Our Aims

• Planning, organisation and fundraising
• experience of personal challenge and adventure
• Awareness of strengths, weaknesses and potential
• Individual initiative and independent thought
• Broadened Outlook
• Effective teamwork and leadership
• Sense of community
• Practical exploration and fieldwork skills
• Balance enjoyment with preservation of wild environments
• Formal reporting processes

To read an article in full, click one of the headlines below:

• 2010 Expedition Blogs Quick Links
• Anglo Omani 2011 Desert Expedition
• Tim Stott's Research Gets Published...
• Ye And Leader Andy Ruck Writes His First Book!
• Fantastic Website: Tanzania 2004
• BSES Southern Endurance 2008 On Tv
• BSES Thanks Their Patrons
• Polar Bears, Walruses And Icebergs: Arctic Pictures By Wildlife Photographer Paul Souders
• Life In The Jungle
• 2011 Expeditions - Current Line Up

I've been a writer for as long as I can remember, – composing detailed reports on every scout camp I went on, for example - but something of an early breakthrough came when I was a BSES Young Explorer in Svalbard in 2002.  Encouraged by positive feedback on my entries in the “Geology Fire” diary, I produced a blow-by-blow account of the whole trip, won the journal writing competition, and with it a handshake from Prince Andrew at the RGS.  I could, then, go so far as to say that this may never have happened without BSES.

 

I always aspired to write a travel book one day.  And of all the adventures I've had since that early Svalbard experience (among them returning as a mountain leader with BSES in Ladakh in 2008), this post-University trip through South America offered the most material. 

 

On the surface the book describes a journey from Buenos Aires to Lima, in which we are robbed at knife-point in Northern Argentina, climb a 6,000m peak in Bolivia, and are stranded on a snow-bound high-level trek in Peru.  But it aims to go deeper than that, examining – via several forays into social anthropology, which I have a masters in - the reasons why people travel, and the at-times unequal relationship between tourists and locals.

 

I've had a lot of positive feedback on the book so far, not least from Adventure Travel magazine, who gave it a very positive review last month.  My publishers and I, however, are still doing all we can to spread the word among adventurous types such as anyone involved with BSES.

 

The best way to buy the book, from my point of view, is to order it from a bookshop such as Waterstones – as once they have several orders, they then begin to stock it on their shelves.  It is also available, however, from websites such as Amazon, and directly from Pegasus Publishers.  Check out my blog and Facebook page too...

 

"The Object of the Society is to advance the education of young people by providing inspirational, challenging, scientific expeditions to remote,wild environments and so promote the development of their confidence, teamwork, leadership, and spirit of adventure and exploration."