Reflections on 2024: A year of adventure and being brave

My foot sank straight down to the knee, the grasp of the snow forming around my calf. I clutched my poles halfway down the shaft in some kind of makeshift anchors, forcing my trailing leg up the slope to provide the next contact point.

Drive knee, plant foot, sink, pole, pole, repeat. Robotically I made my way back up the slope to where my friends and wife watched my ridiculous toil. In fairness to me, I’d told them to go the other way when I realised just how deep this section of snow was. Breathless from the effort, I cast my gaze across the landscape that surrounded us.

The Alpstein massif was encrusted in its winter coast. I love the shapes of this mountain range, ever since my first visit here a few months before. Great protrusions of rock stretch upwards, gigantic hands, fists and fingers pointing towards the sky. It looked less like the snow had fallen upon these shapes and more like the mountains had burst from the ground, bringing the snow up with them.

As soon as I got my breath back I chased after the others: we had a mission. Half an hour ago we’d realised we would soon lose the final sun of the year as it dropped behind the mountains. We changed in a hurry and shouldered running packs on the hunt for the last sunset of 2024.

Now, as we tramped our way towards the Schäfler mountain hut, perched precariously on a crest of the ridge, we could see it being lit from behind by the sun making its final bows. As we approached the hut, golden light spilled across our faces and the wind threw diamonds of snow into the air. We could barely make out the magnificent view of the Altenalptürm as we squinted against the blazing sun.

The landscape around us was putting on a show, as if it knew this was the end of a year. While years feel somewhat arbitrary, they do bring with them a sense of endings and beginnings. As the sun crept closer to the farthest mountain we could feel its warmth leaving us.

I turned to Bo, my wife, and smiled at her. “We’ve had quite the year, haven’t we?”

“We really have”, she smiled back at me. We kissed and turned to watch the shadows grow around us before finally turning our backs on 2024 in the west and towards 2025 in the east.

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We are now over a week into 2025 and I have yet to write my ‘review’ of 2024. Truth be told, I always struggle with these types of blogs. I make a point of avoiding writing them before the year is actually finished – who knows what adventures await before 23.59 on 31 December?

As it turned out, 2024 packed adventure in right until the end. We spent New Year’s Eve in a mountain hut with two friends, playing board games with some local skiers and enjoying quality Appenzeller beer. So, in that sense, I was right to wait!

When I think back on 2024, I am genuinely astonished and incredibly proud of what Bo and I have done. On 1 January we were driving back to Kendal from Fort William in our recently purchased van, right in the middle of preparing for our van trip. We were nervous, no doubt about it: we had a house to rent out; we were leaving our jobs and going freelance; we had to pack our life into a Mercedes Sprinter and chart a course across Europe.

I am not one for quoting books or thinkers in my blogs, but one comes to mind I feel is most apt:

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring

I can’t think of a better way of encapsulating the year we had. As we left Kendal, neither of us could have imagined where the road would lead us.

There’s another level of symmetry between the Hobbit’s journey and mine, personally. I have always been a home bird, enjoying the delights of familiarity and knowing a place intimately. I know Scotland like the back of my hand, and was at least four fingers into knowing the Lake District. The prospect of leaving it behind for the relative unknown was nerve-wracking. As I explained in my previous blog, Bo was very keen for such a trip whereas I required some convincing.

Above: A few pictures from the latter part of our van trip.

As the months in the van went by, though, I felt myself grow in confidence and better at dealing with the unfamiliar. And we had to deal with our fair share of adversity, especially Bo when she had a persistent knee-injury that at times looked liked it’d derail the entire trip after just a couple of months. It’s very easy to show all the highlights, but there were certainly low ones, too, where we were angry, scared, made mistakes, and more besides.

But we stuck through it, through everything. As a couple, I cannot think of anything better in both helping us realise how much we care for each other and how we can rely on one another. We had some of the best times and some of the hardest times; saw some of the most stunning places and slept in some of the strangest; cried with delight at stunning mountain views and laughed together as the rain drummed against the roof.

None of that would have happened without us being brave enough to try. No one ever tried to dissuade us, either. We were so well supported by friends and family, for which I will be eternally grateful.

If you had told me in 2023 that I would have spent eight months living in a van just a year later, I would have never believed you. And if you’d then tell me we would move to Switzerland, I’d laugh you out the room.

But we did.

Again, very little of moving to Switzerland was plain sailing, nor without tears. When we found out Bo had been offered a job in Zurich, we slowly made our way back to the UK, where we would then pack up our house of what we’d left in it and turn back towards Europe.

Despite all the challenges we faced on the van trip, I think the hardest moment for me all year was that trip to our home in Kendal. Removing our belongings from a place we held so dear in our hearts – with its views across the town, the garden, the access to the fells, the community – was a painful experience. We sat together for some time, both crying, wondering when we’d be back. Do I still miss it now? Absolutely, but sometimes you have to turn your back on the things you love for a time to grow.

Above: Recent adventures in Switzerland

Moving to Switzerland was by no means in our plan, but I am proud of us, both for saying yes to the prospect and in achieving what we have here. I am sure I am not alone in having those ideas – call them dreams, if you like – but immediately dismissing them because they seem so far-fetched. Switzerland was that dream. If you’d asked me a few years ago if I’d like to move here, I would say, “Of course! But like that’s going to happen.”

And yet here we are. It was a scary thing to do, and we’re still navigating our new lives here, but I am so glad we said yes to it, despite how hard it’s been at times.

As I reflect on the year, I am unsure how to completely unpack the lessons from it, because I genuinely feel like I and we have changed so much over the course of the year. What I can say is that being brave yields incredible results. Things will never be as bad as you fear and you can never imagine just how good they can be, nor what can come as a result of them.

I am certainly no fatalist, but I don’t think we’d have moved to Switzerland had we not been on the van trip. We learned to adapt, to face challenges, to work together and show up for each other and ourselves. Had we not had that experience, I am not sure what would have happened.

In 2024, I learned to ski, ran on a glacier for the first time, we made pasta in Italy, we both worked freelance, we cycled in a desert, I cycled up my first Alpine passes, I saw the Dolomites for the first time, we became an aunt and uncle, I wrote a feature for TGO magazine, we both got jobs in Switzerland* – and so many more.

But I also learned to be a little braver, to challenge my fears and expand my horizons a bit more. Trust in myself a little more, perhaps.

I look back on 2024 with genuine pride. Pride for the big, daunting leaps we made, the connections we forged, the chances we took, the mountains we climbed and the ones we didn’t, the hard decisions we made, and that we stuck together through it all.

I’ll take being proud of a year any day.

It felt absolutely right to enjoy that final day of 2024 on a mountain, with my wife, with my friends, surrounded by the stunning landscape we are now fortunate enough to live near. Fireworks burst in tiny plumes of colour in the valleys and plains around us at midnight, as we rang in 2025.

May it be another year of being brave.

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*If it is of any interest, I am astonished to say I am now a full-time writer for EF Education First. I will be writing for their ef.com/impact website, so feel free to read the latest articles there.