Alastair Humphreys: author, father, round-the-world cyclist

Alastair Humphreys is a 47-year-old British adventurer, author, and speaker who has cycled around the world, rowed across the Atlantic, busked with a violin across Spain, and made a career from telling his stories and encouraging others to live more adventurously (alastairhumphreys.com).

Alastair talks about the “push” and “pull” factors that drive certain people toward lives of wanderlust and adventure. At age 24, he couldn’t imagine becoming a science teacher and decided to embark upon a very long bike trip instead. Four years later, his round-the-world cycle tour only deepened his thirst for adventure, prompting him to turn it into a career: one he sustains through writing, speaking, filmmaking, podcasting, and brand sponsorships.

What motivates Alastair? Initially, it was the desire to make the most of life—it drove him crazy to see how many privileged people squandered their opportunities. Now he’s less manic and more fired up about thorny environmental problems. Most consistent is Alastair’s “complete aversion to a high-stress life.”

Is adventure only for privileged people? Alastair takes a nuanced position, both admitting the reality and encouraging a proactive, opportunity-focused mindset. He also discusses how adventures are different from vacations—because they necessarily involve uncertainty, risk, and discomfort—but emphasizes that they come in all sizes, and it’s not useful to compare your own adventures to those of others.

In the early 2000s, Alastair scraped together £7000 for his round-the-world trip and made it last for four full years by living like a total dirtbag. He then set himself a goal of earning as much from adventure as he might as a teacher. Now that he’s achieved a reliable income, he works less and spends more time as a stay-at-home dad. Eventually he hopes to earn his living entirely from writing.

Alastair’s passions have mellowed with age, but he still finds himself yearning for raw, uncertain adventure at times: impulses that he channels into a curiosity for his local area (a “mundane, suburban corner of England”) and discovering unexpected pockets of wildness and solitude. His advice for adventure-curious young people is almost always “Go!”, even if it doesn’t make sense or fit neatly into a life plan.

Spiritually, Alastair describes growing up Christian-curious but finding “no evidence of higher powers” on his cycle journey. Now he’s an atheist with a deep interest in awe, grace, and mystery.

Find Alastair Humphreys on every online platform except TikTok. He’s currently finishing up a children’s book about the Lewis & Clark expedition.

(I was looking forward to interviewing Alastair for a very long time. You may detect this in my gushing praise and rambling questions.)

Full transcript: dirtbagrich.com/alastair