My silly GetOutside Activity Challenge is back! Sunday 29 September – just two weeks away – has been designated Ordnance Survey’s National GetOutside Day. And I’ll be using it as an opportunity to demonstrate that the outdoors can be all kinds of things to everyone by showing you just how many activities there are available to us out of doors – hopefully one of them will take your fancy and you can go and try it out for yourself.
Last year I managed 55 different outdoors activities in 48 hours (Friday evening to Sunday evening), and naturally I am hoping to beat that.
How My GetOutside Activity Challenge Will Work
If you followed along last year you will know that I managed these 55 activities in my 48 hours. While many of the activities this year will be the same, there will be new ones, too. There will be all kinds of things such as camping, swimming, painting, reading, walking up hills, geocaching, picking up litter, kayaking, gardening, and hopefully it’ll be warm enough to eat ice cream. I have a bit of an itinerary mapped out that will mean I can make the most of the hours and activities available to me; I have chosen places to visit, worked out travel times, and written an extensive menu of activities I can pick and choose from as the mood (and weather) takes me.
Good friends Sarah @the_urban_wanderer and Katy @hellokatyish are coming along for the ride as my judges – and willing participants – throughout the challenge. They will decide whether activities do or don’t go on the completed list, and I am very grateful that they are joining me in this.
I’m also hugely grateful to a couple of organisations for the support they’ve offered, and as such you’ll see me visit them during the 48 hour challenge. Cotswold Country Park and Beach have given me free entry to their site on the Saturday (I’ve booked and paid for other activities there myself), and Cotswold Farm Park are very kindly allowing us to camp on their field. Both are great places to spend your National GetOutside Day if you’ve not planned your day out just yet – I know that Cotswold Farm Park are holding some free family activities that you can get involved with which look like a lot of fun, and I will be there on the Saturday evening giving a short talk on my challenge and how it’s going so far (it’s in a tipi, so it counts as an outdoors activity, I reckon!). I’ll be sure to promote the time of that talk over on my twitter feed so you can come along and listen!
Getting One Hour Outside
I might not be spending an hour on every activity I take part in during the weekend, but the principles of One Hour Outside are definitely at play here. To keep things in the spirit of the everyday outdoors, I will be keeping costs down as much as I can, travel to a reasonable minimum, and the frequency as high as possible. The majority of activities will be free, based at home or in parks, and that is just the way I like my outdoors time. I have a campsite organised, have pre-booked kayak and SUP hire, and there will be some more entry/hire fees to pay as we go along, but the whole weekend should come in at a pretty reasonable price.
It’s important to me that the activities I do are accessible to the masses, and so pretty much everything I’m doing is something that any normal person can organise for a Sunday afternoon or mid-week day out, nothing requires hours of preparation or years of training, and where specialist equipment is needed, it is easy to get hold of. I want to show that we don’t have to spend loads, have loads or go far to get outside.
The Reason Behind the Challenge
I know this isn’t a massive undertaking, it really is just a silly way to spend a weekend. I’m not breaking any records, I’m not risking my life, and I’m not pushing my outdoor skills to their limit on this one. It’s just a bit of fun, hopefully an awful lot of fun, but there is a message – honest.
The whole point of this weekend is to do my part in encouraging you to spend a little bit more time outdoors. My One Hour Outside project is all about making – creating – time each and every day to get some fresh air, do a little bit of exercise, and give ourselves the opportunity to get the national light we need to keep us healthy. And I absolutely love how being a part of the GetOutside family helps me do this.
Ordnance Survey have designated Sunday 29 September as their second National GetOutside Day, and each GetOutside Champion is using it as an opportunity to demonstrate the ways we like to spend time outdoors, in order to encourage and motivate others to follow suit. There are activities being organised up and down the country including family days out, trig bagging hikes, runs, cycle rides, scrambles, bush craft skills workshops, family fun days, and all kinds of things. You can join in by spending your Sunday outdoors doing whatever activity you fancy – everyone is welcome, wherever you happen to be.
The reason I was chosen as a GetOutside Champion had nothing to do with fame or special skills or athletic prowess (I know… really!). It is because I am (arguably…) normal. Working the nine to five and having all the usual life commitments, doesn’t mean the outdoors is closed to me; I don’t have to anything more adventurous than putting on my shoes and leaving my own front door. This challenge is simply about demonstrating the plethora of activities that are open to us all, however little time we have left at the end of the day.
Follow the Story
You can see the idea is very simple. Over the next two days I will be camping, eating, walking, swimming and a whole lot more besides, all in the name of celebrating the great outdoors and demonstrating just how much fun you can have without a roof over your head.
I’ll be a little busy to update all my social media channels during the challenge itself, so make sure you’re following me on instagram as I’ll be doing my best to update my stories with what’s going on… and I’ll have something to share on the blog afterwards.
I’m very happy to answer any questions about the challenge, and am always accepting suggestions of things I should have on my activity menu for the weekend. Comment below!
If you’d like to cover my challenge on your own media outlet, please let me know by getting in touch. There will be little time during the challenge itself, but I’m sure we can arrange something.