A Derrygonnelly man has put into words some of the experiences he has encountered all over the world as an adventure travel guide, gathering his thoughts for his new book, ‘Venture’.

Sean Meehan has travelled the globe with Rogue Expeditions, a company that offers adventure travel trips for runners.

The week- to 10 day-long trips take in some of the most breathtaking scenery, with the core part being great runs that are usually eight to 13 miles a day.

The rest of the time is spent travelling around and doing other activities and engaging with local culture, whether in Morocco, Patagonia, Kenya, Slovenia, South Africa, British Columbia or Ireland.

“I got involved off the back of working in event management for large-scale running events, so I had a transferable skillset, had already travelled to some of the destinations, and so I joined a small team back in 2016 as they were growing, and the idea of small group adventure tourism was on the rise,” Sean explained.

As with any sort of adventure, there are going to be plenty of stories to tell, and with Covid-19 putting the brakes on the majority of society, Sean had plenty of time to write ‘Venture – The Rogue Expeditions Story’.

“Between the guides of Rogue Expeditions, we had an ongoing joke that we had enough funny stories and almost disaster stories from the world of travel to fill a book!

“Lots of the runners coming on the trips want to hear about the stories from previous groups – you couldn’t make up some of the shenanigans! They want to hear about the backstories of the guides and how the company got started and so on.

“That provided the framework for the book. The travel pause of the pandemic provided the moment to put the head down and write it.

‘Creative project’

“It was really nice to have a creative project to put energy into during the dark days of last winter when so much in the world seemed out of our control.”

It is the first book he has ever written, but Sean did not find it all that difficult, explaining: “Once I was sat at a laptop focused on it, the words flowed. I was writing from memory a lot of the time, so I think that memoir-style writing is somewhat easier than creative-style writing from imagination.

“Bit by bit, I got a clear picture of what the whole story would be, and I wanted to get it finished before travel re-opened, so that gave it an extra push along. It is something I enjoyed a lot and definitely hope to do again.”

With an eclectic skillset among the team at Rogue Expeditions and some friends, once the writing was done there were enough people to help self-publish the book, giving them full control of how they wanted the book to look.

Looking back at the most enjoyable bits to write about, Sean talks about the founders of Rogue Expeditions.

“I probably most enjoyed writing about my colleagues, Allison and Gabe – the couple who founded the company. It was fun to be the third wheel of the company and write some funny and personal stuff about them that they might not have written about themselves.

“Some of the chapters are of the early years, 2012-2016, before I joined so I was working from voice recordings they sent me from Oregon – we haven’t met up since before the pandemic started – and I based the early chapters on those. Many of the stories were new to me, and it was fun to go down memory lane with them.”

Interest in the book has been “fantastic” and a real shot of energy after a frustrating 16 months of cancelled trips.

“We’re fortunate to have some really loyal fans who come on trip after trip with us and they all bought the book and reviewed it, and shared it across social media, so it gave us a nice little wave of support. We’ve sent copies out to 20-odd countries around the world, so the thought of the book going on its own journey now and reaching new people is quite exciting,” Sean concluded.

Sean is grateful to Allison and Gabe and the dozens of runners who have shared their stories, and also to Frances who did the editing.

Sean will be swapping writing for running in the coming weeks as he heads to Iceland for his first trip since February, 2020, while those interested in reading Venture can order it on Amazon or through rogueexpeditions.com.