This is the story of four men in a boat and a tandem rickshaw…and then another boat! Of an iconic, world first challenge…on home soil.
Forget Land’s End to John O’Groats! The southernmost point of the British Isles is actually the islands of Les Minquiers, south of Jersey, just off the French coast, while the northernmost point is Out Stack, a rocky outpost off the northern tip of Shetland. A journey of around 1200 miles.
One of us (Kevin), psychologist and bestselling author, realized back in 2021 that not only had no-one undertaken this journey, but no-one had even thought of it. Intrigued, he set about persuading a trio of like-minded people to join him on this epic quest. Billy Taylor, an experienced ocean rower, jumped in and agreed to skipper the rowing sections. An ex-paramedic and fireman, Billy has developed a passion for ocean rowing and has now crossed many of the world’s oceans under his own steam.
They will be joined in the adventure by Patrick Neale, who, with his partner, Polly, runs, Jaffe & Neale, an independent bookshop in Chipping Norton. Having recently stopped playing rugby in the local club, Patrick jumped at the chance to join Kevin and the boys on the South North Adventure, especially as he is passionate about encouraging children and younb people to read.
The final member of the team is Gary Hutchings. Gary hails from north Devon, where he runs his own business, and is also a highly accomplished ocean rower and adventurer.
Kevin finally managed to persuade his wife, Elaine, also a psychologist and mental health researcher, to help organize this epic adventure – his greatest accomplishment of all! We are both passionate about making this adventure a festival of young people’s resilience and mental health and aim to develop a unique research project based on what young people, themselves, have to say. It’s all about listening to their aims, their ideas, their objectives. We want to bring the lived experience of the nation’s youth into the heart of the research process and couldn’t think of a better partner than MQ – The Mental Health Research Charity to bring this to fruition. More on that later.
The team will start by rowing about 300 miles from Les Minquiers to Portsmouth, via Jersey, and then from Scrabster, in the north of Scotland, to Out Stack. In the interim, they will cycle around 900 miles on land on their custom-made tandem rickshaw from Portsmouth Harbour to Scrabster.
We reached out to 10 wonderful charity partners (https://givestar.io/gs/south-north-adventures-supports-youth-mental-health) who agreed to work with the team. The idea is that Kevin and the boys will chat to young people at our 10 charity ‘meet and greets’ throughout the country to discuss what they think mental health researchers should be investigating. We will then prepare a research proposal after the adventure and aim to pursue these questions in a scientifically valid study. We hope that the nation will get behind the team in this epic adventure and celebration of young people’s resilience.
All of our charity partners are involved with supporting young people in one way or another. In Jersey, the team will meet people from Every Child Our Future who this year are highlighting the importance of reading books and stories for mental health and developing resilience. On a similar theme, the 1851 Trust whom they will meet in Portsmouth emphasize the role of education and critical thinking skills in giving young people a step up in life. Then it’s off to London on the tandem-rickshaw where they will speak with young people from Women in Sport about the role of sport and physical activity in building confidence and resilience in young girls; the Big Kid Foundation will be waiting in Brixton to discuss the impact of knife crime among young people and how we might be able to reduce it. Their patron, chef Michel Roux, will present the team with a frozen boeuf bourguignon to be consumed when they complete the journey. From Brixton, it’s off to Oxford, accompanied part of the way by Susie Dent, patron of Guide Dogs, who will cycle alongside the team and introduce them to young visually impaired people where they will discuss ways they deal with this type of adversity. It’s then on to Sheffield where the team plan to arrive during the World Snooker Championship where several leading players will introduce them to their chosen charity Jessie May, who are supporting end of life care for young people facing terminal illness. Kevin will interview young people and their families about how they cope with this worst of adversities. The team will then head to the small Yorkshire village of Bramhope where they have been promised a cream tea by the triathete Brownlee brothers and a visit to the Brownlee Foundation who are also using physical activity and sport to build resilience in young people. Along the way, the team will be accompanied by Bikeability and Heavy Metal Truants who focus on cycling and physical activity to boost wellbeing.
In all meetings, along the length of the country Kevin and the team will listen to children and young people and ask them what they believe should be the focus of mental health research to build their resilience and protect against the onset of mental health problems. We can’t wait to hear their ideas, and which ones can be turned into a valid research project. The team will then speak with some leading researchers and youth ambassadors from MQ in their final ‘meet and greet’ in Edinburgh. They will discuss these ideas and consider how we might go about setting up a co-produced research project based on all of these interviews and discussions – a truly novel way of bringing the lived experience of children to the heart of the research process. This is one of the reasons why MQ is one of the trusted partners of the south north team.
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