The Next Challenge

Tag: 2016 Grant

  • Walking the Length of New Zealand

    Walking the Length of New Zealand

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    Tim Moss
    in

    Next Challenge Grant winner Chase Lewine and his partner, Eve, recently completed the Te Arora Trail, a 3,000km walk that runs the full length of New Zealand’s two main islands. They encountered mud baths, cyclones, cheeky Kea birds and wild pig hunters. But, as with so many tales of adventure, it is the stories of…

  • Scoot the Loop: 150-miles around London on a kick-scooter

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    Tim Moss
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    Last year, Next Challenge Grant winner Bex Band kicked a scooter 150 miles around the ‘London LOOP’. In her grant application, written in July 2016, she wrote: Myself and my husband have never done anything like this before. We are very ordinary – I am a secondary school teacher and my husband is an account…

  • Running the Channel Islands

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    Tim Moss
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    The Channel Islands might not be the first destination that springs to mind when planning an expedition but it is eactly where Next Challenge Grant winner, Amanda McDonnell, chose for her adventure earlier this year. She ran 110 miles across the five main islands over the course of a week. Her story is below. In…

  • Cycling a Beach Cruiser Around Costa Rica

    Cycling a Beach Cruiser Around Costa Rica

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    Tim Moss
    in

    On first reading, nothing about ‘cycling a beach cruiser around Costa Rica’ sounds especially tough. It sounds like a fun trip, somewhere warm. The reality, however, is that Next Challenge Grant winner Dylan Haskin had quite an adventure. A month spent cycling 900 miles on a bike with no gears. Three days straight cycling uphill…

  • A thousand miles barefoot across South Africa

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    Tim Moss
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    2016 Next Challenge Grant winner Thommo Hart recently walked and ran one thousand miles across South Africa, with his friend Simphiwe Ngcobo. They dragged carts filled with their supplies across tar so hot you could fry an egg on it (which they did). They marched through sand and over rocks with their feet rubbed raw,…

  • Cycling 2,000 miles through Europe

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    Tim Moss
    in

    Charlie and Sam King were winners of a 2016 Next Challenge Grant. They used their money for a big cycling trip across Europe inspired by their dad who had done a similar ride aged 17 but had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Charlie and Sam were partly inspired by their dad’s attitude to…

  • Cycling the Welsh Three Peaks

    Cycling the Welsh Three Peaks

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    Tim Moss
    in

    Cycling between, walking up and swimming on the slopes of Snowdon, Cadair Idris and Pen y Fan. That was the plan for 2016 Next Challenge Grant winner Heather Jones. She hadn’t planned, however, to get buried by snow in a bivvy bag. Her trip turned out to be a little more dramatic than she’d anticipated.…

  • Running Around the Channel Islands

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    Tim Moss
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    Applications for the 2017 Next Challenge Grant closed last Friday. We’ll have to wait a while before we find out who’s going to win but, in the meantime, there are still plenty of winners from 2016 who are up to exciting things. One of those people is Amanda McDonnell who will be setting off later…

  • Failure is My Fear (Worse Would Be Not Trying)

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    Tim Moss
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    Heather Jones is about to set off to cycle between, hike up and swim on the slopes of the Welsh Three Peaks. She was one of the winners of last year’s Next Challenge Grant and has very kindly been loaned one of Simon Stanforth’s excellent expedition bikes for the trip. Below, Heather explains what’s motivated…

  • Nate’s Big Commute

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    Tim Moss
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    We’ve had some big expeditions come through The Next Challenge Grant: running 5,000 miles around the coast of Great Britain and crossing Kyrgyzstan on foot to name two. But we’ve also had some smaller adventures too like cycling the Berlin Wall and up Alpe d’Huez and today we have another. Nathan Freeman’s idea was as…

  • 5 Nights in 5 Bothies with a 5 Year Old

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    Tim Moss
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    Anyone who applies for The Next Challenge Grant has to summarise their idea in a single sentence. I get people to do that partly because I think it’s good practice to be get your pitch as succinct as possible. It’s also partly because it takes ages to read the hundreds of applications I get so…

  • Running Across Kyrgyzstan

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    Tim Moss
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    Grant winner Jenny Tough has recently returned from a remarkable trip: running the length of Kyrgyzstan. My first ever expedition was to Kyrgyzstan so I’ve got a soft spot for the place but even without my rose tinted memories it would be hard to conclude that running across a Central Asian mountain range was anything…