Inspired by a desire to seek out and create adventures closer to home, Explore Your Boundaries became an opportunity for Markus Stitz and Mark Beaumont to see the familiar with refreshed eyes. Together, they mapped 24 Scottish council boundary routes to encourage people to stay active, whether cycling or walking, and to inspire adventures that start and finish at their front door.
‘The thing I love about the Explore Your Boundaries concept is that it forced us to find routes which we never would have looked for,’ explains Beaumont. ‘Often it felt like we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and yet if I stopped and thought about it, I was only 25 miles from home. It’s really interesting when you have a project, a journey, which is defined by a route which is not necessarily the trail itself. Straight-lining expeditions have always fascinated me, and in a weird way this felt like a straight-lining expedition, because we were following this predefined line.’
Their new documentary captures their four adventures in Clackmannanshire, East Lothian and Falkirk, undertaken between June and September 2021, and Glasgow, undertaken during COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, in November 2021.