Dwayne Fields and Phoebe Smith are no strangers to pushing things forward, not least their own powers of endurance. Travel writer, author and broadcaster Smith, who has made a career of wild-camping in extreme locations, and explorer and presenter Fields, the first black Briton to walk to the north pole, will readily confess to little hacks ranging from energy-giving handfuls of Jelly Babies to the indispensability of inflatable pillows for travelling. But their most essential piece of kit is optimism and a sense of humour. Even on gruelling hikes peppered with freezing streams, soaked sleeping bags and muddy tents, they have a motto: “Enjoy not endure”.
It certainly stood them well on their 828-mile, 40-night, north-to-south expedition over mainland Britain last year, wild-camping everywhere from the middle of marshlands to beside motorways. This was both a practice run and a fundraiser for their plan, under the banner of their #WeTwo foundation, to take a group of 20 underprivileged young people from the UK to Antarctica in 2021 – part of their broader mission to change people’s mindsets about adventuring and caring for the planet.
Teaming up came naturally. As a woman and a black man both from non-privileged backgrounds, Smith and Fields represent groups of people who are otherwise hugely under-represented in the world of adventuring. Meeting at Buckingham Palace in 2017 when handing out the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards to young people, they bonded over sharing their experiences of overcoming considerable barriers to excel in their solo pursuits. The pair soon set up the #WeTwo foundation, aiming to help show people from any background, gender or race that they too can accomplish the same, as well as to inspire young people to get involved in and to care for the outdoors.
“The mentality of going against what people told us we shouldn’t and couldn’t do brought us together,” says Smith, a daredevil whose pioneering spirit saw her become the first person to wild sleep at all four of Britain’s extreme points – as well as its centremost – on five consecutive nights in 2014. “For very different reasons we both entered a world that felt closed off to us. Our mission is to try to open it up for other people so no one else feels shut out of what can be an incredibly freeing place, a real leveller.”
Despite being raised near Snowdonia, Smith grew up with a lack of female role models in the field. “I was in school when the mountain climber Alison Hargreaves died on K2 and I remember the press saying how bad it was that a woman had left her kids at home to go and do expeditions. No one ever said that about a male mountaineer,” she says. “It was life-changing when I eventually discovered that you didn’t have to be a burly, bearded man to get into the outdoors world.”
Fields felt similarly detached from the wealth of opportunity he now knows the outdoors has to offer. Born in rural Jamaica, he forged a close bond with nature as a child, before moving to inner London where – despite not being involved in gangs or drugs – he was frequently mugged and even stabbed. It was when a stranger pulled a gun on him on an east London street (an incident his younger brother also had to witness) that prompted Fields, at 21, to chart a new course.
Taking on the Three Peaks Challenge (climbing the three highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales respectively within 24 hours) reignited his passion for the outdoors. “I [represent] everyone who has been estranged from parents, been homeless or who didn’t do great at school, anyone who just thinks: ‘the outdoor world is not for me’,” he says.
For Smith, an unexpected but exhilarating first taste of the great outdoors in the Australian outback made her question why she had never explored the places closer to home, and resolved to do just that when she returned to the UK. Ever since, she has blazed a trail in the world of adventuring, from walking the length of Hadrian’s Wall dressed as Wonder Woman to wild sleeping over sea cliffs in the north of Scotland as part of the Extreme Sleep Out challenge.
Such achievements seem a far cry from when she started, facing numerous hurdles because of her gender. “I was met by a wave of, ‘you can’t, you shouldn’t, it’s dangerous, you’re a woman on your own’,” she says. “I had to point out that attackers wouldn’t be hiding in the mountains just in case there was a lone woman!”
Fields agrees: “I’ve faced more risks on the streets of London,” he says, contrasting it with the sense of ease he feels in nature. “You see a squirrel and it’s happy, you see birds and they are chirping. When I’m outdoors, I feel like the wildlife is watching my back.”
Of course, Smith and Fields have each other’s backs, too, with an easy camaraderie evident between them. “We are both willing to laugh at ourselves and at each other,” he says. “It can feel like the elements are against you, and a psychological meltdown can be as debilitating as a broken leg. Emotional wellbeing is the one thing you can control.”
Though the world of travel and the outdoors might be in an uncertain place for now, the duo are both firmly focused on continuing to break down the barriers for others. “For me it’s never been about, ‘look what I’ve conquered’ – that’s an old way of thinking about adventuring,” says Fields. “I want all my adventures to be a story I can tell that can do something good for someone.”
“If we can show people from communities who think the outdoors are not for them that it’s fun and you don’t need much to be able to do it, then that will spread,” says Smith. “That’s our big ambition – to change the outlook and mindset when it comes to adventure in the outdoors. It’s about working together – across different backgrounds, genders, religions and races – to make this a much more level playing field. Just like how the outdoors is.”
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