Active Travel Magazine was launched on a passionate whim and a budget of under USD 1000 in 1997. I remember the figures well; Conde Naste launched their ‘Traveller’ magazine around the same time with a promotional spend of £500,000. The first issue was put together by Tony Tran and myself (Bobby Nguyen), and for some long forgotten reason we titled up the magazine under the snappy name of ‘Independent and Specialist Travel’. Neither of us had any prior experience in magazine production, desk top publishing or coming up with sensible names for magazines