Welcome to send me to sleep. I'm Andrew and it's nice to see you. Whilst the premium members are listening to Rip Van Winkle on the premium feed this week, I'd like to try something a little bit different. Tonight, I'd like to have a conversation, albeit a very one-sided one. Think about it like a phone call,

or perhaps a long voice note from a friend. I'm going to choose a topic and talk around it,

giving some of my own personal stories, maybe some interesting facts, but nothing you need to pay too much

attention to, and all in my low, calming tone. It's something I've been excited to do for a little

while now, and I hope you enjoy it too. I have a survey in the description that I really appreciate you feeling back on if you enjoy it or even if you don't.

Your feedback is really important to us.

But without further ado, let your eyes fall heavy and your breath soften as we settle in for a peaceful night's sleep.

The I'm not entirely sure when I first heard of a giant sequoia tree,

but I do have a vivid image in my head of sort of a low angle photograph of the huge tree and

someone standing at the base of it to give scale and just being mesmerized.

I think I must have been quite young when I first saw it.

Because there was a great sense of awe in that scale and felt very otherworldly to know that there was

living trees on the planet that I lived on as large as that.

And so it had been an ambition of mine to go and see these trees in person for quite a while.

And so when I had the opportunity, I think a couple of years ago now, to travel to

San Francisco, I was going to Australia for a wedding and we went to Singapore on the way there and we flew all the

way around on the way back went to San Francisco came back to the UK but stopping off

in that part of the world it was a three hour bus ride over to Yosemite National Park and we did debate

oh we've only got two days here it's there really time.

But, you know, it's something we both thought we have to see.

And so we booked the tour and got up early the next morning to start driving down there.

The night before, when we didn't realize quite how cold it was going to be.

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