Areas Grey didn’t begin as an exploration project.

Originally it existed as a small independent investigation firm. While the work was interesting, it lacked something important. I didn’t want to spend my time behind a desk chasing paperwork and routine cases. I wanted exploration.

Around that time I had begun diving into the world of treasure hunting and historical puzzles. Projects like The Thrill of the Chase, The Secret, and the long-rumoured ship in the desert opened the door to a much wider world of historical mysteries. Lost cities, pirate legends, missing relics, and strange stories buried in archives and old maps.

It reminded me of the things that had fascinated me years earlier. Archaeology. Exploration. The feeling I had experienced while travelling through places like Belize, where the past still feels close enough to touch.

So Areas Grey began to evolve.

What started as a private investigation company slowly transformed into a research platform dedicated to historical mysteries and treasure hunting. I built a website and began documenting investigations while sharing the many legends and unresolved stories I had discovered over the years.

To my surprise, people started reading.

Emails began arriving from around the world. Tips, ideas, theories, and conversations from others who shared the same fascination with the hidden corners of history.

Somewhere along the way, Areas Grey stopped being just a personal project and began to feel like the beginning of something much larger.

Some of the investigations that shaped Areas Grey began long before the project itself existed.

While living in Canada, I followed the historical routes of Sir Francis Drake along the coastlines of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, examining the long-debated question of Nova Albion and the theories surrounding the North West Passage. Later, while living in California, research into frontier accounts, early maps, and terrain analysis led me to what I believe is the likely location of the legendary Lost Ship of the California Desert, a maritime mystery recorded in historical sources but often dismissed as folklore.

As Areas Grey developed, those early investigations expanded into new projects and discoveries.

I began participating in armchair treasure hunts and quickly found some success, solving several puzzles including the Bossall Treasure, which had remained unsolved for more than a decade.

Wanting to understand these puzzles from the other side of the table, I also designed my own hunt, Deadman's Tale, an armchair treasure hunt created to test the instincts and reasoning of other treasure hunters.

Other investigations moved beyond puzzles and into the field. After uncovering an overlooked historical letter describing the burial place of the pirate Henry Every’s treasure, I assembled an international team of researchers and explorers to investigate the claim in Cornwall.

Exploration has since taken me across the globe. Investigations have challenged long-standing pirate legends, uncovered forgotten artefacts, and even revealed previously unrecognised sacred ground connected to the indigenous Guanches of Tenerife.

Not every search ends with treasure. But every investigation reveals something the past tried to hide. 

One of the original goals of creating Areas Grey was to connect with other explorers, researchers, and adventurers who shared the same fascination with history’s unanswered questions.

It turned out to work rather well.

Over the years I’ve worked with people from around the world on investigations ranging from armchair treasure hunts to full field expeditions. Some collaborations formed through the Areas Grey website itself, as readers began reaching out with ideas, theories, and stories of their own.

As the work grew, those collaborations occasionally extended beyond the exploration community. Areas Grey has provided research and advisory support for television productions and documentaries exploring historical mysteries, most notably the Discovery Channel series Expedition Unknown.

One of the earliest major collaborations in the field came during the search for the legendary treasure of the pirate Henry Every in Cornwall. The expedition brought together an international team of researchers and explorers who had originally connected through Areas Grey. Although the expedition itself faced unexpected complications, it marked the beginning of several lasting partnerships.

The most significant of those partnerships has been with Rob Frey, an explorer and archaeologist based in Germany. Rob has a talent for turning research into action and navigating the unpredictable moments that inevitably appear once an expedition leaves the planning stage.

Since working together we have investigated historical mysteries across the UK and Europe. Expeditions have taken us to the forests of Alsace in search of the Golden Owl, along the Yorkshire coast following smuggler legends, across parts of Germany investigating lost histories, and in 2025 to Tenerife, where an investigation into the treasure of Amaro Pargo uncovered the truth behind a long-standing pirate legend and led to the discovery of an unrecorded Guanche sacred site.

From the beginning, the hope was that Areas Grey could grow into something more than a personal project. The dream was to turn exploration, research, and historical investigation into a sustainable business.

So we tried.

New websites were built. Merchandise was designed. Books and articles were written. Hours were spent studying search engines, social media algorithms, and the strange mechanics of building an audience online.

Despite the effort, the audience never grew the way we had hoped. Sales were almost nonexistent. The more we tried to push Areas Grey forward as a business, the more time and money it seemed to consume.

Naturally, the response was to push harder. More content. More products. More attempts to make the business financially viable.

But in the process something important began to slip away.

The time once spent researching mysteries and exploring the field was increasingly replaced by the work of trying to run a business that simply wasn’t working. Expeditions became rushed. Research slowed. The sense of discovery that had once driven everything gradually faded.

All the while Areas Grey remained a registered company and we continued trying to do everything properly and by the book. But the costs of maintaining the business kept rising while Areas Grey itself generated almost no income.

In February 2026, after eight years, Areas Grey Ltd finally closed.

It was a difficult moment. Years of work, thousands of pounds invested, and a company that had become part of my identity had quietly come to an end.

But the closure also forced an uncomfortable yet necessary realisation.

Somewhere along the way, in trying to make Areas Grey succeed as a business, we had lost sight of the thing that inspired it in the first place.

The pursuit of uncharted history.

Closing Areas Grey Ltd did not mean the end of Areas Grey.

From the beginning the dream had been to build Areas Grey into a successful business built around exploration and historical investigation. But somewhere along the way the business side started smothering the fire that made Areas Grey worth doing in the first place.

Exploration of the unknown was that fire.

When the company finally closed in February 2026, it felt like the end of something that had defined nearly a decade of my life. In reality it did something unexpected.

It fanned the flame again.

Without the structure of a company behind it, Areas Grey no longer has to chase algorithms, push merchandise, or spend time trying to make an online platform behave like a profitable business. The rulebook has been thrown out of the window. There are no content schedules, no pressure to perform, and no deadlines standing between a question and the decision to go investigate it.

That freedom also allows Areas Grey to operate the way exploration often needs to operate. Independent by design, we investigate without institutional constraint, sponsorship, or pressure to conform. Curiosity and evidence guide the work, not approval processes or outside expectations.

At the centre of Areas Grey are the investigations and expeditions that drive the story forward. Many of those will be my own adventures. Others will come from long-time collaborator Rob Frey, whose independent expeditions and investigations will increasingly become part of the wider Areas Grey story.

Around that core, Areas Grey will also be involved in a range of ventures. Some will be expeditions in search of lost treasure. Others will investigate overlooked historical narratives, retracing the journeys of explorers, examining unresolved legends, or asking questions historians quietly set aside. New initiatives such as the developing League of Adventurers will grow alongside these efforts, creating a place where explorers, researchers, and storytellers can share their discoveries.

Areas Grey is no longer trying to be a business.

It is returning to what it was always meant to be.

An exploration.

And its purpose remains simple.

To explore history’s grey areas and uncover the answers waiting there.