About

Farafen is built from two old words of the North Sea coast. Fara is Old Norse: to travel, to go — the root that gave English fare, farewell, and seafarer. Fenne is Old Frisian: a wild meadow. Put together, something like travelling the open country — a nod to going far afield, in the languages of people who did.

My name's Steve Evans. I set Farafen up as a site for stories of adventure travel and staying active later in life, starting with my own.

The travel bug arrived early, and with it the certainty of a big trip someday. The 1980s delivered it: three years on the road, starting overland through Southeast Asia and into China in 1982, not long after the bamboo curtain came down. A working stop in Australia was followed by the length of South America — still my favourite continent. A motorbike from Los Angeles to Alaska, where a season's work as a fisherman paid the way. Then back to China, and back to Europe the slow way — on the Trans-Siberian railway.

Moscow was the end of the railway, not the journey — roads, trains and ferries covered the rest of the way back to London. What followed was the settled version of life: work, family, a home, the years stacking up in the usual way. Decades of it, and good ones.

This site came much later — partly to finally write down those early journeys, thirty and forty years on, and partly to record the newer ones: the places still not got around to, now being worked through. Some of the tales here are old, some are new. The mix is deliberate. Because somewhere along the way to what people politely call "older age" came a realisation that changed how the years ahead look: the list of places not yet been is still far longer than the list of places been. There's a lot left to do.

What's made it possible is simple: never stopping moving. Football for most of my life — the last game at 62, celebrated by swimming across the Thames. Triathlon had already started at 49, and I tried boxing at 50. If you're going to have a midlife crisis, you might as well get fitter doing it. The competing continues into my seventies, and 2025 finally brought an age-group win at a triathlon. Some of the competition had the decency to forget the event was on, went to the wrong location or are still out on the course asking where they are.

But standing on a start line at this age was never really about the results. It's about still being on that start line.

That's what Farafen Tales is about. Not extraordinary feats — ordinary determination. The travel and the training feed each other: staying active keeps the world open, and wanting to see the world is a very good reason to stay active. This is cruising, not cruises.

Adventure doesn't retire. And plenty of others feel the same way — Farafen is open to like-minded people with their own stories to tell, whatever their age.