The race to the poles has been won and the seven seas and five continents have been mapped and plundered but the human hunger for adventure isn’t sated. While some people still crave virgin exploration, there are a lot of people who’d prefer something more achievable – an Adventure Holiday. On an adventure holiday you will have to work to achieve your goal, but you don’t have to risk death or frostbite to get there and you can be there in back in two weeks.
Explorers used to look upwards for adventure. Everest took some conquering, and Mont Blanc’s snows have made a worthy adversary in the past. But Kilimanjaro was recently conquered by a bunch of celebrities for Comic Relief, and the impressively titled highest mountains in the United Kingdom and Australia: Ben Nevis and Mount Kosciuszko, are ideal for a short holiday adventure. Ben you can summit in about nine hours, Kosciuszko you can do in about three – and during your Adventure Holiday you’ll have climbed one of the ‘Seven Summits’.
Sailors are some of the world’s great adventurers, setting off to discover a new land is pretty adventurous, but that kind of epic journey doesn’t fit into your time off work. But those who crave the open promises of the sea can still experience life on a tall ship, or attempt to sail round Cape Horn – or for the Adventure Holiday version charter a boat and bob round Scotland’s western coast. Or take your adventure holiday time completing the Three Peaks Yacht Race – still an impressive achievement.
No one has ever ventured 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but the underwater world has set challenges for man, with both its creatures of the deep and its depths – conquer them in adventure holiday comfort by diving with Great White Sharks, or the less teeth-y whale sharks or dolphins, or take a submarine safari to the depths on your next adventure holiday to the Spanish sun.
If you’re in the market to prove yourself on your adventure holiday there are still plenty of ways to come of age in traditionally challenging style. Young men on Pentecost Island proved themselves with a bungee jump of faith, and while you could travel there to perform with the traditional vines etc. it would be much more exciting and impressive to come of age in the same kind of way James Bond would have – not with Miss Moneypenny – but by repeating the Bond bungee from Goldeneye off Verzasca Dam.
China’s Great Wall is an adventure holiday and historic hike, but you can now get up to the wall via cable car and down via toboggan. Instead of racing to the pole you can witness the wilds of Antarctica from the deck of your cruise ship, and the Arctic though the window of your train, and instead of joining a Tureg Salt Caravan you can opt to camp in five star luxury at Ksar Ghilane in the Sahara. Running with the Bulls is kind of adventure holiday bullfighting lite, though still pretty dangerous.