Sailing a carbon fibre racing yacht across the English Channel to France

Sorry for the long gaps between these blogs, it’s been a very busy few months with my work at Lupine Travel culminating in a large amount of press and media surrounding a train trip from Wigan to North Korea we’ve been working on. Coverage at links here in The Times, The Independent and the BBC.

I’ve got some blogs in draft that I’m working on with images and videos of visits I’ve made this year to Socotra Island in Yemen as well as Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific so I should have these ready soon.

The reason for this post, I’ve just returned from a trip across the English channel and back on an incredible carbon fibre hulled Volvo 70 ocean racing yacht which I’ve made a short video of below that I thought you might enjoy. I made the trip as I’m planning to take the same boat across the Atlantic as part of the ARC 2020 race from Gran Canaria to Antigua. It’s been a dream of mine for many years to sail the Atlantic, not the cheapest thing to do as part of a racing crew, but I’ve decided to finally make it happen.

We’ve got aims of making the 2,700 nautical mile journey in 11 days working an sleeping in a 4 hours on, 4 hours off pattern, standing a good chance of placing  highly in the 200+ yachts competing. I was keen to try out the spartan conditions before committing to the race, keep your eyes peeled for the ultralight carbon fibre toilet located around 1 metre away from the cooking facilities…

If you’re keen to book a trip on this boat, or one like it, check out Kraken Travel and they’ll be happy to help :).

A week in Algeria! – Algiers, Constantine and Taghit…

Click above for a short video highlight reel from my trip earlier this month to Algeria leading a tour for Lupine Travel, or carry on for a blog post. I’m planning to make more video content of my trips so make sure to subscribe on YouTube if you want to see more 🙂 . Algeria was the final country I’d yet to visit in North Africa having previously made visits to Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and it certainly didn’t disappoint…

Visiting Sierra Leone and Liberia

Fisherman at Kent Beach, Sierra Leone.

It’s been a long, long time since I wrote a proper blog here! For the last couple of years nearly all of my time has been taken up by my new work as a co-owner of an adventure travel company called Lupine Travel. If the name sounds familiar, it may be from when I was originally a client of Lupine in my old blog posts from 2012 about visiting North Korea for the first time, a very long time ago now!

New website and projects!

Hi all!

I’ve not posted to this blog in a very long time (sorry for this!), but I’m going to start posting updates in a few places for some projects I’m working on. I’ve just put together a little website detailing some of them over at jamesfinnerty.co.uk.

If you want to follow along with some of these projects directly you can also try the following, thanks for your support!…

Mailing lists…
My personal mailing list sign up
This will contain reports on trips I’ve done in a blog style format
Mailing list signup for my challenge to eat or cook a meal from every country
Recipes and restaurant reviews from the challenge

Instagram accounts
Eating Every Country
My Personal Instagram account

All the best!
James Finnerty

Walking the Thames pt. 2 – Lechlade-on-Thames to Oxford

After an 8 month hiatus the project to walk the length of the Thames has finally received it’s second instalment! It’s been tough keeping these regular posts going despite quite a busy period at my day job, plus the training for my upcoming 24 hour bike ride at the iconic Brands Hatch race track, but trust me they will keep coming!

A week cycle touring across the Normandy coast from Cherbourg to Dieppe

About three years ago a good friend of mine, Chris, and I began to hatch a plan to cycle from our homes in Hove, near Brighton, all the way to Paris. As with many ideas of this sort plans fizzle then re-ignite but finally we got off our back sides and put the trip together…

A long time coming! Longboarding from Antwerp to the Hook of Holland.

Well this is certainly a rather late blog post. I’ve neglected these posts due to a particularly busy period at work but I finally decided to get off my backside and catch up on some writing. Before jumping into the write up of my latest excursion I’ll give a quick update on one of my long term projects…

Paris to London. 200 miles. 9 days. 1 silly form of transport.

Well it has been far, far too long since I last posted. Quite a bit has happend, as you may have seen if you follow my facebook or twitter pages, but I’ve finally settled on my next little adventure…

Walking the Thames pt. 1 – The source to Lechlade-on-Thames

Well the first 28 miles of the Thames have been smashed out and I have to say it was much tougher than expected. Walking with a loaded pack and my heavy winter hiking boots (the most appropriate footwear I had for this) took it’s toll over a couple of days but it was great to be pushing myself on something other than a bike. Back at home (we’re splitting this walk into chunks to be a bit more practical with our jobs) my legs are still recovering a few days later.

So What’s Next?

I’ve gone a bit quiet on this blog for the last month. I’ve been slowly working on a reflective blog on the bike trip (from London-Shanghai) but it’s taking quite awhile to get my thoughts down in a way that I am happy with. To tide this blog over I thought a little summary of my month back would be helpful for anyone wanting to take a long journey and are worried about the inevitable return. On top of that I’ve got a couple of plans in the works.