Extending Your Comfort Zone. Antarctica With Karen Espley

Books And Travel

The challenges of travel can help us expand our comfort zone enough to drive change in our lives. In this episode, Karen Espley talks about how a trip to Antarctica helped her change direction.

Karen Espley is an author, speaker, and businesswoman. Her latest book is The Impulsive Explorer: One Businesswoman’s Accidental Journey of Self-discovery on an Expedition to the Antarctic.

Show notes

• What is it about corporate life that makes us want to escape?
• The challenges of getting to Antarctica and difficulties living in close quarters
• Finding perspective on life
• The breathing space that travel affords one to consider life choices
• Changing your mindset by changing the scenery
• The importance of pushing our comfort zones back out since pandemic life has shrunken them so much
• Recommended travel books

You can find Karen Espley at KarenEspley.com

Transcript of the interview

Jo: Karen Espley is an author, speaker, and businesswoman. Her latest book is The Impulsive Explorer: One Businesswoman’s Accidental Journey of Self-discovery on an Expedition to the Antarctic. Welcome, Karen.

Karen: Hello, Jo, thank you so much for having me on today. I’m really looking forward to chatting with you.

Jo: It is such an interesting topic. I wanted to start because you spent many years in the corporate world, as I did, 13 years as an IT consultant, and I was reading your book and thinking:

What is it about the corporate life that makes so many of us crave adventure and escape?

Karen: It’s a really interesting question. Actually, I was pondering that one. For me, I think it’s a number of things. But I think it’s certainly when you get to a certain seniority, it’s just unrelenting pressure.

It doesn’t matter how much you give, they still want more from you. So it’s just that endless treadmill of them wanting more, giving you less to do it. I had some really interesting jobs, but they are still routine. And it’s the never-ending-ness of it, I think. There are endless meetings, that daily commute into the office that we all used to have to do, and knowing that you’re not indispensable, and you also don’t really have a voice. So, for me, it was just that there’s no end to it. You rarely get praised, or if you do, you need to grasp it like jewels.

Obviously, I was saved by the Antarctic, but it’s just you don’t often have time to think — Is there another way? What might I do differently? You said you did it for 13 years, I did it for 15, 16 years, it wears you down, I think. After a while, you go, there must be something else, surely.

Jo: Yes. It’s funny you say relentless, and I used to put in IT systems. So, it would be this rollout and then this rollout, and then exactly the same thing over and over again in these different companies in different countries. And what got me was this: they’re just going to overwrite this system again in a couple of years with some other system and everything I do will disappear. How can I just keep doing that? I decided to write books because they have some longevity, at least.

Karen: That was it exactly.

Jo: Let’s talk about your escape then. Because you can’t just pop to Antarctica.

What drew you to Antarctica? And what was that trip specifically about?

Karen: I was really, really lucky. I was working for Standard Life Healthcare. And unbeknownst to me, Standard Life HQ up in Edinburgh was sponsoring this environmental trip down to a Russian base in the Antarctic.

Karen Espley in Antarctica. Photo by Karen Espley

Robert Swan, who was the first man to walk to the North and South Pole, had recreated Scott’s footsteps to the South Pole and had got bitten by the environmental bug whilst doing so. He became a public speaker as part of his way of raising money for funds to raise environmental issues. And he’d obviously done a talk to Standard Life.

They’d been so impressed with him that they sponsored this four-year mission. And as part of that mission, two people from Standard Life would go every year down to the base to see what was going on and support the activities. I literally came into work one day and there on my chair was an A4 flyer announcing this trip and looking, asking for people to go through the application process.

And that was it. I can’t give you any more explanation. I saw that, and I knew I had to go. There was no forethought. I hadn’t thought one day I must go to Antarctica, how am I going to do it? It was completely impulsive. Hence the name of my book.

The idea was that we were going to sail across Drake’s Passage, which is down at the very pointy bit of South America, and spend two or three weeks on the Russian base talking to the team who were there sponsored by Robert Swan’s team doing some research, I did some research with the Water Research Council, and just experiencing it and then bringing your message back.

In theory, we were supposed to come back to the U.K. and then do a tour of different Standard Life offices and explain what we had seen and the impact on the environment and top tips and lessons learned. So that was really how it all came about by complete accident.

Jo: I don’t really like extreme cold. But I love the pictures of Antarctica. It’s incredibly stunningly beautiful and all of that. But it does seem like a scary place. So when you saw that flyer, and you were like, ‘Yeah, I want to do that’:

Did you have any initial fears that made you wonder if this was the right trip or what did you face before you even went?

Karen: To be honest, I do some of these things just literally on impulse and I don’t really think through the consequences of what might transpire afterward. But so just to assure you, when we went in February, January/February time, it was summer down in the Antarctic, so relatively warm. So although the weather could change really quickly from beautiful sunshine to howling gales, I wouldn’t say it was bitterly cold because the Russians were just wandering around in shirtsleeves because they were used to Siberia.

For me, my biggest fear was this sailing across Drake’s Passage, actually. So whilst I did a lot of dinghy sailing when I was younger and in my 20s when I lived in Bournemouth, and I’d been on some big yachts, done Cowe’s Week and all sorts of things, the thought of Drake’s Passage is the thing that throws terror into a lot of people’s hearts because it’s the confluence of the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean. So big waves, big storms, shocking weather of the Cape. Shocking storms.

So I was actually really frightened of four to five days sailing across Drake’s Passage, that was my biggest fear of all. And then having done it, I thought, I better go and try this out. I signed up for a race across the channel from Southampton across to France and unfortunately happened to pick the day when there were gale force storms out in the channel.

Arriving in Antarctica. Photo licensed from BigStockPhoto

I ended up being strapped into my bunk with a bucket as I vomited my way copiously across the channel. So I really was quite frightened by the experience of knowing I was going to have to do four-hour shifts in impossibly big winds, massive seas, in the dark, being cold, being wet. That was my biggest fear, I think, of everything that I was worried about was that.

Jo: Did it turn out to be that in reality?

Karen: No. Luckily for me, anyway, the ship which was the yacht, which was an Annex round-the-world yacht race yacht didn’t get down to Ushuaia in time. So we ended up going on a very small cruise ship, which was our Annex Russian research ship, it was very small.

There were only about 60 guests in total on the ship, but even that had problems. We set off and got as far as Cape Horn when suddenly the engines failed, the propellers just wouldn’t turn properly. So we had to totter our way back to Ushuaia, and that was my next massive fear was that actually weren’t going to be able to get to the Antarctic. Literally, the engineer flew in at the 11th hour and managed to fix propellers before the entire trip was canceled. So it was all fraught with great anxiety before we even set foot across Drake’s Passage.

Jo: Oh, how interesting. I had a friend who was going to go on one of these Antarctic trips and their boat got canceled. As you say, the weather down there is pretty violent. So, they do get canceled more often than not.

I also feel like these fears we have, sometimes the things we’re afraid of are not the things that happen. And then other things happen that we hadn’t even considered.

Were there any other difficulties that you had when you were there that you weren’t expecting?

Karen: Close-quarter living is always challenging. I was actually very worried before we left because I read everybody else’s biography. A lot of them done lots of mountain walking, were very outdoorsy sorts, and very hale and hearty, and done lots of outdoor stuff, and I’m a walker but certainly not a serious one to the degree that the rest of the team were. So I was really worried about letting people down with my lack of experience. But that was, as you say, a completely unfounded fear as it turns out.

For me, it was in the middle of nowhere, and there were eight of us in a very small metal hut with four women. We were sleeping in one very small room and four men sleeping in another very small room so that there’s no escape. And there was literally this metal hut with these two rooms and the lounge as we call it, which is a space with a few chairs in it. And you’ve got to get on with people because you can’t really escape. There’s nowhere to go. So for me, I had a big challenge with somebody I took against, probably not their fault, more about my own issues rather than theirs.

It was trying to keep a lid on that. Because you have to live together, there was nowhere to go. So you have to find a way through it. I think we both found our way by keeping out of each other’s way during the day as much as possible. It’s really interesting. You have to learn to get on with people in those sorts of situations.

Jo: You must have learned a lot about what we ended up doing with lockdown living. It’s this sort of quarantine. I had COVID, and me and my husband, we couldn’t even leave the house. And I know we’re in the house and there’s only two of us, but I still really struggled.

Karen: We were lucky, we could go out and there were plenty of things to do. I was doing this research for the Water Research Council, so I could at least get out and about and we weren’t on top of each other 24 hours a day, which we would have been had it been winter. So yes, we could escape from each other to a certain degree. And there were enough other people around and about to water down any angst that we may have had with each other.

Harbor Bay Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica. Photo licensed from BigStockPhoto

Jo: What were some of the highlights of the trip and the things that stick in your mind even many years later?

Karen: Honestly, there were so many. I think the first one was actually the ship arriving in the Antarctic. We saw our first icebergs and we literally stopped for the evening in amongst these icebergs. So it’s just staggeringly beautiful, the blue of the icebergs is just impossible to describe them.

And then they took us out on the Zodiacs and we were cruising in amongst the icebergs. One of the stories I talk about in the book is he cut the engine and there was this fizzing sound. The only way I can get people to recreate it is to open a can of coke and put that can of coke to your ear. That noise of the bubbles just fizzing to the surface was air that was trapped in ice that was melting as it hit the surface. It was 2000 years old. It just blew my mind. So that was amazing.

And because we’d gone on the cruise ship, we got to see some of the really pretty parts of the Antarctic. We went down what’s called Kodak Alley, which is actually the Lemaire Channel. And again, that was just staggering. You can’t understand the scale of the place until you take photographs. There was another small ship where we were at the same time and you have to take the picture with the ship in because you don’t understand how enormous this place is without that scale.

I was very excited to land on the actual Antarctic. I have an Antarctic stamp in my passport. And we were really lucky when we were there to see an iceberg calve. It shot off the side of the glacier into the sea, all very dramatic. So that was amazing.

And then for me, really, I just loved being in the Antarctic. I loved the remoteness of it all. I loved the simplicity of life. I loved that I was doing something really useful for the Water Research Council. And I loved not being able to be back in touch with home so I could completely disconnect and just completely live in the present. It was marvelous from that perspective.

Jo: We were saying at the beginning about how the corporate world grinds you down. And then as you say, you see these icebergs and the perspective that your life is tiny. I find insignificance comforting, the fact that my lifespan is a brief flicker of light. It makes me want to experience more rather than be concerned that my life is so small. I imagine seeing that perspective was just the opposite of the corporate world.

Karen: Exactly, there is that freedom. For me, the fact that I was doing that research for the Water Research Council, I was doing in my own time, but I was doing a really good job of it and enjoying it and there wasn’t that pressure was just so refreshing.

That was the first inkling that maybe corporate life possibly wasn’t going to be my long-term future because I could start to see there might be another way to live my life and that that might be okay.

Jo: I want to come back on that. You said this was a Russian base. So presumably, some of the people there were Russians.

Did you have interesting cultural clashes there? Was the food all Russian?

Karen: Yes. The Russians were very interesting. It sort of went from they all stood and it felt quite menacing. As we arrived at the base, they just all stood on the shore, watching us, and then took our stuff up to the hut and they seemed at first to be very dire and very isolating. They didn’t seem to be terribly friendly.

And then it really dawned on us after being there some time when…there was a Chilean base next door to us on the shore and then four miles away, there was a Uruguayan base. We visited both of those bases and the contrast in living conditions was just so marked.

The Uruguayan base had hot and cold running water, there were comfortable sitting areas, there was decent food, and the Chilean base even had a church, it had a sports center, it had everything going. Whereas the Russians are desperately poor and have nothing, so the food was beyond awful. Honestly, you couldn’t even tell what it was most days. It was just unremitting in its awfulness.

But as time went by, we spent one evening up at the hut of the team, who with the team being paid for by Robert Swan’s organization, and they’d been out and they’d fished for us. So, we have some fresh fish and one of the chaps had carved us little penguins, he painted for each of us.

They lived in this metal hut that had nothing, they had used cassette tape, the tape from the cassettes to make swags and tails to pimp up their hut, but they literally had nothing. And they had obviously come from Russia to earn peanuts a day just so that they could feed their families back home because with perestroika, their livelihoods have been destroyed.

They were really, really well qualified, highly educated people. But this was how they were making a living. And they were just delightful. Once they had warmed up, and once we realized that they weren’t being standoffish, but they had no money, so they couldn’t reciprocate the hospitality of the others. So it wasn’t that they were being antisocial, and they didn’t come to the parties that we went to, they didn’t have anything to reciprocate back in return, so they kept to themselves. It was heartbreaking. And they were just such lovely people once you got past that reserve.

Jo: That’s interesting too because, again, we have so many cultural stereotypes in our mind, don’t we, and as British people, we have a pretty cold exterior, I think to some people, they think we’re quite standoffish, and I can imagine that being difficult at first. But as you say, people in every culture, once you get past the initial stereotype, you can find things in common despite which country you’re in or where you’re from.

Karen: Exactly, and I think that was one of my big learnings actually from that, the whole episode from Bronco, who was our project leader through to the Russians and other people is that appearances are deceiving and you really do need to dig past the exterior to get to the point where you go, well, actually, my conceptions of these people or my ideas of what they are and who they are are completely wrong. That was a big lesson for me was just not to judge people quite so quickly, but to let me know them before I make my judgments.

Jo: Did you want to go back? Obviously, you were there on a scientific trip. But it left a resonance with you.

Union Glacier in Antarctica. Photo Licensed from BigStockPhoto

Have you been dreaming of going back to the ice in any way or did that trip encompass Antarctica for you?

Karen: I wanted to go back. I would quite happily have spent all summer there.

The whole idea of what Roberts’s mission was and one step beyond was that as part of the 2041 Treaty is all the bases need to clear out their rubbish. And that was part of what that Rizen team was doing was collecting all the detritus and the scrap metal and rubbish and bring it down to the beach for eventual removal back to South America for dealing with.

And they had been planning the year after or within 2 years to take a group of 40 students from around the world and take them down to film this being removed. I had been penciled in as going down as the deputy expedition leader. I was very excited about that. But unfortunately, we had one of the world recessions, and the sponsorship all dried up. It did eventually happen, but it happened at a later stage and life had moved on by then.

Jo: Interesting. And then, of course, the subtitle of the book mentioned self-discovery, and you hinted at a change because of the trip.

What changed for you as a result, and why do you think travel enables us to face these bigger questions?

Karen: As you know, as I mentioned, when I was doing that research for the Water Research Council, it made me realize that I probably could earn a living, not in the corporate environment. So it showed me another way that I could live my life.

I’d just always done the traditional thing that had been expected of me, I’d gone to university, I’d gotten a job, I started clawing my way up the corporate ladder. And to be honest, I didn’t know any different. So that really opened my eyes to a longing for the other part of me, which is the less conventional part, to say, ‘actually, I do want to do something different.’

I don’t want to be this person who just claws their way out and becomes a stressed-out alcoholic by the time they’re 45, because it’s the only way to cope with work. And I had been saving money. I have always been very sensible. I had been saving up against the day that I might, just might decide to do something different.

It just happily coincided with my return from the Antarctic that my FOF, I won’t repeat what it stands for, but it stands F off-fund, which enabled me to be able to take a year off work, but not a year off work, to give up work and know that all my bills would be paid for 12 months, so I didn’t have to panic myself into going back into full-time work.

The stars aligned for me with that trip. And yes, you’re absolutely right, I just find travel, when it’s that challenging and difficult…and it happened to me when I went to Ghana and traveled around West Africa, and to a degree when I had my midlife crisis when I camper vanned my way around Australia and New Zealand, that distance from your day-to-day life, gives you breathing space, and gives you perspective, and seeing different ways of lives being led.

It makes you appreciate what you’ve got substantially, but also gives you that breathing space for your brain just to go, ‘Oh, okay, let’s think about this from a slightly different perspective.’ I think that’s what travel does for me anyway, it just gives my brain that space to look at things from different angles.

Karen Espley at the Antarctic. Photo by Karen Espley

Jo: When you’re in your house, there are things happening, and there’s just normal life happening. And when you make an effort to go somewhere else, it doesn’t have to be Antarctica. I went to Bristol, a nearby town, on Friday. And just even getting away from your normal life for a period of time, as you say, gives you that perspective.

You can think about things that you might not think about when you’re at home.

Karen: I couldn’t agree more and I really need to start doing that. I’ve become a bit of a recluse over the last 18 months with COVID and stuff. I’m feeling very staid and very locked in mentally. I absolutely need to get out and feel the fresh air and be in a different place.

It’s really important to have that distance. For me, it’s going to be a caravan in Dorset in a couple of weeks’ time where I shall just roam the hills, and let my brain breathe again.

Jo: We are both people who’ve lived in different places and traveled a lot. I have felt my comfort zone has shrunk, it’s shrunk down with COVID as you said, not speaking another language or hearing another language or finding I can’t read a sign or find a toilet or just even the basic things of being in another culture.

I feel even a little bit afraid of because I haven’t done it for so long, and even flying and all of this stuff. I feel a sort of desperation to start pushing my comfort zone out by degrees. And as you say, it will start with small trips.

And then hopefully, we will get back out into the world. But that comfort zone, obviously your comfort zone expanded massively when you went to Antarctica, but now it’s shrunk back again. I think it’s good to realize that that can happen and that we then have to start actively pushing it again.

Karen: Definitely. Just a really odd example; I moved here from London six years ago and going back to London terrifies me now, whereas, in the old days, I would just happily wander around London, 2:00 in the morning, I knew where I was with all the trains and the tubes.

It is amazing how quickly your courage can atrophy in places that you were previously comfortable. So, you’re absolutely right, I need to get back out there and start challenging myself again.

Jo: And for people listening too, as we said, it doesn’t have to be a massive trip. You can start with little trips and just keep pushing out.

I fear that if we don’t start pushing the boundaries, it will shrink even further and we’ll never go anywhere again.

Karen: I know, my goodness, we can’t have that. For me, my big thing at the moment is planes. I have absolutely no desire to get on an airplane at the moment. And that’s going to scupper things. I’m going to have to find some slow ships. I am too displaced to go elsewhere now, I think.

Jo: For most people, you don’t have to necessarily fly but my husband’s a New Zealander, so we’re heading over as soon as we can. But, yes, it’s like, okay, we have looked at getting a boat to New Zealand, but it’s a blooming long time, and like you, I’m not particularly happy about travel sickness.

I do want to ask you about your past. You grew up across different countries, I was reading in your book, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Malta, and Hong Kong. And you’ve obviously traveled lots. And you mentioned now just London.

Where is home to you? Do you find home wherever you are? Or do you think people with wanderlust can ever find home?

Karen: On one level, I don’t feel I have an anchor because when I was growing up, we were never anywhere for a particular long period of time. Bizarrely, I still consider myself to be a northerner, despite the fact I haven’t lived up north for centuries.

If anywhere I would call home is probably Hong Kong because I was there the longest and there for the most significant time because I was there from the age of 12 to 18. I met my most significant friends there and had my most significant part of my life.

But whilst I have been back to Hong Kong, gosh, back in 2012, I think I went en route down to New Zealand, funny enough, I don’t have a desire to go back there. For me, my friends are probably my family. I’ve got friends all over the world as a consequence of going to school in Hong Kong, and friends who I met in London who have gone back home to New Zealand or South Africa.

For me, home is more about my friends, I think, these days than any particular physical location.

Icebergs in Antarctica. Photo licensed from BigStockPhoto.

It’s an interesting question about wanderlust because interestingly, I never particularly felt like I have wanderlust because I did so much traveling when I was younger. I don’t necessarily have that urge to go and discover new places, although I do have a bucket list of places I really would like to go and visit having said that.

I think what I’m more attracted to is a novel opportunity, particularly more obscure stuff. I like obscure stuff. So hence, the Antarctic appealed to me. And when I went to Ghana, that was part of Raleigh International. Most people when they sign up for Raleigh want to go to Chile because that’s where everybody goes.

Prince Harry went to Chile. Everybody wants to go to Chile. I did not put Chile down on the list. I put Ghana and I think Mongolia and some other strange place. So of course, I ended up going to go Ghana because very few other people had put themselves down for Ghana. So, for me, that was what was more attractive was oh, that sounds different and interesting, that piques my interest.

I think that’s kind of what tempts me to go to places or an opportunity arises and I go, yes, that sounds like it could be challenging, I probably should do that, and off I go.

Jo: That’s interesting because what you’re saying is the trips you choose are more about doing something specific as opposed to just going and looking at things or being a tourist.

Karen: Right. Yes.

Ghana was by exploring, I’d thought about maybe doing voluntary service overseas, but that was a two-year commitment and that frightened me a little bit. I thought, well, what if I don’t like it? Whereas Raleigh was a three-month commitment. I was going as a project manager and I thought, well, If I don’t like it, at least it’s only three months, and then got sucked into this traveling through West Africa on public transport adventure afterwards, which was completely bonkers.

And my trip to New Zealand and Australia was…I’d always promised myself Australia. New Zealand, I’ve been to a lot. But the trip to New Zealand and Australia was about escaping. I’d had a terrible 2012 and I just had to go. So yeah, that was the reason, it wasn’t I feel I must go and travel to somewhere, I was gone. It was about curiosity, hence the book’s called The Curious Explorer.

And my trip to Australia, New Zealand about me escaping. I was never coming back. I was going to emigrate. And that’s The Escaping Explorer, my third book. I have reasons for going which aren’t just that oh, I want to go and see that place.

Jo: That’s so funny because I went backpacking in Australia and New Zealand fully intending to come home and on the way home, I met a man, as you do, and ended up staying for 11 years.

Karen: Wish I’d met a man in Australia. Do you know, I would really happily have stayed in Australia but at my age, it was pretty impossible to…

Jo: With the points.

Karen: Yeah, points. Unless I had 800,000 pounds to buy my own business, or I found myself an Australian who took a fancy, yeah, I was a bit stymied. It was more likely that I was going to get into New Zealand, but even that proved too difficult for me.

Jo: When you said that I had a terrible time that year and I just had to go, and I guess that’s something that I also think is so important about travel. I’ve done the same. Again, it’s the getting away gives you perspective, instead of sitting in your memories and your difficult thoughts, you can escape to do that. So I’m completely with you there.

It’s very much a way to change your mindset by physically changing your scene.

Karen: Absolutely. I came back, I hadn’t got any of the answers but I felt a lot better about everything by the time I came back. And it was great because of the internet these days, I was sustained by writing my blog. So I was staying in touch with people and that made me view where I was in much more detail.

It made me look at places and research places so I could write a proper travel blog for people. And that was lovely because I do like writing and I like entertaining my friends. So it was a really lovely way to travel around in a camper van, you just sort of decide where you’re going tomorrow, if you like it where you are, you just stay, you just go, and oh, it was just a wonderful escape of, again, not having any rigid, I must go to work today.

Every day just melded into another and you just went where the wind blew you that day or however you felt and whatever you wanted to do, it was marvelous.

Jo: Yes, we all need those periods. So this is the Books and Travel Show.

Apart from your own book, what are a few that you recommend either about Antarctica or wider travel books you love?

Karen: In terms of the Antarctic, I obviously read quite a lot before I went because I suddenly realized I probably should read up where I was going. So there’s a marvelous book. So there was one by Diane Preston called A First-Rate Tragedy.

That looked at the Scott expedition to the South Pole and how it failed versus the Norwegian team. That was a brilliant book. That explained the build-up to them going to the South Pole and all the little mini-adventures they did, just a marvelous book.

And of course, I have to mention Robert Swan’s book. Robert Swan and Roger Mears wrote a book called In the Footsteps of Scott, which was they were recreating the exact route that Scott took. It’s just really fascinating because it’s a lot more about the people dynamics and how the team got on with each other.

And then there are fascinating appendices about the physiology of being an adventurer in the Antarctic, and how many calories you need to eat, and the impact it has on your body. So, fascinating for me. And, of course, Ernest Shackleton is just one of my all-time heroes, and his tale of the endurance and how he managed to return everybody without loss of life is just beyond amazing.

But a rather obscure book about that is a book called Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition 1914-1915 by Caroline Alexander. It’s written from the perspective of the ship’s cat. It’s beautiful. It’s such a gorgeous book, and the ending is really, really sad. So you need tissues for the ending. But I just loved that book. It was just so quirky and different. Those are my favorite Antarctic books.

And then I do like witchy writers. Obviously, Bill Bryson, you can’t go wrong. I really loved his The Lost Continent where he travels around small-town America. He really reveals different sides of America than the one that we all think of New York and the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.

He’s going to the Rust Belt and talking about the poverty and the really difficult life that people in Middle America quite often have. I found that fascinating. Tony Hawks’ Round Ireland With A Fridge, love that book. Very funny. Tony Hawks, very funny comedian. I particularly liked it because I knew Tony Hawks from when I was at university, he used to come into the Pheasant & Firkin and play the piano quite regularly. So I had that little affiliation with him.

And then last year, I read The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. She and her husband did the coastal path. Again, that’s quite a remarkable tale. I was particularly attracted to it because I was going down to the Isle of Purbeck last summer and I was doing some of the coastal paths. So it had a nice alignment for me, but clearly, I did it in a lot more luxury than her and her husband did.

Jo: Where can people find you and your book and everything you do online?

Karen: I have a website for my book because I’ve got a business book on there as well. It’s karenespley.com. That’s got The Impulsive Explorer and How To Create a Profitable Business is my other one. And there are other little bits of interviews and press stuff on there. You can find me on LinkedIn. And yes, I think those are probably the two key places and of course my books are available on Amazon.

The audiobook’s just come out now so you can get it audio, Kindle, or paperback. But I far prefer if you bought it from my website, and you get a signed copy if you buy it from my website. Who can resist such a thing?

Jo: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Karen. That was great.

Karen: Thank you very much for having me. Lovely chatting with you.

Photo credits: Header photo and shareables. Photo by Cassie Matias on Unsplash

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