Matt & Fay Doyle, photographers & filmmakers

“Getting out into the mountains felt like taking medicine”

For most of our twenties, we both suffered with depression and anxiety. When we met, we were both working demanding jobs in advertising. Our weeks were spent working late, shoving takeaways down our throats as fast as we could so we could get back to work. All whilst being washed down with copious amounts of alcohol to numb us out. 

The thing is, we both felt bad that we weren’t happy. On the outside, we were both successful and the sky was the limit – we had it all. Inside, we felt a dark void that couldn’t be filled regardless of what we did. Nobody really tells you what you’re supposed to do when you’ve ‘got it all’ and you aren’t happy!

Then, Fay’s dad died of cancer and it was an incredibly difficult time. We’d started urban walking most days as a bid to get a bit healthier and to take our minds off things, so we decided to give hiking a go. Those first few hikes felt like huge revelations to us. Afterwards, we felt calmer, we slept better and for the first time in weeks since Fay’s dad had died, we felt like we could handle everything that life was throwing at us in a much calmer way.

It wasn’t long before hiking became an obsession and getting out into the mountains felt like taking medicine. Our weekend hikes turned into longer trips and soon we were devoting holidays purely to hiking, adventure and exploring. What we loved most was how being in the mountains connected us. Suddenly we were spending hours opening up about our emotions. We were finding solutions to old problems and finding ways to cope with the depression and anxiety that felt like it had a magnitude of power over us for a long time.

Every time we came back from the peace we’d found in the outdoors, we felt a well of emptiness that seemed to grow the more advanced our adventures became. However, the confidence we were building in nature allowed us the perspective to see that what we were doing with our lives wasn’t serving us. We wanted to find a way to make what we were doing in the outdoors our full-time, and so we started our photography and filmmaking business. Working primarily with brands in the outdoor, adventure and tourism spheres. It wasn’t an easy jump at all, and sacrificed a lot to begin with, but life is too short to regret not following your heart.

At the same time, we’d had a lot of conversations with people in the outdoors who’d felt the same as us in their jobs and found the outdoors a solace. It seemed that a lot of people felt like it was hard to get into adventure and that there was a lot of machoism and comparison. For us, the outdoors felt more about connecting to nature rather than these superhuman adventures and our passion grew for trying to help people get out into nature and reconnect – this saw us starting our blog This Expansive Adventure.

Fast forward a couple of years and our blog has grown massively as a media outlet in the outdoor and adventure space and has become a safe haven for people who lack the confidence to get outside, gain this confidence to do so. We spend the majority of our years in the mountains and work on projects, with brands who share our passion, to recreate the lost connections we have to nature – with a heavy emphasis on mental health and mindset.

We couldn’t imagine our lives without adventure now – and it’s crazy to think, in just a few years, how much different our lives are. We both feel like completely different people to who we were when we met, and the fact that we get to do this together, full time, feels like a dream we hope we never wake up from!

What you want can often feel scary, or unrealistic – but if the path we’ve chosen to take with our lives has taught us anything, it’s that life is too short to not spend it doing what makes you happy. This is something we’ve realized even more in recent weeks since the outbreak of Covid-19 and the fact that we’ve had to trade big mountains for our home turf.

It has been a turbulent journey for us from complete terror and panic to stripping back to only the simplistic necessities and we’ve interestingly reached a place of peacefulness. There is no pressure on us right now to achieve or to thrive, just being is enough – and there is something quite beautiful about that. The mindfulness techniques that we’ve learned to call on through adventure to help us deal with depression and anxiety are the tools that we are using every day now.

It is now that we’re seeing the true benefits that we’ve taken from spending time in the mountains. This time has allowed us to truly connect back to local walks and relish every moment we get to spend with the trees in the woodland close to our house.

Life might look completely different to us right now, but it has definitely got us connecting in a more purposeful way. We’re really looking forward to bringing that even deeper appreciation to our adventures further afield when we’re able to get out there again. For now, our adventures are all about exploring in a different way, and we truly believe that adventure is a state of mind.