The Monthly Digest - My Love for the Lake District
December Edition
Hey guys,
We’re really close to December now, and we’ve had some beautiful frosty, sunny days recently—my favorite kind of weather in the winter. But we’ve also had that insane storm, which was absolutely wild. SO much rain, right?
While that storm was raging, I was up in the Lake District. Funny enough, it wasn’t as bad there as it was back home in Bournemouth. Apparently, Bournemouth was hit with 100 mph winds and torrential rain, whereas in the Lakes, we just had… a lot of rain. And guess what I was doing while it bucketed down? A cooking demo and a DJ set! Haha! For this weeks newsletter, I’m going to tell you a little story of my time in the lakes and everything I love about it.
The reason I was in the Lake District was for the Kendal Mountain Festival, an annual event for outdoor enthusiasts and top outdoor brands. The festival also awards the best outdoor short film, with entries covering everything from kayaking to mountain climbing to trail running—a truly vast scope of talent and inspiration.
Speaking of inspiration, the festival featured so many incredible people sharing talks about their personal adventures and challenges. And guess what? I was one of those people! As you may have seen I am now a Passenger Clothing Ambassador and I couldn't be happier with how our journey has begun. They are such a forward thinking brand with so many amazing employees. They are given complete creative freedom with their ambassadors and events they run, which shows, because they attend and put on the best events. Passenger invited me to Kendal Mountain Festival to cook and DJ.
We started off our journey stopping off at Molly's mums for the night in Stratford upon Avon. This is where we had our first beautiful frosty morning, and definitely started to feel christmassy. We stopped off at a services on the way, and went to Lyon and of course Bronson wanted to get involved; he loves chips!
After a 6 hour journey we finally made it to Kendal. We settled into our beautiful air BnB which was a 12 minute drive out of Kendal in the countryside, which we were stoked with. We then headed into town for Passengers first event they put on for us which was Pizza & Quiz, unfortunately they had an over capacity that night so we couldn't get in. But we made a friend instantly called Elise (I’ll tell you more about her later). So we decided to go for pizza across the road (which was banging) and have an early night.
The next morning we saw this beautiful sunrise for another frost and sunny morning. We had quite a bit on today, seeing some of Passenger’s other ambassadors, so we decided to run into town and back just to get those exercise juices flowing. I went into the Base Camp tent to watch the Passenger founder chat about how he started the brand and what impact Passenger is having on the outdoor clothing scene and also on the planet.
One of the main reasons I joined Passenger was because of what they are doing for the environment. They plant one tree for every order made and it's not just a greenwashing campaign that a lot of brands do. They work very closely with several different conservation projects and they actually go out to these plantations to help plant trees and see what impact they are having on these communities.. I’ve attached a few links below with more info.
https://www.passenger-clothing.com/blogs/journal/its-more-than-trees-notes-from-the-field
https://www.rainforesttrust.org/
That day, we also had the chance to meet two of Passenger's other ambassadors, @somewherewilder and @woman_with_altitude. Both were incredibly inspiring. Elise, also known as Woman with Altitude, was a runner-up on the Channel 4 show Alone, and her story is absolutely incredible. She’s a passionate advocate for hiking the way women did hundreds of years ago—using minimal equipment and none of the modern gear we rely on today. In fact, she even wore a bonnet on one of her hikes! What’s even more impressive is that Elise joined Alone with very little experience of outdoor survival, learning most of her skills from YouTube, yet she managed to persevere and secure second place.
As for the team behind @somewherewilder, they live in Scotland with their two Spaniels and embark on countless mountain adventures across the country. It was amazing to hear from fellow creators and learn about how they approach life and the outdoors.
On to Saturday—this was the day I got my groove on with a cooking demo and DJ set. We started the morning driving to Lake Windermere through the chaos of the storm, with flooded roads everywhere. Let me tell you, the thought of getting into the lake in that weather was not appealing!
When we arrived, DJ Nemone and the Scottish Ensemble were there setting up, and to my surprise, quite a few brave souls were ready to take the plunge into the lake. The original plan was for DJ Nemone and the Scottish Ensemble to create a magical atmosphere by playing beautiful, trippy music while we all got into the lake—a truly invigorating experience. But thanks to the wild weather, the performance had to move indoors to the boathouse, which, in my opinion, was an even better choice.
The acoustics and setting inside the boathouse were absolutely magical. As the violins played and Nemone set the affirmations for the day, I looked out at the rain gently pattering on the lake—it was definitely one of those special, unforgettable moments in life.
Then came the lake dip.