Sue Stockdale speaks to adventurer, author, and deep thinker Ed Ley-Wilson. Ed shares insights from his life exploring both the outdoors and the mind. From kayaking the rugged west coast of Scotland to reflecting on resilience, solitude, and the power of slowing down, Ed reveals how adventure – whether on land, sea, or within ourselves – shapes our engagement with the world. He discusses the lessons he learned from legendary explorer John Ridgway, the importance of self-reliance, and how his journey led to personal growth and a deeper appreciation for community, nature, and slowing down. The episode offers profound insights on embracing curiosity and confronting fears to live a more fulfilling life.
About Ed Ley-Wilson
Ed lives in Inverness, Scotland and has over thirty years of working and engaging with business, community, educational, social and environmental issues throughout the Highlands. He has first-hand knowledge of the tourism and salmon farming industries, particularly the latter, and has engaged directly with most of Scotland’s two hundred salmon farms and the businesses around them from Shetland to Argyll on many occasions. He understands well the impact jobs have on sustaining remote Highland communities and he has engaged at senior level with communities, business owners, NGOs, Regulators and Government on the full range of issues pertinent to living and working in the Highlands.
Ed has also chaired his local Community Trust, he has co-founded the charity ‘Day1’ working with disadvantaged young people, and he has chaired Coille Alba, an environmental charity re-establishing Scottish native woodlands and eradicating non-native invasive species. With a string of expeditions to mountains and seas around the world, Ed is no stranger to hardship and his 2022 journey through Highland seas in the worst June/July weather for years is no exception. With a fish farming background, a past life on a remote Highland croft with access only by sea, and many years of sea kayaking under his belt, the ocean environment and the communities perched on its edge continue to be a source of inspiration and exploration. Long self-supported kayaking journeys in Norway and southern Patagonia are underpinned by his years of negotiating the fickle seas in and around the Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland and the Scottish Mainland. In addition to his kayaking ventures, Ed has run 1200 miles of the Great Wall of China (1988) and the 2000 mile length of the Himalayas (1990). He also has two books to his name, ‘The Himalayan Shuffle’ and ‘Kayaking the Sea Roads.
Key Quotes
- “Adventure isn’t just about the physical challenge; it’s about how we engage with the world around us and what we learn from it.”
- “Solitude teaches you resilience in a way nothing else can -you have to sit with your thoughts and find your own way through them.”
- “Whether on the sea or in life, you can’t always control what happens, but you can control how you respond to it.”
- “The lessons I learned from John Ridgway weren’t just about survival; they were about self-reliance, discipline, and understanding your own limits.”
- “Slowing down and disconnecting from the noise of the modern world is one of the greatest gifts adventure can offer.”
- “It’s not a weakness to not know stuff. It’s a strength actually”.
Time Stamps
01:57 Early Adventures and Influences
03:33 Lessons from the Wild
04:31 The Philosophy of Adventure
05:42 Kayaking the Sea Roads
10:07 Reflections on Highland Communities
16:27 The Importance of Time and Space
21:30 Embracing Uncertainty and Curiosity
23:06 The Role of Yoga in Kayaking
25:54 The Journey of Self-Discovery
35:39 Balancing Life and Future Plans
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Ed Ley-Wilson Transcription
Sue: Welcome to the podcast Ed. Great to speak to you today from the Highlands of Scotland, I think, isn’t it?
Ed: Yes. Sparkling days up here, blue skies. It’s always blue skies up here. Of course.
Sue: I always love speaking to people who are adventuring and it strikes me from what I’ve know of you and what I’ve read about you, you seem to be a bit of an inner adventurer and an outer adventurer.
Early Adventures and Influences
Ed: Yeah, I guess so. I don’t see adventure as something separate, something that you only do outside you know what I mean? I think probably a bit of a mindset really. And where does that come from? I don’t know, but have been blessed actually, you mentioned that I live up in Scotland. I live right up in the north just now, and I’ve lived further north. When I think I was 19, I went to stay with a guy called John Ridgway who had an adventure school up in the far northwest. Do you know John?
Sue: I do. I do know of John Ridgeway, yes, but I don’t know him personally.
Ed: Quite a character, he is now 86 and he’s still, he is still a big guy with a big personality.But back in the day he gave, you know I went to work with him at his adventure school, and he gives you this tremendous sense of space and sense of responsibility. You take responsibility for equipment and lots of people, lots of people coming up from the south and from abroad actually, to engage in leadership and teamwork type training. And so it’s a very adventurous life. But then in the wintertime, of course, the Adventure School closed down he took me off to to Peru. I was a donkey really. I carried a huge pack and moved very slowly, and I should mention Marie-Christine here, his wife as well, who’s, who’s as much a part of it as, as he is. But they showed me how, they showed me what was possible and that if want to have a, a bit of adventure in life, you just have to think a little differently. Anything was possible to that guy. So if there was an ocean, it was, it was there to be experienced and crossed if need be. we didn’t just go to Peru and look at the tourist sites, we went way off road on quite an adventure. He wrote a book about it actually. So I guess maybe I was open to that sort of stuff from an early age but then you meet these people who show you how to think a little differently. John was certainly one of those.
The Philosophy of Adventure
Sue: And then how did you take that learning that you got from him? And how did that shape some of the adventures you then got up to? You’ve been kayaking in Patagonia, you’ve run long distances as well. What, what was it John that inspired you in some way to do those or something else?
Ed: of course there’s inspiration Yeah. From individuals and John would certainly be one of those. But I met other people too There’s a guy called Brian Cunningham who told me how to run in the hills he was about 20 years older than me and we went running, I was about 20 and he was 40 something. And we went into the Scottish Mountains and we got to the top of the hills gasping for breath. And he looked at me with this steely look, and he said, right, Ed, are you ready? I said, what do you mean? What do you mean what’s going on? And he just set off down these hills on this rough ground.
There’s no track. He just exploded out of the, out of the heather and set off. And I, I tried my best to stay with him. And there are guys like that who just say, oh yeah, you can do this. you don’t have to stick to a path all your life. Stick to some way that’s set out for you by your background or your education or your job. Indeed, you can reach out beyond that occasionally. And so I think folk like John and Brian and then, and then I’ve met other people who, who go on intellectual journeys, intellectual, adventures and when all these people come together, all these influences come together, then yeah, you just start looking at life a little differently. If you can move into any space, whether it’s a physical space the mountains or on the sea, or whether it’s in your workspace, there is adventure to be had wherever you’re looking. ’cause adventure is about popping your nose around the corner. It’s about looking over the horizon, isn’t it? Do you know what I mean?
Lessons from the Wild
Sue: Yeah, absolutely.
Ed: my Kiwi, there’s a couple of Kiwi guys who inspire me and kayakers both. They said to me, all you’ve gotta do is poke your nose out. Ed, you just gotta poke your nose out. And what they meant was when you get to the headland and you can see that the sea is raging past the headland and the wind’s blown offshore, you can turn back. Yeah. Or you could just nudge your way out you nudge the tip of your kayak, the bow of your kayak out beyond the headland into the rough water. And then you just wait and you see what comes. And slowly but surely you acclimatised to this new way of being in this new weather and off you go. So it’s it’s a mindset. I think you could be adventurous wherever you are.
Kayaking the Sea Roads
Sue: What better way to put it? Ed, and that really came out for me in reading your most recent book, Kayaking The Sea Roads, because that’s a journey that you take up the coastline of the Scottish Highlands. What prompted you to undertake that journey? Because this book is far more than just an adventure story or a travel diary. There’s a lot of that kind of inner inward reflection on yourself and the communities that you’re traveling past but before you even undertook the journey, what, what made it happen in the first place?
Ed: Firstly, thank you. ’cause yeah, it was much more than just a physical journey. I. Kayaking is a fabulous way to be in the world. And maybe we’ll talk about that later. I think I got to mid fifties and I’ve had to a tremendously exciting parts of life. And and I was in a job where it was really challenging. There was an awful lot of people that was dashing all over the country, all over the UK, flying here and there, senior level business, Lots of responsibility for lots of people and lots of money, and I was really enjoying it. But I started to feel maybe I’m losing myself a little bit into this one aspect of life, which is the work. And then a few things happened. Five of my friends passed away in quite short order. some of them quickly, some of them not so quickly, another friend had a life changing incident and ended up in a wheelchair.
And so there’s an element in your late fifties, mid to late fifties when I started to feel a little bit mortal. And then you ask yourself, well, I’ve always wanted to do this journey up the west coast ’cause there’s so much I’ve been engaged with my job has that allowed me to engage with communities from Shetland down to Argyll and out to the Hebrides. And you pick up an awful lot of what’s happening in communities there the difficult bits as well as the positive bits. And, I wanted a bit of time to explore some of that. There was a bit of me that thought, well, if I don’t do it now, then when am I going to do it? And I love a bit of a journey. I like to think about places where I’m visiting, so it’s not just a physical thing. The physical thing is always there, but it needs to be an intellectual journey for me as well. So yeah, I think there was a bit about if I don’t do it now, when am I going to do it? And I guess what came unexpectedly was a bit of self discovery.
I don’t think you set out, not at my age anyway, you don’t set out to self-discover. But it would be arrogant to think, you know, yourself well even in your fifties. And I think you need to be open to the possibility that maybe you don’t know yourself very well. So when you cast yourself out, especially alone, I was on my own this time, normally my kayaking, I’ve gone out with pals and it’s different, when you’re with your mate, you’re paddling along, you chat, so you’re chatting about your kids or your job or whatever it is, so you are in the space, on the sea, out in the west, but you’re not really in that space. You’re actually back home chatting about things. Whereas when you’re on your own, you’re very exposed and that sort of solitude versus loneliness piece was something I was really keen to explore. I’ve been on my own many times before, but never for this extended period. So there was a bit of self-discovery as well, which I haven’t harped on about I hope too much in the book age 50 plus. Nobody wants to hear about that, but it does happen, you know, it does happen and if you’re open to it can be a wonderful journey of its own actually.
Sue: Well, we hope to hear a little bit about that in this conversation, even if it’s not written in your book Ed, because that’s what really inspires other people we’ve found from our listeners and previous guests we’ve had on this show is that when they reflect about what things they’ve learned for themselves that can be an inspiration to others. So we’ll get into that. One thing I was looking at today, I was reminded of a quote, I think it was Marcel Proust said about traveling somewhere and then coming back to the same place and seeing it with new eyes.
Ed: Yeah.
Reflections on Highland Communities
Sue: And I just wondered whether your journey, seeing the communities and the landscape that you knew from old, from the sea on your own at a different level as well, than being in a vehicle or on land. What did you notice? What did you observe from that perspective?
Ed: I do know this place well. I’ve had a lifetime of living and working here and engaging with communities with workplace as well. So it, it wasn’t like I was moving into a brand new space for me. When Robert and I went down to Patagonia, for instance that was a brand new space with a brand new way of being in the world, different language, all of that. That was different for me here, but what traveling by sea gives you is a chance to, first of all, you notice why everything wins where it is. So if you take the map, we have this view of the map, certainly in Britain anyway, Britain’s always in the middle, isn’t it? It’s always in the center of things. And it’s always upright and and the rest of the world pans out alongside, I suspect if you were an East coast Chinese person, you might put yourself in the middle of a map and Britain would be way off on the edge. So do that for Scotland. the map, turn it on its side so you have north facing to the right and south facing to the left. And you’ll, you’ll capture a wee glimpse of Northern Ireland. And then you’ll see all the islands all strung together. Take away all the roads. Take away all the modern communications networks and put in place people traveling by sea because it’s such rough ground out on the west. That before the combustion engine came along, you need to be pretty fit to have a pretty good horse to move around by land. So everybody came and went by sea. I’ve called my book the Kayaking the Sea Roads because it’s like a road, it’s a watery road. And it’s endless of course. ’cause you can travel between islands and go as far as you go, but it interconnects people and place. So when you go to places like Lochinver for instance, out on the edge there, you realise, oh, now I understand why it is where it is, because it’s enclosed. In a wee harbour everything came and went by sea. And so that’s where people settled. So there’s a physical piece there, which becomes quite obvious actually when you’re journeying by sea.
Sue: so you’re giving us a visual perspective. I’m wondering what also you noticed about being close to nature from sitting in the kayak.
Ed: Yeah, you’ve just prompted me because, there is another perspective that you get and that is the fragility of West coast communities. If you travel everywhere by car, or as we do nowadays, we fly in a plane, don’t we? You lose all perspective of space and time ’cause you’re traveling at such speed, over such distance. when you slow all that down, you move by sea. Especially if you are moving in a kayak, you’re moving pretty slowly. You know, you haven’t got an engine behind you forcing your way through the weather. gotta move pretty slowly. and what you notice is the fragility of these tiny communities. Way out on what other people call the edge. I take some issue with thinking about the Highlands as the edge. I think that’s probably part of our problem, that we haven’t invested long enough.
Unlike the Norwegians who see the edge as part of the centre, to see our edges as edges and lack of investment often follows that sort of mental perspective. But when you travel to these places and you see how fragile they are, and if you care about communities, which I do, I’ve lived and worked there and I want to see Highland communities thrive. It needs care and it needs investment and it needs jobs. And it needs a land ownership scheme that works for people living on the ground. And it needs an intelligent tourism that isn’t going to turn our places into toy towns. Because without that sort of infrastructure piece, without knowledge based jobs economy, these communities fragile as they are, will potentially die away. And I’m seeing it actually, I’m seeing some communities on my journey turning into places that only tourists live. So of course, in the wintertime, the winds go black. There’s a term on the west known as called the new black houses. A black house was a black house ’cause it’s was full of smoke. ’cause the fire was always inside and the smoke would go up through the thatch and they were dark. But they were warm enough to protect from the winter. But nowadays, the black house is a black window in the wintertime, a window without a light on because the person owning the house doesn’t live there. And this is what’s gonna kill the community. So I think the fragility of the communities is certainly one thing, that you really do notice.
Sue: What’s, what’s coming up in my mind as you’re saying that Ed is technology because knowledge based workers can be located anywhere in the world if they’ve got access to the internet. Is that an issue then in the Highlands?
Ed: I think you have pinned it I think knowledge based economy is where it’s at. You’ve gotta look at what the Danes are doing. And the Norwegians have done, they pursue knowledge based economies. We don’t, we haven’t on the west, you know, I can be a tourist as well, of course I can. But I think there’s levels of tourism that are not particularly knowledge based. The wages are low, the skills are low, skill requirement is low. And then it has this impact on housing that I’ve mentioned already. But technology could be used to enable, knowledge based workers to live wherever they want. So let’s have that. There’s a term I heard the other day it sounds a bit rude and it’s not but it’s called Willies, I think, which is working in London, living in Edinburgh. Great. So people are living in Edinburgh, but they’ve got a London based job, so why not? I haven’t sorted out an acronym for this one ’cause we need to sort about it, but why not live in Lewis, and work in Edinburgh using the knowledge based economy. and I don’t have a feel yet for how much that is promoted by Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the like. But perhaps that’s something we should think harder on because our communities, if we just rely on tourism and public sector then nothing’s going to change actually. Whereas why couldn’t we have engineering design people living in Lewis ’cause it’s a lovely place to live.
The Importance of Time and Space
Sue: Certainly you’re prompting some reflections about the ecosystem that exists in the Highlands, from the communities, to tourism and so on. Just by your observations here, Ed. I’m wondering if part of the reason that you did have the opportunity to get these reflections is because your journey was open-ended. You hadn’t set yourself, or at least from what I read in your book, you hadn’t set yourself a time scale to get from A to B to C in a given amount of time. So I’m wondering, how much allowing yourself time helped in some in the enjoyment of the journey?
Ed: Yeah, You, you obviously do lots of this stuff. ’cause I think having the time and that open end, that’s the first time I’ve ever done that because I had just retired and so all of a sudden you’ve got this amazing thing called space and time that’s available to you. And isn’t that a wonderful gift? Because up until now I’ve been, like everybody else, forced to holidays and all the rest. So but this time having that empty space and I was really determined not to set a target. Really determined. And there was two reasons for that. I think one was, that I just wanted my own space and time to to think and not to have other people pressuring me for this needs to be done, that needs to be done, what decisions we are making, et cetera.
I just wanted that complete space to think and therefore having the open end, enabled that completely. And then what I found was I didnt set out to write a book, for instance, I write a bit of a diary, but it was only gonna be a bit of a diary. But then something happened and it was something about this releasing yourself to space and time. I think something happened about a week in where this stuff just started to flow out to me. I was not unaware of all the issues that surround us in the Highlands here. But I started to really care and really think about it, and my brain opened up and when I came back, I looked back at my diaries, which are all handwritten in pencil, and there’s hardly any crossings out. This stuff just started to flow there’s no way I would’ve done that. If I construct something on an email you can go back and you can correct, can’t you? you can do all that. if I construct something at my desk, even handwritten, I’m looking at some notes I’ve got in the moment. It’s full of crossing out. Whereas out there, out there stuck in my tent. maybe the wind and the rain was another thing that was a good thing to happen. ’cause if you’re in your tent. If you’re always journeying and always moving and never reflecting, then never reflect. You have a lovely physical journey. But what about reflecting and I had such coarse weather. That was, in hindsight, probably a bit of a blessing. ’cause it added a certain edge to the trip. If it had been sunny days, and calm seas. Would my mind have opened up? Would I have spent time in the tent writing? Possibly not. So wind, weather, time, space, that’s what you need to put all these things together and something happens.
Sue: The other thing that you haven’t mentioned there, but was important, was you switched off your mobile phone.
Ed: Yeah, gotta switch off the mobile phone. Doesnt everybody wanna switch their mobile phone off at some point? I think the answer is no. I think a lot of people love their mobile phone and would be bereft without it. You know, there’s all this debate at the moment in the schools isn’t there about encouraging young people to switch off their mobile phones. I have a mobile phone. I use it all the time like everybody else, but I’m not addicted to it and I can put it down and my wife finds it exasperating when I don’t answer the calls when they come. But it doesn’t rule my life. It is a fantastic tool, a fantastic tool. And I did use it on occasion ’cause I had such coarse weather that I did use it to get a forecast. I’m a natural forecaster, which means I know an awful lot less than the professional forecasters, but I like to travel looking at the tide and understanding whether it’s coming or going, it’s moving towards neeps or springs. I like to look at the clouds and understand what’s happening with the wind and what’s coming. I like to react to the natural world as I see it and as I experience it rather than. Rather than knowing what’s gonna happen, a day ahead, a week ahead, that removes some of the adventure.
I’ll give you another for instance, I have a friend who is inclined to do a long run in the Himalayas. I did a long run in the Himalayas in 1990 with my pal. The maps were really basic. The ridges were black lines. The rivers were blue lines, and there was the occasional village and town named. And we went over sort of 2000 miles. But you didn’t know what would lay ahead. Not really. You had no idea. There was no internet to look at and my friend who’s doing it now they’ll know where they’re gonna be every day. They’ve seen pictures of where they’re gonna be. They can book a place in a small village in the middle of the Himalayas. I mean, It’s different. Its different. And the next generation will pursue their adventures in their own ways. But I think sometimes knowing things in advance and knowing everything, you end up experiencing a little less. So yeah, stick your mobile phone away. Stop trying to understand everything and know everything in advance and release yourself to what happens. It’s a lovely thing. I can get quite fluffy talking about this stuff ’cause it is kind of a bit fluffy. I, perhaps haven’t found a way to articulate it properly. But there’s real value in just feeling your way in the world occasionally not feeling, you have to know everything in advance.
Sue: As you’re speaking Ed, I can’t help but reflect that. Perhaps sometimes people don’t want to do that because they’re fearful of what they may discover themselves or about the world around them.
Embracing Uncertainty and Curiosity
Ed: yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. But why should we be afraid of, of not knowing things. Was it Socrates or Plato I can never remember who said why is this? Is he who knows what he does not know? There’s a fabulous release in that if you take that in the spirit of which it’s intended, it’s not a weakness to not know stuff. It’s a strength actually. And when you realize that you don’t know stuff, you have an opportunity then to be curious and go away and find out, and there lies happiness. For me, being curious is part of being happy and it also helps in your, in your work. If you think that you have to know everything as the big boss, eventually you’re gonna fall. Whereas when you realize that you actually don’t know very much then you surround yourself with people who do know stuff that you don’t know, and as a team, you go forward together and you’re much stronger. So, yeah, not knowing things, putting the phone down feeling your way, asking questions. That’s an interesting life for me. I’ve had an interesting life living like that.
Sue: And the one thing that you haven’t mentioned yet, and, and I think for our listener, they may, may find this again slightly out of the ordinary, is that yoga played quite a large role in your experience during this kayaking trip Ed, which is not, not what people might think of from a kayaker.
Ed: do you not think?
Sue: I don’t know. I don’t know.I haven’t come across a kayaker yet who’s so openly talked about yoga, playing a role in helping them on their journey.
The Role of Yoga in Kayaking
Ed: Im addicted, Sue, Im addicted.
Sue: Tell me about yoga.
Ed: How long have you got? I’m kind of addicted now. I don’t think I have an addictive personality, but I am addicted to yoga now. There’s lots of different types of yoga. And if you go onto the web and, root about, you’ll see, you’ll see folk who want you to think about the clouds and you’ll see folk who will do sort of power yoga. But yoga is much more than the physical endeavour, although that is incredibly challenging. If you want to take it to a level, it’s incredibly challenging. And I started when I was 40, pretty skeptical used to running about going in straight lines on a bike, in a kayak. And then I discovered this way of being and, and how weak I was when I started doing yoga.
I realized, I thought I was quite strong. I can run up this hill, but many kinds of strength aren’t there? And I was pretty weak actually. I was very inflexible. I had muscles that, that were very good in moving in one direction but as soon as I tried moving them in other directions, started to fall apart. And so I just investigated it and I think I’ve probably done my 10,000 hours now. And when you’ve got to that level of 10,000 hours, I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert. I don’t teach or anything like that. But I do engage in it every day. And I wouldn’t be without it. It’s a form of embodied cognition. I dunno if I’ve read that or made it up myself. I’d love to think I’ve made it up myself. But it’s all about the mind. It’s all about educating the mind and understanding yourself and dealing with adversity, dealing with change. Dealing with challenge. That’s what yoga is about in your mind. And you use lots of tools to do that. The physical tool is one of them. The meditative tool is another one. The pranayama or the breathing is a really powerful tool as well. It’s part of it. and when all of that comes together, I find great happiness in it and it’s a quiet happiness. It’s outta the way. I don’t do my yoga in front of everybody. I do it quietly. I have a mat when I’m outside. You don’t need a mat. You have the grass as a mat. there’s a great joy. I tell you, if anybody out there is considering a bit of yoga at whatever level, go onto a cliff top, pick a calm day, go onto a cliff top. listen to the birds, feel the breeze on your body, and and just engage in a bit of yoga and you’ll never look back. Have I persuaded you Sue?
The Journey of Self-Discovery
Sue: To me it speaks to this point about one’s inner adventure, connecting with senses slowing down and the connection between body and mind
Ed: yeah, it is.
Sue: and that sounds like that that was an important part of your kayaking journey to have a yoga as well to ground you in a way perhaps.
Ed: Does it ground you? Yes, it does. I guess it does ground you. I think it’s part of the sort of slow travel the slower way of being in the world when you’re younger. I wanted to conquer things and and, and there’s still a bit of me that does that. I’m pursuing my Munros at the moment, but I’m not doing them too rabidly, I’d like to think I might finish the list by the time I’m 65, something like that.
Sue: Now for those that aren’t in, in Scotland, the Munros are the, the mountains over 3000 feet high? Is that right?
Ed: that’s right. Yeah.
Sue: And there’s 277.
Ed: 277 ish. There you go. I’m not even quite sure. It’s a list, but it leads you into some wonderful empty spaces and keeps you fit. and you go with your pals. It’s all positive, it’s all great. So there’s a bit of me that’s still target driven for sure. And, actually if you think about it, most of our journey needs some sort of target, you need to set yourself some sort of target just to set out I’d be a terrible wonderer. I wouldn’t wonder well at all. I kind of envy those who can and write about it. I do need some sort of target. And this kayak journey had definitely had some loose target to start from the Clyde where the old puffers used to come out from the Clyde with coal and wood and things and deliver to remote highland communities. and I wanted to start there and move through the highlands as the sea and the wind allowed me, but ultimately finish up where, so my own highland journey began up in the northwest, just shy of Cape Wrath. So yeah, you have that target, but how you move between point A and B is has changed over time. When I was young, it was as quickly and as fast as possible. And then you’d exchange notes with your mates but that, that has matured over time, I think, into something that is much more an intellectual journey than it’s that physical one. ,
Sue: Just coming back to, to right at the start of our conversation, Ed, and you were talking about John Ridgway and some of the things that you learned from him, and also in the book, it seems to me you’re very values led that that how you show up in the world and what you do are, is very much guided by your values. So how did you become aware of what your values were? When in your career did that happen for you?
Ed: That’s a really good question. I think it probably crept up on me a bit. I suspect John, when I met John and MC first as a young guy. I was a young man. And so they would’ve been a big influence. And he had three principles by which you were expected to live if you wanted to make a success of things up there. And they were, and I can trip them off actually even, whatever it is, 40 years on. Positive thinking, self reliance, and leaving people and things better than you find them. Goodness me, if John’s listening to this podcast, he’ll be cockahoop. Those three things, if you think about them, they’re really, really powerful and there are more nuanced, values in different parts of living.
You go to businesses and other organisations, there are more nuanced values you can find. But these three are pretty good. Sometimes the self-reliance piece is misinterpreted as a selfish piece. It’s actually not, it’s the other way around. It’s you put on your own mask on, on the plane to enable you to help the people around you. what self-reliance is about. I can trip those things off. So that was probably my first introduction to values, but. I’ve met some good people. I’ve worked, especially in the workplace. The workplace has been a wonderful space for learning about values where you’re engaged with large, sometimes large numbers of people and you have to find a common way forward and you have to find a way forward that doesn’t leave you feeling uneasy, that you’re doing something that is somehow wrong or, or damaging to others or damaging to the environment. Indeed. And I’ve had jobs that have sometimes been nudging at the edge of that. So what carries you through that, challenge are your values. And and I think I’ve got sort of four values of my own, which, which I quietly bounce everything off if I’ve got decisions to make. But I suppose John Ridgways values sort of sitting there deeply, quite deeply bedded.
Sue: So it just goes to show what an impact having an awareness of values can guide your decision making, the route you take in your career and your life.
Ed: I think it’s everything. I think if you’re going to lead, if you’re going to take people with you, you’re going to build a team that needs to face in the same direction to achieve a name, then you values are, are where it’s at, is where you start. and then you have your mission and there’s some business language you can use to describe this stuff. But I think always you should come back to your original values. And, that way you, you retain some integrity, and hopefully you retain your clear sense of direction as well. You don’t sort of veer off. I have seen lots of organisations in my time haven’t articulated values clearly, they don’t share them. And then as the environment changes around them, off they go, chasing this bit of money here or whatever it is, and they forget themselves and they become that they didn’t something new,
Sue: so in that vein, what were the values that you were holding in mind as you did your kayaking journey when the weather threatened to blow you off course
Ed: keep calm and carry on.
Ed:: I’ve got values that that enable me. They’re aspirational. Most of us have values that we don’t, we don’t necessarily adhere to all the time ’cause we are human beings and we fail. But we can have an intent. So I try to be kind and that that means that that’s applicable to people and to environment. I try to be curious and that’s been a wonderful value. That’s allowed me to poke my nose out. Listening well is key. Listening is about knowing what you do not know. And there are other people in the world who know so much more than I do, and I learn from other people. So learn to listen well, that’s a skill. then my final one is to keep moving which yeah, as you get older, especially if you’ve abused your body as much as I have over the years, things start to give. So keep moving. Yoga’s a big part of that. I do have a fifth one actually, which is turn upside down every day. But that’s for the yogis who are listening maybe.
Ed: But for this journey. I think the overriding piece here was resilience actually. And I know you, you and your husband deal with this in your own work. But there was such wet and windy weather, That I quite quickly was telling myself I needed to be resilient here I needed to explore what I thought resilience was. And I think when I was a younger man, I thought resilience was about being tough, And let, let the bad things bounce off you and that isn’t resilience at all. You know, resilience is about being, the strap line is to be agile, not fragile. So it’s about being open to change. It’s about understanding your emotions well. So recognising those emotions of fear or anger or anxiety, whatever they are. in a yogi fashion, why not? Allow them to be and explore them. Take time to explore them a little so that you can, you can counter any negative emotions that might be rising.
You’ve gotta be able to turn difficult things into positive things. That’s what being resilient is about. And for me, this journey, I mean, I’ve got a couple of mates who said I’d have jacked it after a week Ed. ’cause they were watching the weather, they were sitting at home or doing their work and the weather was really, really poor. And I had to pick little weather windows. I was up really early in the morning. Because you’d often get a little weather window in the morning. So it was light at about 4, 4 30. Well, getting light at four 30, certainly light by five. It took me an hour to get on the water. So I would often be on the water for five o’clock or five 30. Thats a pretty early rise. The kit’s always wet. Of course. Don’t forget that everything’s wet all the time, so you only dry out when you go into your tent and then your body heat dries it off. If you get sunshine, you stop, you lay everything out and you try and dry it off, but then it gets wet again. So learning to live with that endless onslaught of wind and weather and move between the squalls that’s a resilience piece so that I had to draw on this. So there’s a lot of self-learning in that and it’s so different when you’re on your own Sue. I don’t know if you’ve done much traveling on your own. I suspect you have, but it’s completely different, especially on the sea, because the sea will kill you in a jiffy, it doesn’t care that you are there. It hasn’t, there is no meaning to to the sea for you being sat, on it. and if you make a rash decision, or you try and conquer the thing,Then eventually it’s gonna come around and bite you in the ass. So moving carefully, being resilient believing that the storm will not last forever. There will be another weather window, holding onto that. I think that’s a value piece that stayed with me.
Sue: I’m just looking at your book title here. And it, it’s Kayaking the Sea Roads with the subtitle, exploring the Scottish Highlands, and I almost think that should be retitled Exploring Self. maybe not in the way that you’ve, written it specifically. And I think maybe there’s a book two, Exploring Self
Ed: thank, thank you for locking me to my desk for the next year.
Sue: or maybe we can just highlight it in this, in this conversation. So finally, I just want to take us forward into, moving. You talked about moving being an important value for you, being able to move and move on. What are you moving on to now? What’s taking up your time and attention?
Balancing Life and Future Plans
Ed:Well, the outdoors and being outdoors. I try and balance life and so that, I give time to family, time to friends, time to work and then time to myself and I. And one of my very good pals Dennis, who’s an incredibly clever man, I only ever learn off him. And he encouraged me to think about you know, balancing life more carefully. ’cause you can get awful caught up in things. And I am somebody who can get caught up in things. So I’m very caught up with my charity at the moment. that’s something that lies ahead. I run a charity with a team folk called Day1, and we work with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds here in the Highlands. And in fact, resilience is a key theme for us at the moment. There’s a whole chat to be had about youth resilience here. but so that’s taking up a lot of my time. We’ve got to an interesting part in our development 20 years on when, are looking to expand the service. So we run a foundation apprenticeship, for instance, and we’re hoping to be able to build something and offer a whole new set of foundation apprenticeships. So I’m really motivated by that. so I’m spending a lot of time on that. Then I have family duties. I have elderly rellies who need looking after. And that’s takes up a surprising amount of time actually. but it’s time well spent. Then the outdoors, of course, outdoors with friends. Sometimes without friends. Mostly with friends. The sea still draws. The West Coast is an hour and a half away. We are blessed up here. The mountains I was up in, some really remote hills, just the other day, just Tuesday. And two days out with an overnighter. I actually froze my proverbial off in the nighttime. Took all the wrong kit and but beautiful sunset, starry nights when you’re out in the middle of the night, And so I’ve got all that outdoor stuff and, and eventually I shall just succumb to the yoga and stand on one leg somewhere on a rock.
Sue: my final question to you, ed, and I ask this of many of our guests, is if they’re were fast forwarding in their life and their career and looking back, what do you hope your legacy will be for others?
Ed: God, no one’s asked me that. I, what would my legacy be? I would hope, do you know what? I’m gonna try and sum it up using my friend John Ridgway’s piece. I would hope I’ve left people and things better than I find them.
Sue: Mm. What a lovely way to end our conversation, Ed. It’s been wide ranging. It’s been thought provoking and it’s been very inspiring. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today and I would encourage our listener to take a look at that book, Kayaking the Sea Roads. Well worth a read. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Ed: It’s been a pleasure. We’ve hardly talked about kayaking. We’ve mostly talked about other stuff, but it’s it’s been great to get your questions and I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Sue: It’s kind of kayaking as a metaphor for life, isn’t it?
Ed: That’s it. That’s nice.
Sue: What a fascinating conversation with Ed Ley-Wilson. His perspective on adventure, resilience and the power of curiosity is a reminder that exploration is not just about where we want to go, it’s about how we experience the world around us. And if you would like to read more about Ed’s journey, be sure to check out his book, Kayaking the Sea Roads. And follow his work with the Day1 charity which helps young people build resilience and opportunity. You can find links to these things on the show notes. And as always if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review or share it with someone you could use a little bit of inspiration today. Thanks for listening and next time I will be speaking to adventurer, writer and TV presenter Alice Morrison who’s currently on a world first mission to become the first person to cross from the north to the south of Saudi Arabia on foot. I look forward to connecting with you then.
Sound Editor: Matias de Ezcurra
Producer: Sue Stockdale