some assistance to get off the plane and it was quite worrying because still at this point I didn't quite know what was wrong and I remember seeing my my mum and dad came to the airport and I saw my mum's little face through the crowd of people and I kind of like waved her and I think there's pictures in the book you'll see my face is in a bad way all burnt up due to the the atmosphere is very thin out there that high up so you burn very easily and despite using cream and stuff and I didn't look that good and I remember I saw my mum I waved at my mum and the first thing she said to me was James you look awful and I'm like it's great to see you and so I couldn't even push to my trolley with the bags on because I was really struggling with my breathing so she said I think we'd better go to the doctors and I'm like yeah yeah let's go so we didn't drive home we drove straight to the doctor and the doctor said listen mate just go to the hospital now I can see you now I'm well so we were like okay so I went to the hospital and the doctor x-rayed my chest and he put up this x-ray on a big white board and he said look at all these spots on your lungs you've got quite a severe lung infection the fact that you were on Everest not long ago and you're back here now do you know how lucky you are and I was like oh okay great and I said give me some antibiotics and I'll go home and he was like no no you need to stay here you know you're unwell so the day I got back from Everest was the day that I then spent almost two weeks in hospital and it was like a feeling of deja vu sort of having been there with the motorbike accident and it was funny because I remember lying in that bed and two things happened to me okay one was probably I remember was quite embarrassing and as I had a basically I had a a wart on the like a very bad kind of like spot this thing was I picked it up on Everest because routine and using wet wipes to stay clean and things is essential you have to do that and you have that discipline to do that because if you it's if you get you know you pick up an infection or something because you haven't kept yourself clean that's then going to ruin your chances of achieving what it is that you want to achieve and it's quite likely it might affect other people that are around you as well so at base camp you can what there's like sort of portable shower type things but higher up you're just using wet wipes to keep yourself clean and stuff so I'm using wet wipes but for some reason I developed this sort of thing on the around my coccyx which is basically the crack of your bum so I remember I didn't know that I just knew that it was very painful and I remember I couldn't even lie flat in the bed because it was so painful and I remember I said to the doctor can you can we get an x-ray or something on that because it's really painful and he said yeah yeah sure and so I came back and said there's nothing wrong with you and but he said to me let me send someone in and have a look at you and he had this like grin on his face and I thought oh that's strange I wonder why he would have a grin on his face anyway I thought nothing of it so I'm sitting there my parents are there and we're just relaxing and I'm the only guy in a ward at this time all right and the door opens and the most stunning junior doctor brunette that you've the most stunning woman you've seen in your life she walks in and stands at the end of the bed and she says to me James and she said this whilst putting latex gloves on and twanging them in a seductive way she said to me James I'm here to inspect you roll over so I'm dying with embarrassment like my parents are sat right next to me so it's horribly embarrassing and she flings back the covers and I'm not really wearing anything so it's and she's like just roll over I've seen it all before so I roll over and she's like James you've got the biggest war I've ever seen but don't worry I'll burst it and I'm like yeah okay yeah yeah it's really embarrassing but she keeps this really intense eye contact with me and so she's putting her gloves in the bin and she walks around to the end of the bed whilst staring into my eyes smiling at me and I thought wow bloody hell well I've rode the Atlantic and I've climbed Everest you know if you don't know if you don't try you don't know so I slipped her a card and I've never heard from her again that was like the most embarrassing situation I've ever been in but something else happened to me in hospital as well and I couldn't get this thought out my head I thought to myself wouldn't it be a great idea to cycle around the world so I decided I'd kind of fallen in and it kind of happened over time as well that when I got back from Everest I kind of had started to fall into a slightly different life in order to go out to Everest I had to leave my job so I took a massive risk just leaving my job I didn't have a penny to my name but when I got back from that the scouts asked if I wanted to become an ambassador for them I was kind of doing it already speaking in schools and things and I had I managed to capture some amazing footage out on Everest and also out in and as I rode across the Atlantic as well and I was doing a lot of talks I wasn't really thinking about it I was just doing them and initially they started in schools and then I was doing more with companies and things and then you know people were starting to pay me and wanted me to come and do more and more and more and I thought you know what I don't really know where this is going to go but I like this I'm really happy I like it it's not work I'm excited and so I thought right I'm going to cycle around the world I knew someone who'd cycled around the world and he kind of inspired me actually I thought it was a pretty cool thing to do and I thought you know what I'm not trying to do it in no record time or anything I'm just going to cycle around the world and what I'm going to do is speak in a school in every single country I pass through I don't know why but young people seem to listen to me I'm able to connect with young people quite well and so that is what I did and it took I mean I could talk to you for ages about cycling around the world but I met some incredible people I cycled a hundred miles a day for half a year and it sounds like a lot but it's not that big a deal once you get out there how did you plan that over? Well I actually already kind of had an idea there's another chap a Scottish chap actually you're probably into it his name's Mark Beaumont he's a pretty amazing cyclist he'd already cycled around the world so I kind of mirrored his route actually and it sounds daft but you're just looking on Google Maps and stuff and you're planning stuff out through that and the reality is when you're out there doing it quite often or not you're just literally on your you will be amazed at how useful Google Maps really is but once you're out of a major city quite often or not there's only one or two roads that you need to follow and there's science and it's not different at any point yeah in India I had a guy point a gun at me but that was just a problem with communication because I think I was trying to sleep somewhere where perhaps I shouldn't have been trying to sleep and if I had been able to communicate with that guy he would have said to me come on in I'll cook I'll make you dinner but he was getting frustrated because he couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand him so in the end I'm like I've got to go yeah that's great six months 100 miles out there why is that you have to 24,000 miles yeah yeah so I had to fly out it's a flight I'll talk about that later I had to cycle 18,000 miles and cross the equator twice did you have to well so when you get boats and stuff what happens there no nothing you know I've lost so many people say oh do you pedal on the plane ha ha ha but no there's none of that you are allowed to use public transport you have to but you basically would you get a smart ass who's saying you pedal on the plane and stuff yeah yeah yeah I'm just like yeah I did do that well do you have to get a boat and pedal on the boat pedal around the boat I'm like yeah just to get to different like continents do you just fly yeah you're allowed to fly you can just pack your bike up you fly there and then it starts again from the airport yeah yeah or yeah most of the time it was from the airport yeah you just get unpack the bike and just go so as long as your total mileage is more than 18,000 miles that's it so yeah it was incredible the people that I met was amazing cycling across I tell you what cycling across Australia was incredible why well wildlife nature it was yeah the wildlife and nature was was interesting but I'll tell you something I had all these ideas of seeing all this crazy dangerous wild animals so you didn't see anything I couldn't find a deadly spider or snake if I wanted to find one probably they probably were out there but I couldn't find any but I remember cycling across the the famous Nullabor plane it was like it's basically like the outback and it stretches for about seven or eight hundred miles is this particular stretch and there's only really one way across Australia there's one road so you can't get lost unless you're a right idiot you know you just got to follow it and a lot of people said to me like how you how you're getting across Australia and I'd say well you know going across the Nullabor and they'd say no way that's so dangerous man you know truck drivers they deliberately ram cyclists off the road and stuff and I'm like no they don't do that and it was interesting all these people well-meaning people by the way were saying to me I really don't think you should do that it's very dangerous you could end in disaster actually you know what when I got out there it was a complete opposite I felt really safe there were big road trains and things but they they pull over and they give you loads of space I met other people cycling across I met one lunatic running across with a support car and like people couldn't do more I had people pulling over saying do you want some water do you want some food and it's like do you have a sit I mean a calories you need to pee out there you just eat what you can do you? like you will come back ripped to the bone because you it's very similar to the row and a lot of people said when you rode the Atlantic you must have come back like I'm on sports night and I'm like no it's the opposite you waste away and it's similar with you but you'll get ripped so you would just eat everything anything and everything you you physically cycling around the world was a was a world eating challenge if I'm honest you're constantly looking for the next meal and you stay dehydrated all the time yeah you got it you got to you got to try and keep on top of your hydration stuff but what will happen that's quite interesting is you'll get to a point where you get quite fit and then you don't get any fitter because in order to get fitter you need rest days and you need correct nutrition I was just smashing in any old crap that I could get in because it was there it was quick it was easy and then boom off I went again what did your mom and dad say about that adventure no they they they support them no yeah they they were you know what that's what it was the day I went out and do that they were actually quite supportive they were very good actually they came out to meet me in Lisbon and when I was my last where did you start from so I started from Greenwich Park and then from Greenwich Park I went down I had some mates join me and I cycled down to Dover and then I got the ferry across the Calais and then I went through Calais down through France Belgium Netherlands Germany Czech Republic Poland Ukraine Romania Bulgaria Turkey and I was going to route through Iran and Pakistan but it got a bit complicated in the end so I was I actually flew to India and then I flew down the cycle down to Sri Lanka I did a cycle the lap of Sri Lanka which was incredible then I came back into India because I was working with a charity raising some money for young girls out in India who are trafficked it's a very big problem out there so I was trying to help raise awareness and stuff for those guys and then from there I actually flew to Bangkok and then from there I cycled down through Thailand Malaysia Singapore and that was amazing beautiful climate the people were friendly the roads were fucking friendly though I was okay why well I never had any problems to have a helmet knee pads anything no no no I had a helmet I always had a helmet on by Groxac no no I actually travelled very very light I had what you call frame bags so I was carrying stuff but I didn't have massive panties sleeping in hotels camp notes saved what we did a bit of both a bit of both I was able to sleep in hotels and stuff where when I could and when I cycled across America I used a website called warm showers.org be careful if you google that by the way but it's uh it's actually everybody pressing on each other it's actually a website that's set up for people to host cyclists so let's say you live somewhere in America a phoenix for example when this happened to me I found a guy on warm showers and I said hey I'm cycling around the world can I come and stay and it was like yeah yeah of course you can so in fact I was in California at the time and I said I'll be with you tonight and he said James that's 160 miles you won't and he couldn't believe it when I've knocked on his door at 10 o'clock at night and anyway so I was able to sometimes utilize accommodation just well-meaning people who wanted to welcome travelers into their house in exchange for some stories you know they feed you and you you tell them a bit but here's the thing that's complicated about that when you're on the road and you've got commitments to fill emails to reply things to organize like you've just cycled a whole day and you're you're quite tired so then you have to socialize and make an effort for like two or three hours repeating the same stories and then the work can start so sometimes it was easier just to pay the money and check into a cheap hotel because I I didn't have any distractions I was able to get the work done that I needed to do then move on to the next day but having said that the balance of meeting people was just amazing I'll probably one of the things that stands out to me when I cycled around the world is what was a bit of a crazy place at the moment but I'll tell you what you know it doesn't matter you know what skin kind you have it doesn't matter what religion you practice doesn't matter what country you're from I would say 99.99% of people that roam the face of this earth are actually kind, caring and they do want to help you I had so many people give me random acts of kindness to me I will be playing forward favors for the rest of my life I really will there were so many people that were so good so that was the ultimate triumph one done you're the only person in the world to do that to do those three things yeah there's loads of people that have rode an ocean yeah but amateurs amateurs fucking amateurs but yeah so is that what it started so when you flew around the world in a gyro plane how did that come about yeah I'll tell you how about well I'll tell you what there's a few things that happened before that actually tell me bro tell me yeah and so there I was I'd kind of I got back to Greenwich Park and you know and there was quite a lot of media and stuff I did was quite lucky I didn't really anticipate it but it was blown away and then I wrote the book and stuff and then an opportunity came up to to row across the Indian Ocean with an amazing guy and he approached me before I cycled around the world and he said listen I want to row across the Indian Ocean and I'm like yeah I fully condone it let do it and he was like I want to do it with you and I'm like I'm a little bit busy at the moment but perhaps we can pick this up when I get back and you know by this point I was getting quite a lot of people come to me saying can you help me I want to do this I want to do that and I always reply to everyone because I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for the people that helped me and this guy he was different he just instead of like just talking about it he went out there and he did it he started putting together a website he started learning how to row he started trying to seek funding and every time I told him to do something he would come back to me and say I've completed that what do I do now and I thought bloody hell this guy's this guy obviously wants this and so I did a bit more investigations if it were but we knew each other through the scouts because I was doing some stuff with the scouts and so was he and it turns out he had an incredible story he had he nearly died of cancer Hodgkins and Fomar at 19 years old it was his third round of chemo that saved the guy and he had epilepsy ever since he was a young boy and his whole life he just wanted to prove to people that you can do things if you put your mind to it and you know when you get a gut feeling that just something feels right it felt right so I said Ash was his name so I said to him yeah let's do it so I remember we got the we managed to get the funding we were very very lucky we got funded by a family who were putting quite a bit of money into epileptic research and they liked what we were doing and why we were doing it so we got a boat this time we got a much newer boat than what I had when I rode the Atlantic it was all carbon it was it was very nice so we got it out to a place called Geraldton which is western Australia just north of Perth and the mission was to row to Mauritius now that's 4,000 miles so it's quite a long way to row anyway and it's a different beast to the Atlantic you don't necessarily benefit from the prevailing winds quite so much you really do have to row and it's going to it's likely that it will be you're going to experience some bad weather as well like if you go across the Atlantic at the right time of year you can be pretty sure you'll get okay weather you're not going to get a hurricane you're not going to get anything too bad unless you're really unlucky but the Indian Ocean is a bit more volatile it's not rowed so much and we knew that it was going to be difficult and we knew it was going to be a challenge so you know row Ash was incredible he I felt a bit sorry for him because he he lost a lot of weight during his chemo so it was very very thin and people would say people would kind of laugh a little bit and say how are you going to row across the Indian Ocean there's nothing to you mate you got no muscle but the muscle he had was all up here and he was one of the strongest guys very very quiet an unassuming guy but he mentally was nails and and he had no real experience I was the guy with the experience but what he did have what he had was so useful he had that drive that energy and that enthusiasm and I tried to tell kids don't worry if you're not quite sure how to do something you can always find out but having some drive and some get up and go will take you such a long way and belief exactly belief is evident if you get into the jungle the lion is the king of the jungle not because it's the biggest or the smartest or the fastest it's the king of the jungle because it believes it's the king of the jungle absolutely when a lion rows above the elf's runs so you know what I mean and there's other animals there that can destroy it you can beat it yeah it's just because it's belief yeah it's crazy he believed that he could do it and we knew that we could and so it's a kind of long story short we were we were quite you know a couple of weeks out and we got a little bit unlucky we got caught in some quite nasty weather we were you're talking 50 to 60 knots so that's about 70 mile an hour of winds and when you're in a tiny little boat that's probably the length of a normal family car and you're in an ocean with 70 to 80 mile an hour winds that's not a good place to be waves really do break in the middle of an ocean they don't just break at the beach and the boat like I said is designed to self-right and so long as you stay in it you'll be okay these strap yourself friends yeah so you had to basically we're sort of both astronaut by this point once the once this huge area of low pressure started to work its way through us there was nothing we could do we couldn't outrun it we had to go through it and I knew that this weather was coming because the weather router called me on the satellite phone that's never a good thing so there's nothing I could do so we had to go straight through so we tied everything down and you've secured the boat as best as you can and you are safe you're not not safe as long as you stay in the boat and but it's to try and explain what it's like it's like being in a small little kind of coffin you can't really it's limited space to sit up yeah so the hatch has a it's kind of like see-through to to a degree so you can see out but in rough weather you can't have the hatch open because waves will come crashing into the cabin and and soak everything so you have to have the the hatch shut now you do have these vents but they don't work that well so the air goes very stale very quickly and the best way to describe what it's like it's like being in a sauna you can't and but you can't open the door it's a water ah so hot inside it's torture so so hot and and every now and then you can open the hatch to let some fresh air come in and it kind of cools is that when obvious clashes yeah inevitably it always comes as you open the hatch you get soaked and we knew that there was a good chance that the boat was probably gonna roll over and uh yeah unfortunately the boat did did did roll over and we got caught in quite a nasty one and what happened was the boat sort of pitch-pulled and and and went over and as it went over I was okay but Ash was thrown and and he hit his head and unfortunately we had a bit of a medical problem on on board the boat so at that point the row was over because he the priority was safety so how did you get home so here's the difficult part how do you get rescued in the middle of an ocean so you'll activate something called an E-PURP which is an emergency positioning indicating radio beacon and no matter where if it's a UK registered vessel which which we were that no matter where you are in the world that signal will go back to Falmouth Falmouth Coast Guard back in the south of England they will coordinate the rescue so I also called them on the sat phone and explained what had happened now luckily there was a commercial vessel that was within I can't remember how long it was within 24 hours of us and it was called the Dubai Charm and this thing was a crude oil tanker so it's an oil tanker basically 100,000 tons in weight and it was about 70 to 80 feet just to get up to the deck but the problem that you've got is how do you transition from a tiny little boat in high winds that you're getting blown all over the place the boat is you're at risk of it rolling over again you've somehow got to come up alongside this gigantic piece of metal that's so big you cannot comprehend it unless you're actually there looking up at it and you've got to somehow get on top it would be easy if it was a flat calm day they would send they would there's a proper metal ladder that folds down and it would be easy peasy but this wasn't so as we got closer to it what actually happened because we couldn't row the boat to them they had to bring this tanker right up to us and that was scary looking up at it because we didn't want to get run over by it the propellers under it could that shut you anything well they would by the time they got to us they were probably not even running yeah so there were deck sort of workers on the deck throwing ropes down but by the time these massive thick ropes were hitting our boat that had been thrown from 70 or 80 feet above they were like missiles and so if they'd hit you so we were trying to avoid these ropes that were being thrown down eventually I got one tied onto the boat and Ash because Ash was epileptic we couldn't run and he'd luckily regain consciousness at this point so we couldn't run the risk of him climbing up a little ladder in case he fell off it and if he fell off it that's gone no one's going to be able to get him and so he was incredibly brave actually he actually had to get into a harness and they dropped a rope down but the rope that they dropped down to winch him up was getting tangled in some of the mess of other ropes that they'd thrown down as well I like to throw so many ropes down just trying to get them on tied to the boat to secure it but they also threw this netting down now that was a pain because the netting caught on the gate where the oars are which kind of sticks out from the side of the boat so what was happening the massive tanker was sitting still in the water but we were rising up and down as the waves were going up and down and the netting was catching the boat so as the boat would as we as the boat would fall where it was catching on the netting it would be trying to turn us over so we had to cut all the netting free to stop that from happening then the debt workers could see what was happening so they pulled the netting up and got it out of the way but this left a mess of ropes and crap and if you got tangled up in that that's very very dangerous very big problem so Ash got into a harness and he had a life jacket on and we got the rope down but he had to jump free of the row boat in order to be pulled up free of any ropes that would tangle him and it goes against what you will want to do your mind won't let you just jump off a boat you won't want to naturally do that but he was tied on and connected to the to the rope and one minute I remember just looking at him and he jumped off the back of the boat into the water and there must have been five or six guys on the end of this rope he's a small guy anyway but he shot up like a ragdoll I mean there must have been so many guys pulling that rope so as soon as I saw him flying up it was like a relief I knew he was safe and it was funny because what happened I was looking at him and as soon as I turned to look at the boat it was like it was meant to be the rope ladder just dangled right in front of my face and you know when you're driving a car you swerve you don't think about it you swerve if something comes out in front of you it's just your instant reaction well my instant reaction I didn't think I just leapt off the boat onto the ladder and as I grabbed the ladder I remember I was holding I've never held anything so tight in my life trust me and I looked down and my boat had just dropped away below me and there I was like hanging on the side of this crude oil tanker thinking shit and then again adrenaline takes over that's an incredible thing that is and then I was able to get to the top and then what happened was quite odd after that because it was an Indian crew and bearing in mind that this was a crude oil tanker so they're carrying tons and tons of crude oil I asked to see the captain up in the bridge to thank him for coming to our aid okay so this this thing is so big you get in a lift to go to the top and so we're up on the bridge and there's this huge metal door and I pushed the metal door to go in right and the bridge it's thick with smoke and there's the captain with this huge smile on his face with a cigarette and all his crew with a cigarette in their hand and a pack of beers and he looks at me with a big smile on his face and he says whoa that was crazy here you go and just passes me a beer and they're all smoking away it's it was really surreal what happened and then three days later we were back in it was on its that particular vessel was on its way to Melbourne but it stopped off in Perth and and dropped us off and we were okay but this was global news and to be honest this was quite a tough time for me because I thought shit I'd lost all my credibility I'd failed Ash I'd let myself down I'd let everyone down this year feel you're a big thing for you because I know you're talking about Everest you never fail to get your funding and now you're talking about that you feel as if you've let people down but you can't think that way because you're correct you can't think that way all the shit that you've achieved there's want to be failures yeah 99% of success is failures feel, feel, feel, feel, feel until you succeed but something crazy happened off the back of it which I didn't expect and I didn't see coming so I kind of went home feeling eventually got back to the UK feeling pretty demoralised and like I said let everyone down but then my phone was ringing off the hook people were ringing me up saying you're the bloke that was on TV that was rescued right I see yeah that was me they said great can we book you to speak at our event I said uh yeah of course you can they weren't interested in Everest and other bits and bobs the success they wanted to know what it was like to fail and be rescued and they were like what was that like what did you learn how did what's it like to be rescued what happened to your boat unfortunately that boat was lost we were unable to retrieve it so that that was lost it's could well be out there now still floating alone the boat was called the James Lewis yeah and that could still well be out there now somewhere in the Indian Ocean it's never been found yeah so then off the back of that I came home what I thought was this really dark cloud of disappointment but it actually ended up having an incredible silver lining I was being booked for more speaking events people wanted to know what it was like and then I had an opportunity come up off the back of that to go out to the jungle in Brazil to the Amazon and do some filming with a guy and that would have never happened off the back of that to do what well here he ran a travel company at the time and they basically took people out into the jungle to give them kind of like jungle experiences all that kind of stuff and so I went out there with him to help make some videos to promote the company and stuff and and he actually he was an ex raw marina a really nice guy older guy and we got on really well and this guy was a jungle warfare instructor so there was no better person to go out to the Amazon with and you know we were only out there for a few weeks but that was that was incredible but then another opportunity came up as well and an opportunity came up in 2016 to to take a guy across the Atlantic he was it's a bit of an older guy he'd been very successful his whole life he worked very hard and he basically just wanted a bit of an adventure but he only really had about 30 days to spare and so he wanted to cross the Atlantic he didn't want to sail he liked the idea of sort of rowing across but the problem that you've got is I couldn't guarantee that you'd get across in 30 days if that's all the time that you have so we were working with a company that made these like specialist boats and so we ended up having a pedalo a custom pedalo made and we we we decided that we were going to cross the Atlantic the same the very same route that I rode a pedalo and we were going to take this guy across in a pedalo it is this is not the type of thing you would see what a pedalo is an Ibiza beach a lot of yellow ones with a shoe yeah this is no swan on the front with the slide this thing is really bad ass you know it's very very well designed but we had a little bit of a secret weapon as well and that was we wanted to make sure that we could get across in the in the required time so he didn't want to sail but we thought we're going to need to harness something to give us a bit of an advantage so we ended up utilizing a kite design and and so we had a custom pedalo made with a recumbent cycling position but it also had a rowing position as well if we wanted to row but actually the cycling position and the propeller was a model aeroplane propeller and it was incredibly efficient just cycling we were able to go a lot faster than we were rowing it was it was very small how much are legs then did they get stronger did they get bigger yeah but it's you're doing it at such a gentle yeah so it's not that sprint no no if your heart rate is elevated you're going too hard you're just gently gently so why did you make the transition from the ground the sea to the sky well I'll tell you what I'll come on to that in two seconds because there's a few things that happen before the flight around the world Anthony and I were going across the the Atlantic in the pedalo and things were going really well we were halfway across and earlier on you asked me what happens if you become unwell and the answer is there there is things that you can do Anthony had a medical problem so I had to orchestrate another rescue and I thought I meant what's the chances of this happening again but it was something I had to do so again I had to activate an EPIRB and orchestrated a rescue and he was he was fine in the end he luckily he was he was okay is that true on well men though just want to push yourself to the limits no no no what happened with Ash was very a freak just just unlucky yeah and he yeah how did you get rescued this time exactly exactly the same way oil tanker no this was a crude or sorry this was a bulk carrier but it's the same the same type of huge vessel so this was the second time I've been rescued how were you feeling after that I was feel feel now let me tell you something right I was really anxious at the recovery and I'll rescue you because I knew how dangerous it was whereas Anthony was quite calm but he once we were safely on the boat in their medical kind of room if you like he was like oh my god that was so dangerous and and the transition from a tiny little boat onto these things is is deadly if you fall off just you're gone and I knew that but he didn't luckily he didn't but he was fine and he ended up getting back home and I did say to the guy do you want to do it again what happened was very very unlucky at the moment he's not sure but he won an adventure and boy did he get one so it all worked well so I thought to myself you know what I better work on something on my own so I decided because the ones you've done in your own basically you've succeeded not to bring anyone down but just how it's been right so I thought right I know what I'm going to do I'm going to work on a project to row a boat around the coast of Great Britain as a solo guy I'll do it on my own no one had achieved that at the time and it's quite technical because the most dangerous place to be in a boat is that especially a boat that doesn't have an engine is right next to the coast and so it was very technical I had to and tactical so I had to utilize the tide because the tide turns every six hours so that would pull me along and then I'd have a break and then I'd row very close to the coast so I would physically drop an anchor to the bottom to secure the boat then put it up and carry on it's easier to row across the Atlantic than it is to row around Great Britain in which people don't get their head around but it really is so anyway I kind of made it happen I was really prepped to this I'd done all the research I'd trained hard and blow me down a week into the row I'd become unwell myself and get a bladder infection and have to be taken off the boat and I'm thinking everything I'm touching is just going wrong and actually I went through a period of feeling really quite down I was questioning the best yeah I would say so I was questioning whether I was going to carry on doing what I was doing and you know I had a lot of people say you've had a good run give this crap up go and get a real job yeah I did and I thought you know what one of the things that I've learnt over the years is to stand up for the things that you believe in your values and your beliefs and the things that make you happy and just do them and I thought I could easily get another job if I wanted to but I don't want to I want to do the things that I like to do that make me happy I was doing a lot of work with kids speaking in schools and things and I really really enjoyed that and yeah I'd had you know I was this guy who'd achieved all these seemingly impressive feats from the outside but everything I was touching was going wrong and I thought you know what I owe it to myself and all the people that had believed in me and supported me on my projects to to carry on and I'd actually always had an interest in flying ever since I was a kid but I didn't think that I would ever be able to fly I thought people who fly people that are very intelligent and have lots of money and I fell very short on on both those but I thought you know what I'm gonna see what happens and I wanted to do something a little bit different I like being different so I thought I'm gonna learn how to fly gyro planes so a gyro plane it might look like a helicopter because it has a set of rotors but the rotors are not powered they spin via the air passing underneath them it's called auto rotation and you have an engine at the back which turns a propeller that pushes you forward forward correct and I thought you know what I'm just gonna take it one step at a time and see how I get on do you need that license for that yeah yeah yeah you do have to have a license yeah yeah so I was quite lucky I picked up I went for a one trial flight at my local airfield Popham which is not far from Basin Stoke a great guy working there very experienced guy called Steve an amazing guy so I had my trial flight and I thought right I loved it in fact I was quite nervous actually when I first went up I was I thought bloody hell this I'm quite exposed and I remember he basically cut the engine when we're in the air to demonstrate that you can't stall you'll never ever fall out of sky with a with a modern gyro they just they'll auto rotate you can't stall them like you can a normal fixed-wing aircraft and I remember we were motoring along and just back the power off and it felt like I wanted to fall off the edge you know that feeling when you're at the top of a roller coaster you're looking down yeah and you're just about to go I felt like that but we never did shoot why does that why does that happen just because the rotor above your head will continue to spin and you just start to slowly descend you're gliding down so they're incredible machines and I remembered that and I went home I was all psyched up and I thought right I'm going to learn how to fly so I kind of like saved up and sort of organized my finances it didn't cost a huge amount in the grand scheme of things and I thought I'm gonna learn how to fly so I did all my training with Steve and actually with another guy to begin with but then eventually Steve and then I was very lucky I picked up very quickly I think where I was I used to race motorbikes I still had good balance I guess and good coordination I picked up but I think I passed in pretty much the minimum time I think you have to have a minimum of 45 hours before you can go for your test and I think I passed on like 47 so I was really lucky I just picked it up really quickly what was the test like the test like a driving test must be a tonne yeah it's like a driving test yeah the interesting one is when they cut the engine and say you have to make an emergency landing they don't turn the engine off they just back the power backs it's not you'll you'll you have to find a field quickly but there's procedures that you have to go through you have to select a field you have to make a mayday call on the radio you have to make sure the aircraft turned into wind no hike in the go oh man I mean when I flew around the world I took mine up to about 13,000 feet so they'll go high the world's altitude record for a gyro plane I think it's like 26 nearly 27,000 feet is that no fucking orbit that's high that's really high in fact the person who set that a very small woman so she's quite light and she flew the same type of aircraft that I flew so you were never worried that the engine popped because you could still land so what happens if you're going to oversee and then you're going to get wet then you're in big trouble so when you're flying across oceans and water yeah if the engine goes bang you are getting wet but you've got to have a mindset but you're not dying possibly say it all depends how fast can they go about a hundred mile an hour that's not by the speed do about a hundred mile an hour so if I'll come on and I'll talk about going around the world but I'll answer your question about the if you're going across long stretches of water I opted to use an open cockpit gyro that meant that if I was unfortunate enough to ditch in water I wouldn't have to the struggle of getting out of an aircraft that has an enclosed cabin which fills with water and I can't get out so for safety I thought it was better to run an open cockpit gyro and also when I flew across long sections of water I had a special survival suit on so if I was to go into the water that would keep me buoyant and dry and hopefully keep me alive for a little bit longer but the problem with the challenge that you have in the parts of the world where I was flying across you know Canada to Greenland and then Greenland to Iceland you don't really have the water's extremely cold so if you end up going in that water A, you've got to get out the aircraft without drowning without pulling you down then you've got to somehow survive and you know I did carry a small little life raft with me under my left leg which is a small little one man thing but in my mind I made a conscious decision that I was never going to I prepared for it and I did some sea drills and things to like get into the life raft and I prepared the best that I could but I made a conscious decision that I was never going to worry about the engine stopping because it's a mindset the aircraft doesn't know it's flying above water the aircraft don't know where it is it's only me that knows where I am and there is no reason for that engine to stop it could do but there's no reason for it to and to do something like that that I suppose is quite daring and quite out there and quite risky you have to believe that you're going to be safe you have to believe that that engine's never going to stop and some people would say well you're a little bit naive because it could and I would say yeah it could but I believe it's not going to yeah it's not going to how did it take off straight up no no no so what you would do is you'd line up on the runway and you have what's called a pre-rotator so you could spin up the rotors while you're on the ground and then you're pointing down the runway usually the wind is blowing down the runway then you bring the stick back and then you'd put the power in and then you'd accelerate off down the runway so it would take off like a conventional fixed wing aircraft but what happens once you'll go in a certain speed and the rotors start spinning up that rotor effectively look at it like it turns into a wing okay so you provides lift and off you go and you want to turn left you turn the stick to the left the whole rotor head will tilt to the left or to the right and if you want to speed up you push the stick forward and the whole rotor head will tilt forward that's how you speed up and if you want to slow down you pull it back but if you want to climb you add more power and that's how you you climb up so how long did that take you so it took me to fly my aircraft around the world I flew 24,000 nautical miles and it took me 175 days and it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever managed to do because it was quite stressful it was wasn't that easy people said to me that's going to be the easiest thing you've ever managed to do right it's got an engine piece of piss did you sleep in that okay no well you don't sleep in it you you you fly you make your flights throughout the day then in the evening you just check into a hotel somewhere but you're not just like randomly landing in fields and stuff you have you set out a plan a route with dedicated stops and things you have to know that they've got fuel for you to use do you have to contact other airports to tell them you're landing and then you're going I had a really good team back in the UK that were helping me line it all up and stuff so yeah it was and like the cycle it was just amazing is that why they say it goes on the 18 foes at then because you had to travel overseas yeah well okay so actually to set the record that I set I only needed to fly it was just under 20,000 it was the uh length of the traffic of cancer I believe and so I did have to fly there is a criteria to set an official world record there is a criteria and I had to fly just under 20,000 nautical miles or I think it was around 20,000 but I didn't want any any kind of down to whether I've flown far enough so I flew 24,000 nautical miles but what I actually did was like when I entered America I didn't just fly from the west coast to the east coast like I've cycled across America twice and actually I really like America it's good yeah I got a lot of friends there and I thought you know what I'm gonna land in every single state so I zigzagged the whole way across America and I landed in all 49 mainland states the only one I couldn't do was Hawaii because I didn't have the range to get there I run out and crash by the time I got there but again you know it was the people that I met and I spoke in loads of different schools and there was one in Siberia there was a school where I spoke to some kids there and this one little girl just looked at me for about while I was sharing stories pictures and things there was one little girl that sat there and just stared at me for an hour with this big smile on her face and I thought you know what sure I'll never see her again but I hope she remembers the day that that British lunatic came in and was sharing stories of fun and adventure and stuff it was it was just absolutely incredible and I and it was a crazy thing to do because people who fly around the world are typically people who've been flying the whole life it's unheard of for someone to learn how to fly and then fly around the world and you know I remember when I first kind of put it out there again you know I got quite I mean I got a few people saying are you absolutely out of your mind but this is what you need to do surround yourself with the right people so I went out and I was very lucky I got I had the right people around me who had a lot of experience and they said well yeah what you're trying to do is crazy but if you do this this and this and you break it down and you just take it one day at a time you probably can do this and sure enough I was the problem that you've got is it's not just flying this is in everyday life you got to be careful because there's a lot of well-meaning people out there and there's a lot of people who have experience in some things but there will also be a lot of people that have a little bit of experience but think they have a shit load more than they really do and so you've got to be careful who you take advice from and find the people who are already doing what you want to do and we're at the top of the game and because they're going to be doing something right yeah sometimes it's best just to do something without even saying to anyone because people can project their fears onto you and speak you out of it because if you're a lesson to everyone you'd be still fucking working in an office absolutely absolutely so that's probably some of the biggest things that I've learned is so when you've done all that what was your best moment what was that moment you really felt good out of everything yeah oh man probably a moment that I really felt amazing was when I went back out to Nepal and spoke in a school there and this was after I climbed Everest that was that was pretty good and I think the things that actually made me quite happy are when I spend a couple hours in a school and a teacher will say I don't know how you did that but so and so had sat here for an hour and listened to you and that that person is then coming up to me saying I want to do this I want to do that well how would you do that do you think that's realistic if I could do this and I that's what makes me happy the reason why I like to do that is because I really struggled when I was in school I just I spent a lot of time lying around in bed I was lazy I had no real drive I had no ambition I didn't believe in myself and actually that was crazy that was all in my mind just my you know a lot of people suffer with that and and actually one of the things that I want to do by doing these different adventures and things I do them because I like doing them but I also want to highlight that your brain can be your greatest ally it doesn't have to be your worst enemy for a lot of people it is but actually if you just take that take that first step and do something just just have a go you'll be amazed at how far it will take you just just by having a go and saying well I don't know how far I'm going to get but I'll have a go you you'll be amazed so my greatest moments are probably a mix of visiting different schools and different places around the world I love meeting new people and I love traveling very much so plans for the future James it boy right okay tell me so let me let me tell you so this is just to give you a bit of a context to what I'm doing so I've flown around the world that's air I've cycled around the world that's land so it would be crazy not to do see right I have to this woman world I can't I'm not going to swim around the world but I'm working on a project to sail around the world that's not that big a deal lots of people have sailed around the world and I'm not doing it on my own there's no real value in me just doing something on my own anymore what I'm actually doing it's very difficult to take kids away around the world for insurance purposes and stuff so what I'm actually doing with my next project I'm taking some ex-offenders away with me we're not talking of hard and criminals yeah if you're looking for them I can give you a few numbers we're talking yeah we're talking people that because you are who you spend your time with and I believe that you make your own luck but luck does exist you don't choose where and who you're born to and the people that you just are naturally around you and sometimes people make mistakes they're good people but you know they don't really have anyone mentoring them or showing them and guiding the right way to behave and the things to do and not to do and so I decided that for my next project I'm going to work on a project to sail around the world and I'm going to it's going to be split into about seven or eight legs and for each leg I'm going to bring in they're going to be between the ages of 18 and probably 23 24 something like that and the project's really going to be about them and their stories and I'm going to work with the RYA the Royal Yotting Association I'm going to we're going to teach them how to sail and the idea the vision is that the project gives them something to focus on and ultimately shoots them off in the right trajectory in life as opposed to the wrong way and I it's definitely not going to be easy but I'm quite excited at the prospect of identifying some people that I think will benefit from this opportunity it'll instill some discipline in them some drive some motivation that feeling of what it's like to work towards a worthy goal and achieve it and I want to arrange some mentorship pushing through the fear absolutely so these people can be like wow there is something on the other side there is you can get to this great place of doing things that make you feel fulfilled and happy and you don't have to be negative you don't have to your life doesn't have to be what someone's told you you're going to be because you know everyone has the capability to do anything they want and so that's really where the project is going and focusing on so yeah that's going to be in 2023 so I'm working on that now what's the ultimate test you think you could do what would you like to do a proper test yourself solo is there anything bring in your mind that you would think right this is my next adventure yeah I've kind of I generally work one thing at a time I'm not that good at multiple things but the things you're doing that needs to be one thing at a time because it's planned over three months six months it's planned over it's sometimes years yeah I would I would actually quite like to go back and row across the Indian Ocean on my own I think that can be done could I do that in fact I could what do you want to do with me yes it's something I'll do I'll do it yeah okay how long does it take well we're gonna need about 60 days let's say 60 to 70 days in fact we could probably do it quicker than that it all depends fuck it I'll do it yeah yeah I'm crazy enough to do it just to show people this is what I've done yeah but the boat doesn't topple the boat well I could do we could we could end up rolling but you would be just fine you'd be all right because you'd be a how do the fucking float anyway you'd be ahead of an adventure you would love it yeah yeah be crazy but so yeah to answer your question in a slightly long-winded way there is kind of something that I would personally like to do and that is I've already rowed across the Atlantic I would like to to go back and have another go at the Indian Ocean and I would like to do the Pacific so I can at least say I've rowed the Atlantic the Indian and the Pacific so that would be pretty cool and then I'll probably start transitioning into other things really I want to I enjoy working with with young people and so I'm quite passionate about that and we'll just see what what kind of happens really the one thing that I'm afraid of is not fulfilling my potential and not doing enough and that might sound crazy but I've realized that actually there's here's the thing the more you do the more you push yourself out there the more you the more you realize you can do and the more you realize it's out there that you can do and you want to do and you start pushing more and more and bigger and bigger become greater yeah to a degree it's kind of a bit greedy but it's it's your passion it's you want to do more and more and more and if I can use these things to try and inspire perhaps people that are in a particular point in their life where they're struggling a little bit for one reason or another they can either join me or read about the things that I've learned because what's your social media James my Instagram is at Ketchel James Twitter is Captain Ketch and YouTube is just James Ketchel for anybody that's maybe on this struggle looking for a wee bit of inspiration what advice would you have for them tomorrow is a different day you never know what's around the corner and I'll talk very briefly about this and this is something that I learned when I was do you have a thing mate? there's no rush this is what I learned when I was out in the Atlantic okay and I call it stay on and even kill what I mean by that is when I was out in the Atlantic what determined how I felt and my happiness was my the progress towards my goal so when I had a day where I had a great tail wind and I was flying along it was the best place to be in the world but trust me as soon as that wind changes direction and you are going backwards you do not want to be there and your mental and emotional state would change very very quickly and you become down and fed up you'd start talking yourself out you'd be looking for ways out of it thinking how can I get out of this without losing face without losing my credibility because that's what the brain does it plays tricks on you but I learned something that it never there was never that long between feeling like that in a real like I'd still want to be here anymore and all of a sudden like the next day the wind might change and all of a sudden you're back on course and that day that you had the previous day where you felt like shit was just a bit of memory and you're feeling great so I would I would try to I would say to anyone who's kind of struggling things do and things will change and everything is temporary and the situation that you're in now will come to an end undoubtedly it will come to an end and actually you'll be amazed at what you can do with your mind if you just try to stay positive and you keep active and you kill worst thing you can ever do is stop never ever stop just keep doing something and work through any kind of difficulties that you're in and it was that concept of just keep going that got me off Everest and that concept of keep going that's kind of got me through some of these difficult situations so my answer would be just don't stop just don't just keep trying tomorrow's a new day you never know what the wind will bring sounds a bit cheesy but it's true it's true what about when's your next book out? so the next book is out in December and yeah so the next book is different to this it follows on from this the next book I go into a lot of detail on all the things that I've been involved with that haven't quite gone to plan but then finish with the success of flying around the world and ultimately what I learned because I want the new book to appeal to people to anyone that's got a goal they're working towards something they don't have to just be a pilot or someone who's into adventure because I've kind of realized over time I've been very fortunate to go and do all these different things different places different experiences some good some bad some very dangerous so I want to try and share the things that I've learned that might be of some value to other people good on you James you've got to listen to me for your story and for what you're achieving it's an inspiration to show that it can be done you should be proud and I look forward to seeing what else you've got in store man but like I say I'm happy to do an adventure for you my wife with you I'm happy to do one careful what you wish for yeah no listen James you've got to it's an absolute pleasure God bless you brother and thank you for having me yeah thank you check out more of my podcasts on the right and be sure to like share and comment your thoughts on this week's podcast thank you