Sign up now and win a walking or cycling holiday in France!

To kick start summer we have partnered with our friends at muchbetteradventures.com to offer you the chance to win a long weekend hiking or biking in the French Alps.
Simply sign up on the Conch, and we will give you the link and instructions you need to register for the prize draw.
You will get to choose from a 4 day walking or biking break for 2 people in La Clusaz/Le Grand Bornand – a stunning area of the French Alps, not far from Annecy and Geneva. Your holiday will run from Thursday night to Monday evening anytime during this summer, and will include full rail or airport transfers; en-suite accommodation; 3 course dinner with wine; breakfast and afternoon tea; and the full services and support of the lodge team, including walking or biking hosting where applicable.

Sign me up!

I’m already a member. Can I still win?

Yes.  If you’re already a member of The Conch community, just upload a blog or photo of your latest adventures and we will send you the link and instructions you need.

Upload your adventures to The Conch

The Conch teams up with 9Bar

We know that you are all active people in one way or another whether it’s with a sports club, part of your job or just a hobby. For this reason The Conch has teamed up with the great tasting, nutritious energy snack ’9Bar’ in a promotion just for you guys to keep you doing what you do best!

9Bar is a deliciously nutritious seed bar designed to get the maximum nutritional goodness from seeds in a convenient and tasty way. Sharing the passion The Conch has for healthy living and keeping active, 9Bar supply many endurance and explosive athletes with their bars and if it’s good enough for the likes of the GB cycling team then it’s good enough for our members.

The Giveaway

The Conch is giving away 100 new variety packs of 9Bar.  Each pack contains 5 bars giving you the opportunity to taste the whole range of 9Bars on the market. There are two ways that you can claim your free 5 pack:

Newsletter

We’re giving the next 80 subscribers to our newsletter the chance to get their hands on a free pack of 9Bar. If you don’t already receive our monthly newsletter all you have to do is sign up by clicking on our newsletter bar on the homepage to be one of the first to try these tasty snacks.

Content

Already signed up to our newsletter? No problem, you are still in with a chance of getting a free 5 pack through your door. Throughout March we are launching a content competition whereby the best 20 uploads will also receive free 9Bars.  So get uploading your adventure pictures or creating a blog talking about an experience you’ve had.

The Process

All you have to do to claim your FREE pack of these high protein bars is follow these 3 easy steps:

1.  Upload some pictures of you doing something adventurous/write a blog about your experience or register to our monthly newsletter.

2.  Reply to the email we send requesting your name and address to claim your 9Bars.

3.  Get your 9Bar variety pack free in the post and fill in the online feedback form to let us know what you thought of them, that’s it!

Win a Whole Box of 9Bar

That’s not all! If you are one of the 100 lucky members to receive one of these nutritious variety packs, fill in the feedback form letting us know what you thought and you will be automatically entered into a random draw to win an entire box of your favourite 9Bar to share with your friends….or not depending how generous you’re feeling!

The feedback you give will include your honest opinion of the 9Bars as well as your favourite flavour from the selection and why. This will not affect your chances of winning as the draw is done at random, so what are you waiting for? Get your free 9Bars now!

Members cannot claim more than one free variety 5 pack of 9Bar during the period of this promotion. Identification of multiple entries will exclude the member from all future promotions and giveaways and may lead to their account being deleted from The Conch.

Are you passionate about an adventure sport?

Are you the kind of individual worth shouting about?

Interested in boosting your sporting profile in the UK with regular, free promotion?

We are launching our Ambassador Programme for 2010 and are looking for enthusiastic sportspeople to be the face of their sport on The Conch.

All the chosen candidate needs is to be sociable, have some cool pictures/videos to show off and to be active in their sport, that’s it! It’s a great opportunity to get free promotion in your spare time.

To register your interest, please contact us with your name and sport you’d like to represent.

The Conch 5K Giveaway came to an end last night after a month of draws to reduce the number of finalists from 100 to 50 and then just 10 people.

On Wednesday 28th January 2010, someone’s life changed.  They just don’t know it yet.

Rather than just drawing the name out of a hat I enlisted the help of my local Ultimate Frisbee Club to help pick a name at random.  If the gods of video editing were smiling on me, I would have a video to post here right now.  But they’re not.  So the video will follow.

The Draw

The winner was determined by a small frisbee accuracy competition.  We had a cone placed at one end of a sports hall, and my frisbee team (DUFFA) at the other.  During two rounds of 5 people, the 2 discs that landed closest to the cone went through to the final.  The other 3 members were eliminated. 

In the final, the disc that landed closest to the cone would be the winner of the 5K Giveaway.

How it went down

It has to be said, for a frisbee club, the accuracy was shocking.  I was expecting discs to be piled up on top of each other next to the target.  Still, they all got fairly close.

Round 1 (Eliminated) -

Lunaeventer/ Heather Thomson

adventuress/ Kay Dinsdale

Torijames/ Tori James

Round 2 (Eliminated) –

michellekarlden/ Michelle Harris

schoolboy/ Jonathan Wood

tessadarley/ Tessa Darley

The Final

Eliminated:

elllani/ Gareth Banda

hunnylamb/ Vanessa Cagnayo

bekkistanyer/ Bekki Stanyer

So we have a winner! 

Congratulations go to Shestyles/ Izzy Brittain.  You are the 5K Giveaway winner!  We’ll be in touch very soon to find out how you want to spend the money.

A massive thank you to everyone who took part and to all our brand partners and supporters.  Make sure you watch this space to see how £5,000 worth of adventure can change someone’s life.

You’ve got to feel for James Douglass. Anyone who drags a windsurf rig all the way to the beach and out on the water deserves to have some fun with it.

But the sea doesn’t always play ball.

Better luck next time James!

When I was more active on Twitter and Facebook, I used to post a few adventure links each day from some of the hundreds of blogs I subscribe to from the entire range of adventure sports.

Think I might resurrect the format, starting now.

Classic Pro Cycling Shots

If I were this good a cyclist or photographer, I’d be a richer man than I am, in more ways than one.

- Cycling Info blog

It Never Rains in Margaritaville

Some incredible standup paddle surf photos.  Please summer, hurry, HURRY!!!

- from Surfing Sports Blog

Nike SB ‘This Is Qatar Video

Refreshing skate video that tries to get a a deeper connection with Quatar and it’s people.  Ok, so the interviews are in Spanish but the skating translates pretty well

- Huck magazine blog

This event looks pretty awesome. Only wish I were there to see it.

Thanks to Think Empire for the heads up.

I’ve struggled with Twitter over the last year or so.  I used to read it regularly, updating with loads of adventure stories and information from around the world. 

Since then, we started accumulating lots of followers and I got a bit over-enthusiastic with following other people until it was all too much for me to take in.  Without realising I began to use the service less and less.  For the last six months I’ve used it quite sparingly.  That’s about to change.

I’ve been doing a spot of pre-spring cleaning, unfollowing inactive or irrelevant users or those people I might get to know at a later date but not right now.

I’m also splitting my use of Twitter between The Conch account (@shellshocked) and my personal account ( @simonjermy).  Please feel free to follow whichever you like.

If you’ve survived the cut…congratulations.  You must be incredibly interesting, talented or downright gorgeous.  I’ll let you decide that for yourself.

Tweet you later!

Anyone in the UK can’t have failed to notice the unusual amount of snow we’ve had this winter.  I’ve just been talking to Alex Narracott (Much Better Adventures) who relocated to France for the winter.  Apparently, while it’s raining over there…it’s chucked down here!

Obviously The Conch doesn’t approve of skiving off work to enjoy the snow….and while I’d like to finish this paragraph to explain why, I’m afraid I can’t. 

I have a date with a snowboard and my local park.

Happy Snow Day!

A year ago I made a pledge to seek out adventure and to have more fun.  If you haven’t followed my adventures over the summer, I’m happy to say I achieved it. 

The highlights included a long-distance bike ride on the Transpennine Trail, some birthday wakeboarding, and a charity fundraiser that saw me attempt 50 adventure sports in 50 hours.

This year, I’m taking the pledge again and inviting you to do the same. 

Sack off the usual promises of LESS.  Why not start the new decade with a resolution to do MORE, have MORE fun and meet MORE people.

If that sounds like the kind of 2010 you want to have, copy the pledge below and paste it (with your name inserted) to the comments at the bottom of this post.  Then, tell your friends by pasting it into your Facebook status update.

Join with me and let’s make 2010 the most adventurous year yet!

The Pledge

I, [SIMON JERMY] pledge to spend the next year as if it were my last.  I will explore my own boundaries and challenge myself to be venturous.

• - This is my time; the year to try new things; to meet new people who share a passion for adventure and the outdoors…AND TO HAVE FUN!!
• - Friends!  Take the pledge with me – http://blog.theconch.com/2009/12/31/the-conch-resolution-2010-take-the-pledge/