Category: Adventures

What are you up to for you off-season Brownie?……. Vegas again?” This was the start of a new direction with my downtime from rugby. I was sick to my teeth of going to the same places every year, America, NYC, Vegas, etc…. I knew deep down these weren’t wearing I really wanted to be, they weren’t feeding me in any way anymore, so I made a change. If I want to go experience the world, I’m going to go and I’m not letting anything get in my way, especially the fact that I’ll be alone. “So where do you really want to go and experience then?” …… Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail! Some google searching and phone calls to some tour operators show up all the trekking permits for the Inca Trail are sold out…. ‘However there’s an alternative sir, it’s called The Lares Trail but it’s longer and goes over higher passes than The Inca Trail’ “Sign me up”

‘Trolltunga! That’s hardly an adventure, sure anybody can stroll up there’……. Perhaps! However, when my good friend Tommy Ellard and I rocked up one mid-May morning in 2014, we had no idea what the next 12.5 hours and 22kms had in store. Little did we know that an innocuous photograph I took of Tommy at the trailhead would be the saviour of our day and give us a memorable and peaceful hour alone at Norway’s magnificent Trolls Tongue.

For me adventure comes in many different forms, a good one will stimulate you physically, mentally and emotionally, however they can’t all be, nor would we want them to be, epic feats of human endurance.

Along side one of my oldest friends, Gussy Farrell, we rowed a traditional Currach from the smallest Aran Island, Inis Oirr, 26 miles to Galway city to launch Project EMPOWER, our 2022 trans-Atlantic row from New York to Galway. This traditional voyage symbolised what will be the last, triumphant leg of that Atlantic crossing in 2022, while promoting and respecting the seafaring heritage of Irish coastal communities.