Send a text

In this episode of Adventure Unfiltered, Lorna Bray speaks with outdoor guide, former elite skier and entrepreneur Emma Norton about finding grounding through adventure and real life.

Emma’s journey has taken her off-piste, off-road and, at times, fully on fire — from competitive skiing to building a successful outdoor guiding business, while balancing family, responsibility and life beyond sport. But beneath the speed and energy lies something deeper: connection, perspective and staying grounded.

This is a conversation about rediscovering joy after pressure and injury, about knowing when to push and when to pause, and about how the outdoors helps us reconnect with who we really are.

Adventure Keyword: Grounded

In the wild, we remember who we are.

Connect with Emma

Emma Norton on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nortonskipro/
Quad Bike Treks Aviemore: https://www.instagram.com/quadbiketreksaviemore/

🌿 Subscribe & Follow the Journey here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast

Whether you’re planning a local wander, dreaming of a global expedition, craving the outdoors, looking for inspiration or searching for a role model — you’re in the right place.

If you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe and / or tap the 🔔 to be notified as each episode drops.

Listen on:

• YouTube - @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5HdHBR65RVpHEeuTc3fKHX
• Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1855170552
• Amazon Podcasts - https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1640769f-1eec-46bb-9845-661dd3cecddc/adventure-unfiltered

If you enjoyed the episode, a follow, share or quick review makes a huge difference - Thank You!

Send a text

In this episode of Adventure Unfiltered, Lorna Bray speaks with legendary adventurer Myrtle Simpson - pioneering Scottish skier, polar explorer, and one of the first women to ski across Greenland.

Recorded when Myrtle was 95, this conversation is not simply about expeditions, records or milestones. It is about perspective shaped across a lifetime lived fully - a life guided by freedom, curiosity and a deep connection to mountains, snow and wild places.

From Greenland to Peru, and a lifetime of skiing and exploration recognised with the Polar Medal, Myrtle reflects on what adventure really means, why perspective matters more than achievement, and how the outdoors shapes who we become across time.

🌿 Subscribe & Follow the Journey here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast

Whether you’re planning a local wander, dreaming of a global expedition, craving the outdoors, looking for inspiration or searching for a role model — you’re in the right place.

If you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe and / or tap the 🔔 to be notified as each episode drops.

Listen on:

• YouTube - @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5HdHBR65RVpHEeuTc3fKHX
• Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1855170552
• Amazon Podcasts - https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1640769f-1eec-46bb-9845-661dd3cecddc/adventure-unfiltered

If you enjoyed the episode, a follow, share or quick review makes a huge difference - Thank You!

Send a text

In this episode of Adventure Unfiltered, Lorna Bray speaks with award-winning paddler and coach Emy McLeod about confidence, growth and the powerful lessons found in moving water.

From local paddles to the Yukon River, Emy shares how confidence is built through experience, how fear becomes understanding, and why leadership is about helping others discover their own strength. The conversation also explores giving back through coaching and the Polar Academy, and how the outdoors helps us reconnect with who we really are.

Emy McLeod (@empaddlesports) is an paddler, adventurer, storyteller and advocate for exploring the wild with curiosity and courage. She shares her experiences of pushing boundaries - both outdoors and within herself - while celebrating the everyday moments of discovery that connect us to nature and to each other.

🌿 Subscribe & Follow the Journey here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast

Whether you’re planning a local wander, dreaming of a global expedition, craving the outdoors, looking for inspiration or searching for a role model — you’re in the right place.

If you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe and / or tap the 🔔 to be notified as each episode drops.

Listen on:

• YouTube - @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5HdHBR65RVpHEeuTc3fKHX
• Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1855170552
• Amazon Podcasts - https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1640769f-1eec-46bb-9845-661dd3cecddc/adventure-unfiltered

If you enjoyed the episode, a follow, share or quick review makes a huge difference - Thank You!

Send us a text

Please consider subscribing here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast - it’s free, and it genuinely makes a huge difference.

There are moments in conversation that feel like a homecoming - and this opening episode of Season 2, with outdoor guide and ethical adventurer Stevie Boyle, is one of them.

Recorded on the East Lothian coast, a place deeply woven into Lorna’s own story of growing up outdoors, this conversation felt like the right way to begin a new season — not by resetting the conversation, but by deepening it.

Stevie is the founder of Ocean Vertical, a values-led adventure company rooted in paddleboarding, coaststeering and mountain travel. But as this conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that adventure itself is not the point.

What Stevie returns to, again and again, is responsibility.

• Responsibility to the people he works with.
• Responsibility to the environments he moves through.
• Responsibility to speak openly about risk, fear and decision-making - not to diminish adventure, but to make it sustainable.

From rewilding and marine protection to the ethics of guiding, ego, and performance culture in adventure, this episode explores what it means to move through wild places with humility and care.

If Season 2 has a keyword, this one is Responsibility.

Together they explore:

• Why ethics aren’t an add-on in adventure - they’re foundational
• The outdoors as the product, not the backdrop
• How independence, not dependency, should be the goal of guiding
• The role of education, transparency and decision-making in safety
• Why sharing adventure should be a by-product, not the purpose

Key moments in the episode:

• Finding Ocean Vertical and the philosophy behind it
• The pressure, ego and performative culture surrounding modern adventure
• A solo winter journey on the Cairngorm plateau — a snow hole, a broken compass and a whiteout
• The moment Stevie realised no one was coming to help — and what that taught him
• The difference between confidence and entitlement
• What “In the wild we remember who we are” means to him

About Stevie Boyle

🌿 Subscribe & Follow the Journey here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast

Whether you’re planning a local wander, dreaming of a global expedition, craving the outdoors, looking for inspiration or searching for a role model — you’re in the right place.

If you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe and / or tap the 🔔 to be notified as each episode drops.

Listen on:

• YouTube - @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5HdHBR65RVpHEeuTc3fKHX
• Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1855170552
• Amazon Podcasts - https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1640769f-1eec-46bb-9845-661dd3cecddc/adventure-unfiltered

If you enjoyed the episode, a follow, share or quick review makes a huge difference - Thank You!

Send us a text

This episode of Adventure Unfiltered feels a little different.

Rather than sitting down with a new guest, Lorna takes time to step back - revisiting the conversations that have shaped Season One and reflecting on what they’ve left behind.

From the very beginning, Adventure Unfiltered set out to explore the human side of adventure - not the headlines or the achievements, but the quieter moments beneath them. Across Season One, those conversations unfolded in deeply personal ways.

With Iona Andean, adventure was gently reimagined as something everyday, inclusive, and rooted in community - a reminder that it doesn’t have to be loud or far away to matter.

Through Sean Green’s journey riding all 282 Munros by mountain bike, adventure became a story of resilience, grief and what it means to keep showing up when life throws you off course.

In conversation with Alice Goodridge, everything slowed down. We talked about cold water, self-trust, and why adventure isn’t about titles - but about creating spaces where people feel safe to begin.

And with Mollie Hughes, across two conversations, we moved from the noise and pressure of Everest to the defining silence of Antarctica - from preparation, fear and exposure to solitude, stillness and one step in front of the other.

What’s stayed constant across all of these interviews is how personal adventure really is. And how different it looks for every single person.

In this season finale, Lorna dips back into each of these conversations - sharing the moments that stayed with her, the ideas that made her pause and her favourite sound bites from Season One.

This episode is a moment to breathe. A moment to reflect. And a moment to say thank you.

Thank you for listening.
Thank you for sharing.
And thank you for being part of this growing community.

Until next time - In the wild, we remember who we are.

🌿 Subscribe & Follow the Journey here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast

Whether you’re planning a local wander, dreaming of a global expedition, craving the outdoors, looking for inspiration or searching for a role model — you’re in the right place.

If you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe and / or tap the 🔔 to be notified as each episode drops.

Listen on:

• YouTube - @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5HdHBR65RVpHEeuTc3fKHX
• Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1855170552
• Amazon Podcasts - https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1640769f-1eec-46bb-9845-661dd3cecddc/adventure-unfiltered

If you enjoyed the episode, a follow, share or quick review makes a huge difference - Thank You!

Send us a text

In this quietly powerful episode of Adventure Unfiltered, Lorna sits down once again with adventurer and polar explorer Mollie Hughes - this time to talk about her solo, unassisted journey across Antarctica.

When Mollie joined the podcast previously, the focus was Everest: fear, exposure, altitude and the constant external risk of the world’s most mythologised mountain. Antarctica is different. Flatter. Whiter. Quieter. And - in many ways - harder.

Lorna knew the headline before they recorded: nearly 700 miles skied alone across a frozen continent. What she didn’t fully know was the inner story behind it - the silence, the boredom, the self-doubt, the mental strategies and the slow, deliberate psychological work required just to keep moving when there is no summit, no team and no variation in the landscape.

What unfolds is not a story about endurance for its own sake, but a deeply human conversation about solitude.

Together, they explore:

• What it really means to travel solo and unassisted in Antarctica
• How Antarctica differs psychologically from Everest
• The mental impact of prolonged silence and repetition
• Christmas Day alone on the Antarctic ice
• Boredom, fear and the quiet creep of self-doubt
• Realising she hadn’t laughed or smiled for over two weeks
• Why speaking out loud - even mockingly - helped reset her mindset
• The importance of humour, kindness and self-regulation in isolation
• How resilience isn’t always about pushing harder
• What solitude reveals when distraction is removed

Mollie speaks with striking honesty about the moments when silence became uncomfortable and her inner dialogue turned unhelpful — and how she learned to stay with herself rather than fight the experience.

This conversation isn’t about suffering. It’s about steadiness.

In a world that feels increasingly noisy, busy and digitally crowded, this episode invites us to reflect on what happens when the noise falls away — and how learning to meet silence well might be one of the most important skills we have.

This is exactly why Adventure Unfiltered exists - to move beyond the headline and into the human story.

About Mollie Hughes

Mollie Hughes is a record-breaking adventurer, mountaineer and polar explorer.

Website: molliehughes.co.uk
Instagram: @mollieJhughes

🌿 Subscribe & Follow the Journey here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast

Whether you’re planning a local wander, dreaming of a global expedition, craving the outdoors, looking for inspiration or searching for a role model — you’re in the right place.

If you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe and / or tap the 🔔 to be notified as each episode drops.

Listen on:

• YouTube - @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5HdHBR65RVpHEeuTc3fKHX
• Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1855170552
• Amazon Podcasts - https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1640769f-1eec-46bb-9845-661dd3cecddc/adventure-unfiltered

If you enjoyed the episode, a follow, share or quick review makes a huge difference - Thank You!

Send us a text

In this revealing episode of Adventure Unfiltered, Lorna sits down with adventurer and mountaineer Mollie Hughes - who was the first British woman to summit Mount Everest from both the south and the north sides.

Lorna knew the headlines before they recorded: the records, the photos, the iconic summit shots. But she didn’t know the deeper story behind the climbs - the fear, the mindset, the exposure, and the quiet, determined psychology that carried a 21-year-old through one of the most dangerous environments on earth.

What unfolds is not a triumphalist Everest story, but a deeply human one.

Together, they explore:

• Growing up with adventure and discovering mountaineering
• Interviewing Everest climbers for her dissertation
• How a fear of heights shaped (and challenged) Mollie’s Everest journey
• The creaking, shifting danger of the Khumbu Icefall
• What really happens to your body and mind at high altitude
• The pragmatic mindset that carried her through 60 days on the mountain
• Why summiting felt more like relief than joy
• The truth about the “death zone” - and why the descent is where most climbers die
• Returning to climb Everest a second time, older and wiser
• What exposure - physical, psychological and emotional - taught her about herself

Mollie’s honesty, intelligence and quiet strength shine through every part of this conversation. This is an episode about fear, resilience, mindset, exposure, and the reality behind one of the world’s most mythologised mountains.

This is exactly why Adventure Unfiltered exists — to go beyond the headline and into the human story.

About Mollie Hughes

Mollie Hughes is a record-breaking adventurer, mountaineer and motivational speaker. At 21 she summited Everest from the south side, and at 26 she returned to summit from the north, becoming the youngest woman in the world at the time to climb both sides of the mountain. Her work blends expedition experience, psychology, resilience and the science of fear - inspiring people around the world to explore their own potential. Mollie's website: molliehughes.co.uk; Instagram: @mollieJhughes Ocean Vertical: oceanvertical.com

🌿 Subscribe & Follow the Journey here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast

Whether you’re planning a local wander, dreaming of a global expedition, craving the outdoors, looking for inspiration or searching for a role model — you’re in the right place.

If you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe and / or tap the 🔔 to be notified as each episode drops.

Listen on:

• YouTube - @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5HdHBR65RVpHEeuTc3fKHX
• Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1855170552
• Amazon Podcasts - https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1640769f-1eec-46bb-9845-661dd3cecddc/adventure-unfiltered

If you enjoyed the episode, a follow, share or quick review makes a huge difference - Thank You!

Send us a text

Please consider subscribing here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast - it is free and makes a huge difference

There are moments in conversation that stay with you - and this episode with wild swimmer, coach and community-builder Alice Goodridge is full of them. Alice is known for those unforgettable images of ice-dipping in the Highlands, but behind the headlines is someone grounded, humble and deeply connected to the cold water she loves.

In this episode, Lorna and Alice explore what wild swimming can offer in a world that feels increasingly busy, digital and loud. From the gentleness of breath in icy water to the power of community in the Cairngorms, this is a conversation about presence, courage and finding yourself in the wild.

Together they explore:

• The moment cold water shifts from shock to connection
• How fear, imagination and bravery coexist in open water
• What it takes to build thriving swim communities
• The science and safety behind cold water immersion
• Why “focusing on the exhale” can change everything
• The everyday rituals - from lochs to barrels - that keep Alice grounded

Key moments in the episode:

• Smashing through ice and the reality behind the viral images
• Training for the English Channel and managing self-doubt
• The story of swimming through a waterfall-lit cave on St Kilda
• How the Loch Insh Dippers and Cairngorm Wild Swimmers began
• Alice’s top tips for before, during and after a cold-water swim
• An exclusive announcement about Alice’s new podcast, Cold Water Curious
• What “In the wild we remember who we are” means to her

About Alice Goodridge

Alice is a wild swimmer, author of Swimming Wild in Scotland, founder of SwimWild, and the creator of the Cairngorm Wild Swimmers and Loch Insh Dippers communities. A long-distance swimmer who has completed the English Channel and numerous endurance swims, she is as passionate about safety and science as she is about joy, connection and the transformative power of cold water. She lives in the Scottish Highlands, where she swims year-round. Find here on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stories/swimwild_uk

🌿 Subscribe & Follow the Journey here: @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast

Whether you’re planning a local wander, dreaming of a global expedition, craving the outdoors, looking for inspiration or searching for a role model — you’re in the right place.

If you enjoy this episode, hit Subscribe and / or tap the 🔔 to be notified as each episode drops.

Listen on:

• YouTube - @Adventure_Unfiltered_Podcast
• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5HdHBR65RVpHEeuTc3fKHX
• Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1855170552
• Amazon Podcasts - https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/1640769f-1eec-46bb-9845-661dd3cecddc/adventure-unfiltered

If you enjoyed the episode, a follow, share or quick review makes a huge difference - Thank You!