Matt George

So my name is Matt George. I live in Penzance all the way down in West Cornwall. And my job is basically, I own my own business. It's an [outdoor adventure business] and I mainly do coasteering and rock climbing.

So most of the time I'm pretty lucky. I just am enjoying adventure activities with my customers. So I'm there, you know, at the front getting involved, doing all the adventure activities.

So to be honest, as I say, I do feel very lucky. My typical work activity is just having fun, jumping in the sea or climbing up rock faces. So that is what I spend most of my time doing.

Yeah, so a typical day for me is... The most popular activity we do is the coasteering. So more often than not, I'm doing that.

So on a typical day, the time of day varies because we have to work with the tide. So, you know, the tide constantly moves around. So sometimes it'll be first thing in the morning. Sometimes it'll be in the afternoon.

Sometimes we do sessions all day, but I'll get in my van at home. So I'm a mobile business. Basically, I've got a van full of wetsuits, buoyancy aids and helmets and all the gear I need.

We'll go to our coasteering venue. If any of you don't know what coasteering is, it's basically an adventure along a rocky section of coastline. It's best known for sort of cliff jumping, but it's all about exploring the sort of hidden parts of the coast you can't really access on the other way. So as well as doing jumping and stuff, we get to scramble and swim, check out caves and gullies and generally have lots of fun in the Atlantic Ocean.

So yeah, that's the whole day. I'll drive down to our coasteering location and I'll meet our group. We'll greet them, get to know everyone. They have to fill out a little bit of paperwork.

Then we get them equipped. They need to get into a wetsuit, helmet and a buoyancy aid, as well as a pair of shoes, a few other bits and pieces. We get ready. We take them to the start of the coasteering route.

It's very important we give them the safety briefing so they know what they're going to expect and know what they should do and what they shouldn't do.

And then that's it, we get started and we basically go and have some fun. we're usually in, you know, it takes about two and a half hours actually doing the activity. And then once that's all over, the real fun begins, because we have to wash out all the wetsuits and all that kind of stuff.

So if we're just doing one session in a day, that'll be it. We'll wash the gear and go home. Sometimes we do that and then another group will turn up and we'll do that all over again as well.

Yeah, so who do I work with? So basically it's my business. It's my business alone, but I have extra instructors who work with me and help me deliver the sessions.

So I have various coasteering instructors, both in West Cornwall and over on the Isles of Scilly. So they're people I've kind of handpicked. Some are very, very small business. They've usually come to me word of mouth, but you know, it'll be people who've already got pretty good experience in the sea. That's a prerequisite really for doing this.

And then, you know, I put them through a short training program and then they also just build up experience. So yeah, I've got a great team of people around me and basically I've got a sort of a bank of people.

You know, I am a small business and it's sort of the good thing and the bad thing about what I do it's very very seasonal. It's a bad thing because it's quite hard to develop staff. I can't keep people all year round so I rely on people who do other things and they come and work with me.

So of course, the best thing is, it really is genuinely a lot of fun.

You know, almost every session is enjoyable. Really, because I get to do the experience as much, if not more than most of the participants, you know, I get to enjoy all the jumps, swimming and all the adventure.

So, yeah, it's most of the time that side of it doesn't even feel like work. I've just met a group of people and I'm taking them to have a bit of fun.

So the hardest part is very, very physical. I lead all the sessions myself. So, you know, it's very, very demanding.

As I said, it's very, very seasonal. So for those few months in the summer, I am literally going nonstop. And by the end of August, I'm absolutely exhausted. So that's the hardest part, literally.

Of course, as well as having all the fun, is, I do all of the admin, handle all of the bookings, build my own website, manage all of the backend as well. So that's kind of the hidden part of it that people don't see. So as I handle all of that myself, you know, it is quite a lot of plates to spin all at one time.

So whilst not being necessarily physically hard, yeah, there is that sort of other less glamorous side to it as there is with any business.

Well, yeah, certainly by accident. I didn't have ambitions when I was young or a teenager that I want to be a coasteering guy, I want to own my own adventure business. I didn't even know what coasteering was back then. And indeed, not many people did.

So I had a long and I suppose, to be honest, undistinguished career path. I moved away from Cornwall and lived in London for many years.

And actually, my first love in life was music. And I did pursue that for a number of years in London, playing in all sorts of bands and situations. But eventually that kind of ran its course and I moved back to Cornwall.

And at that stage, I was a little bit unsure of what I was going to do. Because I'd gotten into climbing and I'd always loved to see, kind of, I was like, well, I want to do something like this.

And at the time there was a bit of a gap in West Cornwall. No one was offering it. So I kind of took a bit of a gamble really. And I started doing it.

To be honest, when I first started doing it, I probably really didn't know what I was doing. That was all the way back in 2013. And here we are about to go into 2026 and yeah, I'm still here.

I need to be careful of not saying the wrong thing here because I went through school, I went to college and I went to university, I did a degree in geology and people think, oh, there's some kind of overlap there because I'm interested in rock climbing and exploring rocky sections of the coast.

But I don't want to discourage people from pursuing further education but it probably didn't really help me end up where I am today.

I don't regret doing it and whilst people may perceive me as an adventurer, I'm a bit of a nerd. I love learning things and I'm always learning things and I think my journey through education helped nurture that.

Without being obvious the sort of direct path to where it led me in the end, it became a big part of who I am and helped me learn these things, make these judgments and all that kind of stuff.

Let's say it's a strange journey that's led me to where I am. Yeah, education definitely did play its part although it's not obvious looking at it.

So, at a very sort of trivial level, suppose. It's sort of, I bring, you know, sort of fun and entertainment. People come with me and they have a really great time and hopefully, you know, it's been one of the highlights of their holidays. That's often what people say.

But at the same time, you know, lots of these people who come with us, they come from all over the country and other parts of the world as well. It gives them an opportunity to see an environment that actually very few people see. It gives them a new appreciation for it, certainly gives them a newfound respect for the sea, almost always, especially if it's a slightly rough day.

And of course, as well as just being out there having fun, we sort of educate them without making it too heavy. People aren't there for a sort of a lecture, but we point out things about the environment that are of interest, minor bits of geology.

Hopefully we're just bringing a sort of wider awareness, getting people immersed in nature and you know, we all need a bit more of that in our modern lives when often we're stuck inside, stuck in front of the screen. Yeah, hopefully that's all positive.

I took a calculation this year, I think over the years, I've taken more than 12,000 people on adventures. So we've met such a wide range of people, such a huge range of characters.

And I'm picturing like, you know, stag do's with people jumping off cliffs wearing pink tutus and all sorts of crazy things.

One thing that does spring to mind as we're talking now coming up to Christmas, we made a video some years ago of one of my guides who's very, very adept at doing flips and stuff off very large jumps.

And I got him a Santa suit and we went down to our route and just got this amazing video of him doing this huge diving forward roll off like a 10 meter cliff dressed as Santa.

And I made a video and sort of put one of the well-known Christmas pop songs on over and it's every Christmas it kind of comes up again and it always makes us chuckle. That was a lot of fun.

Not many of us when we're young really have a clear idea of exactly what we want to do. I think those who have that are very lucky. Like some people know from a young age or from a teenager, I want to be a doctor. And your pathway is very clear. You know, how one becomes a doctor, there's a very set way of doing that.

But for many of us, it really isn't that obvious. I'm not sure that's really leading to any advice, but yeah, I guess don't overthink it. I mean, don't shy away from education. Don't generally be a lazy person.

You've got to go out there and get involved in the world. And by doing that, opportunities will eventually come to you. And most of us can't see the path or the career we're going to end up doing.

It will find you eventually and you'll probably do lots of things on the way, but it is all part of the journey, but you've got to go out there and get involved with the world. It's not going to come to you. I suppose that's the only thing I'd offer.