Armchair Traveling

the lower Chambeshi river by Phil Harwood

Fellow armchair adventurers may recall Scottish explorer David Livingstone in 1877 was the first European to explore the middle and lower Congo River. Leaving Zanzibar with 356 men, of whom 119 survived, Livingstone travelled for 999 days.

In 2008 British explorer Phil Harwood, with help from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, became what is believed to be the first man to travel, by canoe, the 2922 miles from the source of the Congo River to the Atlantic Ocean. His journey took 8 months through some of the most dangerous territory on earth, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

If you are in London today Phil is speaking at The Olympia at 1400, during the Adventure Travel Show.

Should you find yourself at home, his book, Canoeing The Congo is very good read. Available from Phil, or your favorite bookseller can order it for you. It's not a journey you'd likely consider making yourself. While you are waiting for your new book to a arrive, you can always reread Heart of Darkness.

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The Great Alone

“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.” Apsley Cherry Garrard

Somewhere in the hidden recesses of my DNA is an attraction to the stories of adventurers and explorers. Discoverers, pioneers or all stripes fill my imagination, but at the pinnacle are the tales of Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton, Cherry-Garrard the men who first explored the Antarctic.

The Centenary of Robert Falcon Scott's unsuccessful attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole is next year. In preparation for the anniversary goings-on, Buckingham Palace has staged an exhibit of photos from the Royal Collection taken during Scott's journey by Herbert George Ponting, and of Shackelton's Endurance Expedition by Frank Hurling, the expeditions official photographers. That any glass plate negatives survived is a miracle. That any survived Shackleton's expedition boggles the mind.

If you are unlikely to find yourself in the UK before mid April 2012, many of the photos and artifacts may be found here.

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