It started out like any other Saturday, but it shall now be forever referred to as "The Woody Bay Adventure"….

I’ve always been a fan of adventurers, so much so that I even named my cat after the ultimate adventure hero, Mr Indiana Jones. Never mind that the cat is a girl, nor that she can’t ride a horse (yet!), she has the same spirit, the same fire in her blood, fearlessness and curiosity for exploring what’s beyond the everyday.

You won’t catch my Indy saying "but how will I get there?", "what if it all goes wrong?" or "maybe I’ll just stay at home and watch someone else do it on TV". She just sets off to go and catch her first frog without doubt or hesitation.

Adventurers just see something they want, and they set out to see if they can get it. They know that they’ve only got to take that first step, and that’s when the adventure begins.

Last Saturday, inspired by a photo in October’s issue of Devon Today, my fellow adventurer / partner-in-crime and I set off in search of Woody Bay. We just saw the photo, thought it’d be a pretty pleasant place to go, so decided to go and find it. We didn’t have a map, just a vague idea it was somewhere west of Lynton, but we knew we’d find it, we just had to set off.

It felt like a real-life adventure. There was something quite "Romancing the Stone" about it, although sadly without the mudslides. We were like kids, taking random turnings down unknown roads, stopping off wherever we felt like it, with no idea where we were going to stay that night.

Woody Bay became like a mysterious "utopia" in our minds, and our mission was to find what we were looking for. When we got there, it really didn’t matter that we were having two totally different experiences. Alex was reliving his past-life as Jack Sparrow, in awe at the real smuggler’s cover we found ourselves in, while I was having a "Celestine Prophecy" moment and feeling the "energy" of the place. It didn’t matter. We had shared the adventure, and that was the magic of the day.

It got me thinking about how sometimes we miss out on the adventure of life, when we’re too busy pounding the treadmill, living day to day doing the ordinary stuff. Yet the sense of empowerment is incredible, even with a relatively small adventure such as ours. The process of seeing and achieving our goals has a profoundly positive effect on our self-esteem, and on our sense of control over our lives.

On our Woody Bay Adventure, it was seeing a picture of a beautiful place, and actually going there – all it took was getting in the car. Similarly, in life, all you need is a vision of where you want to go, and actually take the first steps towards that goal. It doesn’t matter how you get there, when you get there, or even if the "there" changes. It’s the journey that counts.

It’s all about that feeling you get when the blood is rushing through your veins, your mind is only alert to your mission, and you’ve got that sense of purpose that makes you feel truly alive.

It’s an adventure, and all you have to do is set off.