Walking and Climbing

Cardiff Adventure Film Festival is on from 13th -15th January next year, and one of the speakers is local lad Richard Parks. You may have seen the 3 part documentary earlier this year on BBC1 about how he achieved the 7 summits and the Poles in less than 7 months.

I was at a talk he gave here at Cardiff University last night, and it was excellent. He's a terrific speaker, very entertaining, and ok, he's not as funny as Andy Kirkpatrick, but that would be hard, but if you get the chance to go and hear him, I'd strongly recommend it.

One of the things that really impressed me was the financial sacrifice he made to do this challenge, and he's still raising money for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

I'd never really been that impressed with him as a rugby player, and indeed he said last night that he was a bit of an 'almost man' in international rugby, but I'm well impressed with what he's done since he retired.