Alex Gregory - DadVentures: Amazing Outdoor Adventures for Daring Dads and Fearless Kids

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

FIRST EDITION

Alex Gregory 2018

Illustrations Alex Gregory, unless otherwise stated

Cover design by Sim Greenaway HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover illustration Eiko Ojala 2018

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Alex Gregory asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein and secure permissions, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future edition of this book. All efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date of publication. These activities should be approached with caution and children should always be supervised by a responsible adult. If you follow any of the activities in this book you do so at your own risk, and the publisher and the author disclaim all responsibility for any harm that occurs as a result of undertaking the activities suggested in this book.

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Source ISBN: 9780008283704

Ebook Edition May 2018 ISBN: 9780008283711

Version: 2018-04-27

To my parents and grandparents, who showed me the value of being outdoors.

For my children, Jasper, Daisy and Jesse. Heres to making many more happy memories together under the big blue sky.

In descriptions of the activities in this book Ive generally assumed that you have one child of a particular age. You might, of course, have a number of children of a varying range of ages. Each activity can easily be tailored to fit the needs of multiple children of any age.

You cant keep a toad under your bed, it wouldnt be happy! Toads like living in the garden!

A toad, by Jasper.

These could so easily have been my mums words echoing around our house as a seven-year-old me tried to smuggle a creature into my room. But in reality this was a snatch of conversation I heard in the upstairs of our home as my partner Emily tried to persuade our son Jasper to put the toad hed brought into his bedroom, back outside into the front garden. Frogs and toads seem to be plentiful in the small garden of our rented cottage, and theyve provided us with some exciting evening adventures. A few years ago, in our last house, it was hedgehogs and before that, well, theres always something to do outdoors

There are five of us in the house two adults and three children but a whole host of other creatures seem to have joined our menagerie along the way. Emily is the one who keeps us all going. She feeds us all, looks after us and stops our lives from grinding to a screeching halt.

We first met at university many years ago. As I was going into our housing block from early rowing-training sessions on the river, shed be returning home from a night out with friends, living a far more typical university lifestyle than me. Wed stop and chat, and soon discovered that we got on very well. We enjoyed each others company, and I found I wanted to spend more time with her than in a boat on the river. That was something new and something that I couldnt ignore. We happily started to spend the rare free time we had together getting to know each other, understanding each other, and sharing dreams and future aspirations. Emily was incredibly patient. I was pursuing a seemingly impossible dream, meaning my free time was limited to almost nothing. This meant that very quickly in our relationship we recognised the value of quality time. My days were spent out on rivers, lakes or in the gym, essentially working a full-time job while at university. I didnt drink, I didnt socialise that much, I made as many lectures as I possibly could, but my life was focused on one specific thing: the Olympics.

I tried and I failed. Year after year I spent seven days a week, three times a day training, only to fall at the last hurdle. For so many different reasons I wasnt reaching my potential and was coming up well short of my goals. But I never gave up. When everyone disappeared off home for the university holidays, I remained, the only person in the block. Waking up that first morning was like a scene from a disaster movie in which everyone except me had disappeared. Emily had returned home to her family on the Isle of Wight, but I could never go back to my family home or go and visit hers because of training or racing. Thankfully, for me, Emily was prepared to stick with me as I pursued my sporting career on lakes and rivers in far-flung places around the world.

As time went by, we both graduated. Emily followed a career in teaching while I continued to battle it out for Olympic selection. We rented a tiny cottage in the centre of Henley-on-Thames and settled down, moving forward with our lives. Emily became an excellent primary-school teacher in a tough school on the outskirts of Reading, but things werent going so well for me and my sporting career was on the ropes. In a world in which performance is everything I was certainly falling short, so it was with a great deal of luck that I was selected to travel with the 2008 Olympic rowing team to Beijing as reserve.

It seemed to be a bittersweet ending to my career, because after this trip I had decided to walk away from the sport for ever, as I was obviously not cut out for life as a successful Olympic rower. But it was there, sitting on the sidelines in China, that everything changed for me as an athlete and for us as a couple. I returned home from China with renewed motivation and vigour, and set myself new goals, new challenges. I wasnt giving up just yet.

We werent quite expecting what life had in store for us, as a few brief months after my trip as Olympic reserve we discovered we were going to have our first child.

It was a shock a big shock and not exactly in my grand plan. I had just found myself on a new path, and for the first time I was starting to excel in the sport Id so nearly given up. There was a great deal of pressure on me to perform and I was only just beginning to do that, moving up the ranks within the team and reaching the position Id need to be in to start competing for medals on the world stage. Life had taken an unexpected turn, and although I felt incredibly unsure about what it might entail, Emily remained strong and positive, matter of fact and excited about the future.

It was always going to happen at some point. We had talked about having children and starting family life together, but I never imagined it would be this soon and at our age. I was really worried about other peoples reaction to our news, particularly my coach, Jrgen Grbler, who demanded complete commitment and the very top level of performance on a consistent, daily basis. Would he think I was being unprofessional and not committed to my sport? My place in the GB rowing team felt under threat.