Past, Present and Future
The past year has been one filled with long days, hard work and experiences beyond my wildest dreams. No one ever said that developing your own business and having a life beyond it was easy, but at the end of another busy year I am enjoying my nights at home in front of the fire with Kerry greatly.
All sorts of things started of the past year for me, but my major one was marrying my now beautiful wife Kerry. We had the most superb wedding, at the stunning Leopard Lodge in the beautiful Magaliesberg Mountains in South Africa. Sharing our special day with our friends and family undisturbed is something we will never forget. Even the brief rain shower, added to the day making for a wonderful rainbow.
After a fantastic honeymoon on the Garden Route in south east South Africa, the order of the day was back home, into work and catching up after a month away.
Other highlights of the past year have been running a massive load of British Canoe Union courses, coaching in Scotland, a week white water kayaking with friends in the alps, 2 months leading canoe expeditions in Scandinavia and a month in the USA running more BCU courses. All told a great year and here are some of my favorite pictures from it…..
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The next year is looking to be the most exciting yet, with so much to do I haven’t quite worked out how it am will be fitted in! So in some sort of order here is what me & Elements is upto….
- First up is a month in South Africa including a couple of weeks of kayak surfing in the Indian Ocean
- First winter trip in Scandinavia (see http://wp.me/pzPqA-4m)
- Two months worth of Canoe Expeditions in Norway & Sweden
- A likely move to South Africa, with me having a large commute to work!
- Developing the ‘Adventure Dayz’ brand with a new business partner (watch this space!)
- Developing our range of BCU courses, delivered both by ourselves and with our partners
- My first Jo’burg to Zambezi road trip
I am also putting a huge amount of time, money and effort into our new sister company ‘Unique Adventures’. Concentrating on adventures of 5 days and more, we will be running high quality adventures from exploring Botswana to sea kayaking in Mexico to walking in South Africa to cross country skiing in Norway to canoeing in Sweden and much much more. As this develops further I will of course put more up here.
Lastly a huge thank you to all those people who have helped me and Elements to keep growing, Mark Dewhurst (for your continued support), Ian Flanders (for being such a positive influence and great friend), Rob Barrett (of http://www.metalfury.co.uk for our great website), all those others I have worked and hung out with and of course Kerry for supporting me at every step.
We hope your next year is fulfilling and look forward to sharing some adventures with you.
Brilliant, what an exciting year and another one to come! Congratulations. Even though I’ve never met you, or been on a trip….yet! I love the sound of it all and you have some cracking photos.
Thanks Ben, glad you liked the read
I look forward to sharing a adventure with you some day soon
Rob
Reading this has set me up for a great day with happy memories of Scotland and Sweden and inspiration for more adventures. So very glad it’s been such a good year for you and looking forward to news of more adventures and lovely stuff in 2011, especially the bits I can join in with.