Fully Charged

Andy is incredibly excited to be working with the Fully Charged team.

Fully charged is a very successful Youtube Channel devoted to Electric Vehicles, Sustainable Energy and Green Living.

Andy joins Robert Llewellyn, Helen Czerski, Maddie Moate, Rory Reid and Chelsea Sexton and he’ll be covering motorbikes, van, boats, planes, conservation, energy and the more unusual electric and sustainable adventures.

Head to Fully Charged Show to see more.

The Sahara Challenge

Andy and Bex were due to join a team from Bailey of Bristol to drive his motorhome  and two off their caravans from the UK to the Sahara desert.

The journey was to take them across Portugal and Spain and through Morocco.

Andy had plans to freediving, SUP, climb and trek in some of the least visited areas on Earth.

However, the trip was due to leave just as the COVID 19 pandemic broke out and had to be postponed. It is hoped the trip will go ahead in 2021.

History’s Top 10

Andy joined a team of other specialist and experts to look at some of the most impressive achievements of the past for The History Channel.

Andy was there to give a military perspective with his experience as a soldier and archaeologist discussing ancient weapons, battles, military commanders and campaigns.

North Gaulton Castle

Just off the coast of Orkney lies North Gaulton Castle. This huge sea stack balances precariously above a the crashing waves and is incredibly inaccessible. But in 2016 Andy and three other climber managed to stand atop the seasick, something only a handful of people have managed in the past. Previously helicopter had been used to drop people onto it but this time the team rigged a massive Tyrollean Traverse.

Two ropes where anchored to the top of a cliff on one side of a horse-shoe shaped bay. Then the ropes where walked around the cliff edge to be secured on the other side before being pulled tight. This left the ropes running across the mouth of the bay close to the foot of North Gaulton Castle sea-stack.

The team then climbed along the ropes, jumped onto the stack, climbed to the top, abseiled back down, jumped back on the ropes and climbed back up them to the mainland – whilst filming the whole thing along the way.

Andy was there looking at the geology of Orkney to explain how this influenced the Neolithic engineering and culture that grew up and helped explain why Orkney became a centre for innovative building techniques 5,000 years ago as the sea stack is effectively a giant rock core sample.

The film was part of the BBC series Britain’s Ancient Capital – Secrets of Orkney.

The Old Man of Hoy

In a very wet summer of 2014 Andy was asked to cover Sir Chris Bonnington’s attempt to re-climb his famous route on The Old Man of Hoy, one of, if not the, most spectacular, remote and adventurous Trad climbs in Britain. Sir Chris originally made the climb in 1965 and again in 1966 for the BBC’s most audacious live broadcast involving a huge amount of crew, equipment and the British Army.

This time the climb was to mark Sir Chris’ 80th Birthday.  Chris was joined by his friend Leo Houlding, one of  the world’s top climbers with new ascent around the world including the Antarctic.

Chris and Leo invited Andy to be the 3rd member of their partnership. This was a chance to not only meet but climb with two living legends of the climbing world.

The Old Man of Hoy is a seasick of just under 500 feet that towers off the coast of the island of Hoy in the Orkneys. It’s a 5 pitch route, often damp and greasy and covered in Fulmars who hide on small ledges and puke on passing climbers (it’s a defence mechanism).

The weather window was 3 days and after 2 of constant rain and wind the team went for it despite the weather still being wet and windy. With the extra filming required it took most of the day to complete the 2-hour walk in, climb the route and make the 4 abseils down to the bottom.

The Old Man of Hoy was Andy’s favourite climbing route in Britain. It’s remote, rarely trafficked, wild, multi pitch and Trad. It represents the best of British Adventure climb. And to climb it with two greats of the climbing community made it Andy’s all time favourite climb.

The adventure became a two-part special for BBC1’s The One Show.

Showreel

Below is Andy’s most recent showreel produced in April 2019.

The One Show

In 2012 Andy became The One Show’s ‘very own Man of Extremes’. And has been making films for them ever since.

He has been the only person to climb Britain’s tallest tree, cave dived in unexplored mines, paddled across England, raced a peregrine falcon whilst skydiving, discovered lost shipwrecks, climbed remote sea stacks and even been the voice of Action Man.

He’s covered everything from wildlife and archaeology to geology and social matter but always with an element of extreme adventure.

He continues his work into 2018 and this year will see him paramotoring, caving, climbing, diving, skydiving and more.

The Adventure Show

And first appeared on BBC2’s The Adventure Show when he produced some films about his solo diving exploration of The Cave of Skulls. After that he did a series of films for the show, first about free diving and snorkelling around Scotland and then about kayaking down the rivers, lochs, estuaries and seas in the South East part of Scotland.

The Lost Mine

Mining has been going on in the UK since Palaeolithic times and for centuries was one of the most important industries in Britain. Many of the old, abandoned mines have been forgotten about and, when the pumps were turned off, their deeper sections flooded. This froze in time the moments after their last use.

A underwater complex of slate mine tunnels near Llangollen in Wales was first re-discovered by Martyn Farr, who explored the initial flooded sections. Martyn passed the information to Andy who went on to do solo cave-diving exploration of the deeper section, laying line and recording his finding. The tunnels were full of artefacts like old winch systems, pick axes, mugs, boots and carts. There was even graffiti of men’s names and dates which showed the last use to day from 24th January 1938.

Later a team of divers led by cave diver Will Smith also undertook work in the mine to help map the remaining sections.

This story became a chapter in Andy’s book about Extreme Adventures in the UK. It also became his first film for the BBC’s The One Show, a clips from this can be seen on the TV page.

MV Shoal Fisher – The Mystery Shipwreck

When a strange, ship-shaped object was detected by the MCA (Maritime and Coastguard Agency) in a place no shipwreck had ever been recorded Andy jumped at the chance to investigate. Along with underwater cameramen and friends Rich Stevenson and Dan Stevenson Andy dived to the seabed, a depth of almost 70 metres, out in the middle of the English Channel. What they discovered with a beautifully intact ship, sitting upright with only some damage to it’s starboard bow. Recording key identification features of the shape of the vessel, it’s size, anchors, boilers and some of the artefact, like a dinner plate, along with research conducted by Andy and Tigress Productions they were able to prove this was the remains of the MV Shoal Fisher. The ship sank in the Second World War after hitting a mine as it brought gun parts to Plymouth. All the crew were saved and the ship was though to have sunk more than two miles away.

Not only did this become a chapter in Andy’s UK-based book, Extreme Adventures,  he also presented a two part film on it for The One Show, a clip if this can be seen on the TV page.