Jen Benson: Adventure guidebook writing and camping around the UK for a year

What if you could go camping all over the UK for a year and write books off the back of your outdoors adventures?

Jen Benson is my guest in this episode and she and her husband Sim are outdoor adventure guidebook authors, travel writers and long-distance runners. Their books include Wild Running, The Adventurer’s Guide to Britain, Short Runs in Beautiful Places and Amazing Family Adventures.

(Photo: Jen Benson with her husband and co-author, Sim)

Jen and Sim have two children and outside of this coronavirus period, they travel to places like the Cairngorms, the Lake District and the Isles of Scilly to research running and walking routes for their books.

Jen and Sim have worked tirelessly to create this outdoors lifestyle for their family and they’ve had to make a lot of big decisions to get there. One of these was deciding to live in a tent and go camping for a year!

(Photo: Jen with the couple’s dog in the Lake District)

I’d planned to meet up with Jen and go for a walk together, but because of Coronavirus we chatted from our homes instead.

I wanted to find out why Jen and her husband decided to pursue a more outdoors lifestyle, how they got into adventure guidebook writing and how it all works around family life.

(Photo: Jen, Sim and their two children spent a year living in this tent in 2015)

I hope you enjoy this episode and Jen’s story. Listen out for her tips for getting into outdoor adventure writing and don’t forget that at the end of the episode, there are some sounds of nature, all recorded by you, the listeners!

You’ll find Jen and Sim Benson on Instagram @jenandsim and for more information about their work and books, head to their website, Adventure Places.

If would be fantastic if you could rate, review and subscribe to The Outdoors Fix (it helps listeners find us) and please feel free to spread the word to your family and friends!

Thanks!

Liv x

(Photo: Some of the books that Jen and Sim Benson have co-authored)

The Outdoors Fix is proudly supported by Ellis Brigham Mountain Sports – stores nationwide and online offering everything you need to equip you for the best outdoors experience.

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Jen Benson: Adventure guidebook writing and camping around the UK for a year

James Michael Forrest, aka ‘Mountain Man’