Dan Richards & Robert Macfarlane: 'He went to climb a mountain. Then I heard nothing…'

The two travel writers met in 2009 and are co-authors of 'Holloway'

Richards, left, says: 'We've had a lot of conversations about writing: his prose seems like it comes effortlessly, but I now know he works very hard on it' (Jean Goldsmith)

Robert Macfarlane, 38

A nature and travel writer, Macfarlane (right in picture) is also senior lecturer in English at Cambridge University. His award-winning books include 'Mountains of the Mind', 'The Old Ways' and his recent bestseller about the language of landscape, 'Landmarks'. He lives in Cambridge with his wife, the sinologist Julia Lovell, and their three children

I was hungover and very grumpy when I met Dan, about four years ago. Grumpy, because he was an hour late and I had a busy teaching day. When this shambolic figure eventually appeared, he got his recorder out and said, "Oh, shit, it's broken." I was thinking, who is this incompetent person? We talked for 30 minutes and he didn't seem to write anything down or record anything: our meeting was so dysfunctional, I thought at one point it was performance art. It was a pretty inauspicious start to what's become an enduring friendship.

He'd originally emailed to ask to interview me about the landscape writer Roger Deakin [with whom Macfarlane had explored the ancient "holloway" sunken roads, in Dorset], and talk about Dan's own great-great uncle, IA Richards, the founder of English studies at Cambridge and also a mountaineer. After the meeting, we corresponded and it became clear that we had a lot of overlapping interests.

He'd been working with Stanley Donwood, an artist best known for his artwork for Radiohead. And Stanley had this idea for the three of us to go back to the sunken lanes that Roger and I had written about.

So we spent three days in Dorset , and Dan's record of incompetence continued, as his bicycle immediately broke: I wonder why every machine he goes near fails? The trip itself was wonderful, though: some of these labyrinths of wilderness go 20ft down into the bedrock, and we spent one night sleeping at the bottom of a holloway, and talking: Dan's openness invites openness in others.

Last year he got back to his natural instinct for getting into difficulty. He'd mentioned to me that he was looking to write a book about the writing and climbing lives of his great-great aunt and uncle. As part of that research, he said he was going to climb the Dent Blanche [one of the highest peaks in the Alps] with his dad. And Dan hadn't done any Alpinism.

He set out with his dad, sending lovely photos to me, then I heard nothing for 15 hours. I woke up to find a text saying, "We're benighted in Dent Blanche, can you ring the hut keeper [at the foot of the mountain]." So I rang but no one answered and I thought, "Crap they're all out looking for Dan and his dad!" Spending a night out with no bivouac is a recipe for frostbite or possible death. I heard nothing for 36 hours – so I was busy checking Alpine rescue reports. Rather than send an email to say he was OK, he sent me a postcard. When his book is finally written, I anticipate it being written in the comic tradition.

Dan Richards, 33

A travel writer, Richards is co-author of 'Holloway', with Robert Macfarlane and graphic artist Stanley Donwood, and 'Climbing Days', a forthcoming exploration of the lives of his great-great aunt and uncle Dorothy Pilley and IA Richards. He lives in Bath

We met in 2009 in Cambridge. I'd emailed to ask if I could talk to him about his writing and relationship with landscape, people and place – specifically, his visit to Dorset, for a book I was writing about creative space and airships.

The interview went terribly in terms of professionalism, but he was affable and we got on well. Still, it takes nerve to be an hour late then suggest spending more time together, in a wilderness situation. As he didn't say no immediately, I arranged to keep in touch.

Those conversations were the start of a collaboration that bloomed into a sylvan trip, and a beautiful book. On the drive down, I took the opportunity to do an interview [for his book about the creative process, The Beechwood Airship Interviews]. And when not shouting at the sat-nav, we got a lot of it done.

After we arrived, we cycled into a leafy valley, looking for a forgotten road. Once we'd found it, it was incredibly eerie. We hid ourselves within it, got our sleeping bags out and stayed for the next couple of nights. We more than tolerated each other – though Robert's sleeping bag had been all over the world on his mountaineering trips and he kept apologising that it smelt abhorrent. We climbed tress together, and Robert pointed out woodpeckers and named trees.

Everyone has an idea of who they'd phone in a crisis. I'm currently writing a mountaineering biography of my great- great aunt and uncle, and when I was stuck 3,800m up the side of Dent Blanche in Switzerland last year, I sent Robert and another friend a text before my phone died, along the lines of: "Benighted alongside the Dent Blanche. All well, please don't send helicopter." I hoped he would get in touch with the climbing hut I was due back at, to say I was going to be late, but my phone died. When I finally charged it, I saw my best friend Roz had replied, "Get hot Ribena!" Though I had a few messages from Robert saying things like, "Are you OK, I've not heard anything."

We've had a lot of conversations about writing, which were hugely helpful to me when I was just starting out: his prose seems like it comes effortlessly, but I now know he works very hard on it. He quotes Keats [ironically], who says that unless writing comes "as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all". It's just another thing he is very good at: remembering great tranches of literature. He's good at getting the best out of people. And it's been a boon to have met him.

Dan Richards' latest book, 'The Beechwood Airship Interviews', is published by Friday Books, priced £14.99