The house
Five people
Three who plan, one who answers the phone at three in the morning, and one who makes sure the price on the page is the whole price. We work from a first-floor room at 9 Fettes Row, Edinburgh, and we are closed on Fridays because somebody is always away.
The house in figures
- 2016Founded
- 5People
- 6 in 10Repeat parties
- 4 of 84Cancelled by us
Who plans
The whole staff
Ines Cadoret
Founder · plans the Southern Andes and the North Atlantic
A glaciologist until 2015, when a field season in Aysén turned into a habit of taking friends back. Started Longitude from a flat in Stockbridge with one Lofoten departure and six travellers.
Rafael Oduya
Planner · the Atlantic Maghreb and the Namib Coast
Grew up in Lagos, trained as a structural engineer, and spent eight years building schools across West Africa before joining in 2018. Plans journeys the way he checked load paths.
Miru Hasegawa
Planner · Northern Japan
Eleven years as a location scout for NHK, most of them in Tōhoku in winter. Has personally been snowed into four of the six places we stay on Snow Country, Slowly.
Neve Brannick
Operations · the out-of-hours phone
Ran a mountain rescue control room in Fort William for a decade. Carries the desk phone on every day a party is travelling, which is about 110 days a year.
Dougal Sim
Money and contracts
An accountant who asked, in his interview, why the house took commission. It stopped in 2017. Writes the booking conditions in plain English and the invoices line by line.
How it runs
Eleven months, four steps
The same order, every journey, since 2016. The long version is in the journal.
- 01
A forty-minute call
With the planner for the region, not a sales desk. We ask how you walk, how you sleep, and what the worst trip you have taken was. About a third of calls end with us suggesting a different journey, or a different house.
- 02
The planning fee
£1,900 per party holds the dates and starts the eleven months. It is credited in full against the journey. If you do not travel, we keep it; it paid for the work.
- 03
Rooms, fixers, and a second of each
Every room is contracted by month ten, every fixer confirmed in writing with a named second. If a planner has not slept the route in twenty months, they go and do it.
- 04
The paper pack
A month out, a printed pack arrives: route, phone numbers, a kit list that is specific to the season, and a single page on what to do if the desk cannot be reached. It never has been.
Four rules
Not for any price
We lose about one enquiry in six to these, and we give each of those people the name of someone good.
No captive animals
No elephant rides, dolphin pens, or sanctuaries that breed. The animal decides how close you get.
No bed we have not slept in
Within the last twenty months, by someone on this page. Not inspected — slept in.
No helicopter for the view
For getting someone out, without hesitation. For looking down, never.
No back-to-back single nights
Two nights minimum, everywhere. Anything less is transit with nicer sheets.
Visiting
Come to Fettes Row
We are open mon–thu, 9 till 6. friday we are somewhere else. The door is the green one between the framers and the dentist; ring once and wait, because the stairs are steep and whoever is nearest is probably on a call to Chile.