Logan’s Place – the highlight of explorer Steve Backshall’s year-long expedition to go where no one has gone before…

We caught up with explorer Steve Backshall to hear all about his latest tv series ‘Expedition with Steve Backshall’.

In Steve’s new tv series which airs on UKTV’s Dave later this month. Viewers will go on exploring with Steve and his team to extreme environments all over the world. Many have never been seen by human eyes before.

For Steve one of the over-riding aims of this massive undertaking is to share a message of hope around conserving the natural world.

“This has been the biggest year in my life and I’m amazed we’ve achieved so many things in so many places,” Steve said when interviewed by Total Guide To journalist Fiona Scott.

 

“These places won’t be left alone for ever and far too often they will be found by those who want to exploit them. We hope to show these places as wondrous, beautiful and worth preserving.

 

“With conservation it’s so easy to be negative yet our world has great potential, there are reasons for optimism and hope. I want young people, including my own son, to see these places, have a desire for adventure and for them to be moved to engage with, explore and enjoy our natural world – not be removed from it.”

 

This series will see Steve visiting some of the most remote places on earth from underground cave systems in Mexico to white water rafting in the Himalayas to the deserts of Oman.

 

Where did the idea for this series come from?

 

“In 1998, I went to New Guinea with the aim of walking across the island on my own. I was a professional expedition leader in the early 1990s. I failed rather spectacularly. However it made me realise there are still so many places, places which are hardcore where people have never been before.

 

“I wanted to create a compendium of some of these places within an enclosed project and I first pitched the idea in around 2006. Finally last year things fell into place and ever since it’s been an explosion of activity.”

 

 

Caves feature in the series – how do you know they are there?

 

“Part of it is due to geology and topography. Limestone which has uplifted into mountains will have caverns beneath them. The limestone produces water which is a weak acid so over time this can create immense cave systems which can run for many miles. Many which have never been explored. To swim in an underground and underwater cave which has never been illuminated before is beyond words. We explored caves in Borneo, Oman and Mexico.”

 

What was your least favourite moment?

 

We were in Borneo in a patch of dense forest which was full of leeches, ticks, mosquitoes and mites. It was so bad you felt as if the forest was growing on you. I made the mistake of sitting down on a log and to my horror, a host of burrowing mites attacked my bottom! They got under the skin of my buttocks and they itched like fury. For about two weeks I could cheerfully have scratched off my skin on my backside – it’s not an experience I’d want to repeat. (I’m sure it will be fun to watch though!).

 

What was your highlight?

 

It would have to be descending into a desert canyon in Oman into a rocky bowl with a ‘paradise’ pool at the bottom and knowing, with absolute certainty, that no human being had ever set foot there before. It’s the desert and it was our first water for 24 hours and it tasted like nothing else. We were the first people to see it. We named it after my newborn son Logan and I hope, one day in the future, that I will go back with him to see it.”

 

*Expedition with Steve Backshall, Series 1, Ep 1 airs on UKTV Dave at 8pm from Sunday July 21