Yestival 2016 in retrospect - A post by Thomas Ivor

I love Yestival, this year was my first time there and it was amazing. It was all held in a field near Pulborough in Sussex last weekend.

Yestival is all about meeting up with fellow adventurers and talking about your adventures in a big way which is what helped me come up with my own ideas. 

I met extraordinary adventurers like The Simonsen family, Jo Pickard, Dan Keely, Will Copestake, the Meek family, the Coxless Crew, Adam Conlon, Danny Bent, Dave Cornthwaite and TV adventurer Sean Conway. I had been invited to speak along with these amazing people.

There were tents that would be for the speakers to talk in, and the tents were called: Amazon, Mississippi, Nile, The Big Yes and Dreamcamp, which was the children’s area.

To prepare for the weekend, Daddy and I wrote a new talk. It was my first time speaking without slides, so I had to get my cue cards written and printed out so I could then rehearse them.

The day before, I got out all of the things that I would need to sleep in and my other things that I would need for my talk. (Bike, stand, luggage etc).

Finally we got in the car at 6:30 on Saturday morning and set off to go to Yestival. On the way there I practised my cards.

After a long journey round the M25 we arrived and were welcomed with open arms.

First, I listened to the first pitches of the day to see what it is like because I would need to do a pitch for my talk. You needed to wait your turn, and then tell everyone what your talk would be about - but you only got 20 seconds to speak! The audience then decided who they wanted to go and listen to.

Next, I had a look in the tent that I would be speaking in at lunchtime, which was the Amazon tent.

I had a small stage to stand on, a table, and my audience sat on hay bales. I also had my bike King Louis stood in front of me.

I set up quite early so that when my audience arrived I was ready to go.

Soon the time came. I was up against Dan Keely, The Coxless Crew and Tim and Kerry Meek, who all had very exciting adventures to talk about, too! I had rehearsed my pitch so I fired away and told everybody that was talking at 12:00 in the Amazon tent, about how to have adventures even if you have to work or go to school.

The crowd clapped and cheered!

I ended up with about 50 people coming to my talk called “Notes from a small cyclist”.

The main idea I was sharing is to get yourself a dry-wipe map and stick it on the wall of any room in your house where you will see it every day. You can plan adventures on the map every day, and pick the best ones to break up into chunks so you can actually do them. I explained how I am doing this myself, and about my #CycloClimbGB challenge to climb the ‘Three Peaks’ and cycle between them.

I had some maps with me, for the audience to try planning an adventure on, and I got them to share their ideas.

At the end, I got nearly a full standing ovation for my effort! I felt very proud of myself.

Dave Cornthwaite (the organiser of Yestival) came up to me at lunch break and asked me if I was up for doing a shortened version of my first talk in front of a crowd of 400 people at 7:00pm.

He asked me in particular because the people that came to my talk had given him good reports about my talk so he said “we can’t give you 30 mins but just come up for 5 - 10 minutes and just show the world what you are made of”.

My talk had been written to last nearly half an hour, so Daddy and I laid my original cue cards out on the floor of the car boot and shuffled them to make a shorter version.

Next I put my own tent up in a field next to Daddy and Katie’s tent.

I laid out my sleeping bag and mat and got everything ready, because I thought I might have a late finish!

Soon it was time for my second talk. Adam Conlon gave me lots of advice for the talk and introduced me to Sean Conway while I was waiting to go on.

I had joke in my talk about Sean eating dog food when he was running around the coast, so I asked him about it. Sean said that he did eat the dog food on the run and it took him two solid days before he finished all of the packets because it was revolting! I had a picture with Sean and he kindly promised that he would ride with me somewhere in the Lake District. I got a wave from Sean in the audience when I mentioned him in my talk.

I felt very nervous at first because I was speaking in front of so many people this time, but in the end I just thought ‘how did I get here?’ - it was amazing. I talked for 10 minutes and afterwards I got another standing ovation! Katie said she heard the roar from the audience, and she was in the next field getting my sisters to sleep!

My jokes worked fine and King Louis got a very warm welcome from everyone. I hope people will take away what I have told them in my talks and try it.

The lady after me, Jo Pickard said firstly “Well thanks a bundle Thomas Ivor!”. Daddy said this was because I was a tough act to follow!

I was very tired after my talk but I tried to hold on until Sean Conway spoke. I was extremely tired now; it was 9:30 at night so I couldn’t take in as much as I could earlier in the day.

The weather forecast had said that it would be 7 degrees overnight but when I got back to my tent at 10:00 there was frost on my tent! It was a cold night in the tent but I was so tired it was very easy to get to sleep!

I really enjoyed speaking but I also had a great time enjoying the rest of the event and meeting some exceptional people. A man called Will Copestake offered to climb Ben Nevis with Daddy and me.

He’s climbed all the ‘Munros’ and kayaked around the top of Scotland.

My favourite talk during the day was the Simonsen family because they had Hobie kayaked from Denmark to Istanbul!

There is just one thing that I was not very happy about which is that I had to miss out some talks that were going on at the same time as mine or others.

My little sister Ruth’s favourite thing at Yestival was catching dreams. Rhoda’s favourite thing was the food. I loved the food, I think it was well served and it all went with adventure. Thank you for supplying us all with something to eat!

At Dreamcamp the girls enjoyed having their faces painted just like scary lions!

I would like to say a big thank you to Dave Cornthwaite for inviting me and to his team for encouraging me throughout the weekend. I hope we will be able to go again next year!


You can watch my evening talk on YouTube, here:

Too much, too soon, or too little, too late? Thoughts on childhood and opportunity.

We've had some really lovely responses to the video we posted yesterday.

@FamilyByCycle This is wonderful, the editing, the narration, everything!

— Anna McNuff (@AnnaMcNuff) August 15, 2016

It's prompted me to write a little about a couple of fundamental principles we apply - that just because most children of a certain age don't do a particular thing, it doesn't mean ours shouldn't; and that to presume we have nothing to learn from our children limits our own horizons.

So often, children of our kids' generation get precious little chance to be children. They are burdened with pressure and responsibility they don't need, given choices to make that would best be made for them, and exposed to things they just don't need to know about. We live in a society that does all that, and then has the temerity to wrap them in the most appalling kind of cotton wool. We're in an era where a parent can believe their irrational fear of the bogeyman can kibosh every other child and their families having photographs on a school sports day - if there are any actual sports at all and if indeed anyone is allowed to win. Children are prevented or at the very least dissuaded from going outside to play, and then left in front of computer screens and televisions bringing them far more risk and brain-rot than they'd have found in the street.

This week sees the launch of the latest film adaptation of the classic 'Swallows and Amazons' and the director, bless them, has decided both that the original storyline isn't exciting enough for today's kids, and that a child nicknamed 'Titty' is now a problem. On the contrary, by my reckoning the biggest anathema for the children watching the film, and the most exciting prospect, will most likely be the idea of playing in the great outdoors, never mind doing it without 'elf an' safety or other politically correct spoilsportism (if that's not a word, I've just made it one!).*

It would be all too easy for me just to whinge about that, but we've learned that opportunities to do something about it are still abundant, if parents take it upon themselves to lead from the front whilst the state still lets us (even if it has long since decided no longer to actually advocate this pernicious, maverick approach, or make it easy for working families to do it).

The greatest disservice children today suffer from is paucity of expectation, of smiling dream-assassins determining what they may or may not try to do, with a predetermined agenda of troubling themselves as little as possible - and so as a family we delight in setting the bar high, making opportunities and cheering the children on to go for it, because they usually can (in their own way) and because it's exciting! Engaged children are, frankly, much easier to parent, so we're doing ourselves a favour, too. It isn't always easy - one day I will write the blog post about 'taking a child cycling vs going for a ride on your own' - but it's seldom without reward.

Few people expect a little girl of three to be riding a trailerbike helping to tow her little sister all afternoon, less still to be learning to read the map as she goes. The faces as we pass people say it all. Nobody expects said little girl to help to film, and then record the voiceover for, a film documenting the trip, but as cute as we may think it is (whether anyone else does is another matter - it's our job!) pivotally, Ruth is so, so proud of herself. That little film will now be the springboard to something else. Having tried the trombone, she's asking to learn the violin. Who knows, maybe she's planning to busk round Spain like Laurie Lee, and latterly Alastair Humphreys.

Maybe for your family and your children it's not even bicycle touring but some other activity or interest you love, that you want to adapt to make it family friendly. Give it a go! I'm sure you can find a way.

One of the biggest motivators for Family ByCycle, is not to say 'look at our kids aren't they incredible' (that's the kind of sickening self-promotional bilge we all whizz merrily past on our Facebook timelines, let's be honest), and in any case we don't hold all the answers, but hoping to encourage other parents 'you can do this, too!' - we dare to dream that we can help build a critical mass of families with children whose horizons are as broad as they can be, who dare to dream, who participate in and explore the world, yes, as children, not as frustrated, stressed little adults, neither constrained to their peer group and the expectations of others. After all, who as an adult surrounds themselves only with people born within a year , and a few miles, of them?

Thomas Ivor's talk about cycle touring as a child received a wonderful reception at the Cycle Touring Festival in Clitheroe earlier in the year, and he's delighted to have accepted an invitation to speak at this Autumn's 'Yestival'. We're especially looking forward as a family to participating in the 'Dreamcamp' part of the event, in the hope not only of inspiring kids to think big, look far and aim high, but for the adults to receive from them a healthy dose of childlike wonder and enthusiasm. I'd rather be blindly accused of 'too much, too soon', than any of our family grow old to realise we did 'too little, too late'.

Why not join us there and give it a go?

Read more on this topic in another post from a little while ago...

* Yes, I know about Pokemon. It will pass. Again. I predict that the gaggle of people staring at their smartphones outside the council offices late at night will not survive a single winter!