Going Places: Great Soft Adventures and Great Journeys

Travel means covering distances and ending up somewhere else.

The best travel still involves a good journey as well as a prized destination at the end of it. Even if there are plotted pathways and your GPS means there is no chance of getting lost, forging out on foot, on horseback, in a boat or on a bike still feels like an adventure, and it’s the closest most of us are going to get to being explorers.

These civilised expeditions are soft adventures. The kind where you have an idea where you’ll be sleeping each night and you’ll not go hungry. The varying degrees of soft adventure allow for some travellers to enjoy soft beds and hot water and others to sleep out under the stars and carry their own drinking water – as tastes require.

You can go it alone but even Indiana Jones uses a guide sometimes, and that’s the best way to adventure softly – let someone who knows where they’re going take the lead while you enjoy the new sights and sounds surrounding you. The best part of travelling really can be the travelling.

Related categories: Cycling, Horse Riding, Train Journeys, Road Trips, Sailing, River Trips, Walking.

Experts on Soft Adventures

Russ Claridge

An architect by trade, Russ Claridge likes to spend as much of his time as possible walking around the countryside. His main concerns when walking are comfort, views and history, so his recommendations take into account whether or not you will have...
Jane Ferguson

Jane has been sailing for 5 years, having spent the last three years racing competitively for York University's racing team. She has done laser and firefly team racing around various locations in Britain and cruised yachts in Europe and the...
BikeBrats

Andrew Broan: BikeBrat and round the world cyclist After taking our two-year pedal around the globe, I wanted to keep cycling, and found a job leading bike tours in France for gay Americans. That was eight years ago, and since then I've expanded...