GeoWizard: Can You Cross A Country In A Perfectly Straight Line?!

**Tom Davies** (0:00)
And I thought, there's a gap in the market here to do a straight line adventure. No one's done it, but that really went viral. It's like the purest form of adventure, just to set off and not know where you go in, not know who you're going to meet, where you're going to sleep. I woke up on a park benching split in Croatia with a man stroking my leg. Because I've completed the UK now, I've walked across Scotland, England and Wales in a straight line. I've been in situations where I've been that hungry, I've been like, I could kill that cow.
Well, I probably couldn't.

**Eddie Hall** (0:37)
Welcome back to The Good, The Bad and The Beast. Today's guest is one of YouTube's most original adventurers. He has trekked across entire countries in perfectly straight lines. He crossed London without touching a single road and somehow made geography one of the most exciting things on the internet. Here's the face of GeoGuessr and the mind behind the straight line mission. Please welcome Tom Davies, better known as the GeoWizard. How are you, sir?

**Tom Davies** (1:06)
I'm very well. Thanks for having me.

**Eddie Hall** (1:08)
Thank you for coming. Where have you come from today?

**Tom Davies** (1:10)
Lichfield. Lichfield?

**Eddie Hall** (1:12)
So you're just down the road?

**Tom Davies** (1:14)
Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much down the road. An hour's drive.

**Eddie Hall** (1:17)
Is that where you're born and bred, Lichfield?

**Tom Davies** (1:19)
Not far. About eight miles further south, you've got the little town of Aldridge, which is kind of on the edge of the Black Country.

**Eddie Hall** (1:27)
Aldridge. Sounds very posh.

**Tom Davies** (1:29)
It's the posh part of Walsall. But it's not posh.

**Eddie Hall** (1:34)
I mean, Walsall is not particularly a posh area, so...

**Tom Davies** (1:36)
No, it's not known for the... No.

**Eddie Hall** (1:39)
I always ask my guest to bring in a piece of the beast. And this can be an artifact, a photo, something like a turning point in your life. Have you brought said item with you?

**Tom Davies** (1:50)
I have. I struggle to think of what to bring. But I have brought... Shall I get it out?

**Eddie Hall** (1:55)
Yes, please.

**Tom Davies** (1:56)
I brought a little book of flags.

**Eddie Hall** (1:59)
Okay.

**Tom Davies** (2:00)
I know. It's weird, isn't it? Okay.

**Eddie Hall** (2:02)
So if there's listening in, it's literally a miniature book, probably the size of my hand, of flags. And you open it up and yeah, it is exactly what you thought it would be. It is a flag and then the description of the flag and the country.

**Tom Davies** (2:19)
Incredibly boring.

**Eddie Hall** (2:20)
Incredibly, incredibly boring. Something that you would learn in geography during a lesson and would fall asleep.

**Tom Davies** (2:29)
Yeah.

**Eddie Hall** (2:29)
Okay. So tell me about this book of flags.

**Tom Davies** (2:32)
I mean, it's, I was looking through some stuff at my mom's house and I saw it and I thought that still, I can still remember the excitement of this book. I think that was the first thing that had me fascinated by something.

**Eddie Hall** (2:48)
Really?

**Tom Davies** (2:48)
Yeah. Yeah. I must have been four or five.

**Eddie Hall** (2:51)
Yeah.

**Tom Davies** (2:51)
And I just thought, wow, all these different countries have these flags with different colors and patterns and designs. And it got me into geography, I would say.

**Eddie Hall** (3:01)
So you said this little book.

**Tom Davies** (3:03)
I think so.

**Eddie Hall** (3:05)
Stirred the brain cells in a little four year old Tom Davies. And you decided, I fancy that. I fancy geography. Yeah.

**Tom Davies** (3:14)
Just the idea of different countries fascinated me. And then, I mean, I was known to read the Birmingham A to Z for pleasure. You know, those A to Z maps.

**Eddie Hall** (3:26)
How old were you?

**Tom Davies** (3:27)
I must have been like five or six. Yeah. Really nerdy stuff.

**Eddie Hall** (3:31)
So you just became a little bit too obsessed with geography at a very, very young age.

**Tom Davies** (3:36)
Yeah. I guess that's what happens when you don't have a video console, you know, a game console. But yeah, I guess I brought it because it kicked off my passion for geography and just having a passion, you know, just becoming fascinated by things.

**Eddie Hall** (3:53)
So when you were a kid, you didn't have PlayStation or like the Amiga? You had none of that?

**Tom Davies** (4:00)
A bit later. I sort of got the PS1 when the PS2 came out.