Saturday 27 March - ADVENTURE

Ben Fogle is an award winning Broadcaster and adventurer. He has written 9 Sunday Times Best selling books and is the United Nations Patron of the Wilderness.

Ben has climbed Mount Everest, Rowed across the Atlantic, Raced across Antarctica to the South Pole and crossed the deserts of the Empty Quarter in the Middle East.

He has presented numerous programmes for the BBC, ITV, C5 and Discovery including the hit series New Lives in the Wild.

A fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. He is ambassador to WWF, Tusk and Hearing Dogs for the Deaf and Patron of The Red Cross and United Nations.

Ben has presented numerous programmes including Animal Park, Countryfile, Wild in Africa, Wild on the West Coast, Crufts, One Man and His Dog, Country Tracks, Extreme Dreams, A Year of Adventures, Storm City, Harbour Lives, Countrywise and Fisherman’s Lives, New Lives in the Wild.

Ben has made documentaries on Prince William in Africa, disease in Ethiopia, Captain Scott in Antarctica and Crocodiles in Botswana.

Ben has travelled extensively in South and Central America and has toured the world for various broadcasting assignments to more than 200 places including Tristan da Cunha, Pitcairn, St Helena, East Timor, Nepal, Namibia, Kenya, the Arctic Circle, Zambia, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Libya, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Tahiti, Maldives, Tanzania and Morocco.

Ben has worked as a special correspondent for NBC News and has published nine bestselling books, The Teatime Islands, Outposts, The Crossing, Race to the Pole, The Accidental Adventurer, The Accidental Naturalist, Labrador, Land Rover, English.

A keen sailor, Ben has run the Marathon Des Sables, swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco and is also a Marathon runner, boxer and cyclist.

Ben married Marina in 2006 after meeting her in the park while the couple were walking their dogs, Inca and Maggi. They have a young son, Ludo and a daughter Iona and a black Labrador, Storm.

Katie-Jane L’Herpiniere is a British adventure girl living in the French Alps. Addicted to type 2 fun and a lover of marzipan!

She is mostly known for her organisation and planning skills (a queen of lists and highlighters), her unwavering belief that anything is possible, whilst bringing a touch of pink and girly glamour to adventure.

Her friends often refer to her as slightly crazy! But don’t be fooled… Katie-Jane is not very brave, nor an adrenaline junkie or a daredevil, she is just a normal girl, that through adventure is perpetually learning that ordinary people can do extraordinary things if they just can be bold enough to begin.

When she is not guiding clients or organising expeditions, you might find her looking out of her tent on a local mountain summit, snuggled deep in her sleeping bag, drinking a cuppa, watching the sun creep up over the mountains at dawn.

She has a passion for exploring this wonderful world in which we live. Having visited over 50 countries on 5 continents so far, she still feels there’s so much more to explore. She has often found that stripped of comforts and faced with hardships and adversities, the completion of each journey becomes so much more rewarding.

Katie-Jane's life goals are to fill her days with wonderful adventures, making memories, seeing new places, meeting new faces, doing things that are difficult, and scaring herself a little, so that nothing feels familiar & therefore everyday becomes extraordinary.

Her adventures, amongst others, include: Being the first person to walk the entire 4500km length of the Great Wall of China unsupported. The longest crossing of the Patagonian Ice Cap by a woman. Riding the 1911 original Tour de France route unsupported, 5,439km, in the duration the professional cyclists take to ride today’s current Tour that is 2000km shorter. 1 of just 29 finishers from the 98 starters to complete the inaugural Silk Road Mountain Race in Kyrgyzstan.

As an adventurer, she has been featured in; Hello Magazine, Easyjet in-flight magazine, Outside, Geographical, Style, Sunday Times and the Telegraph amongst others. She has made appearances on the BBC News, ITV News and the likes of Saturday Kitchen. As a speaker, she has been fortunate to share her stories with organisations that include; HSBC, Admiral Group, Gillette, The Royal Geographic Society, Kendal Mountain Festival and many more.

David Lindo is The Urban Birder - broadcaster, writer, speaker, educator and bird tour leader. His mission is to engage city folks around the world with the environment through the medium of birds. 

He has written countless articles on urban birds, urban conservation and wildlife in general for my websites, publications and magazines, and has written the Forwards to several books. He is a regular television and radio presenter and has been featured on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in the UK as well as other TV and radio channels around the world including CBS in the United States. 

David was recently named as the 7th most influential person in wildlife by BBC Wildlife Magazine and in 2020 was shortlisted for the Professional Publishers Association (PPA) Columnist of the Year Award.

He is a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers and a member of the British Travel Writers Guild. He is the Founder of the Tower 42 Bird Study Group and Britain's Vote National Bird Campaign in 2015 that resulted in over 226,000 votes. 

He is the author of The Urban Birder (Bloomsbury) 2011, The Tales From Concrete Jungles (Bloomsbury) 2015, #Urban Birding (Kosmos) 2011 and How To Be An Urban Birder (Princeton/Wildgates) 2018.

Extreme endurance adventurer Sean Conway is the first and only man in history to cycle, swim and run the length of Britain.

Sean completed the record-breaking feat in 2015 when he ran from John O’Groats to Land’s End in just 44 days, having previously cycled and swum the route.

In 2016 Sean raised the bar once more when he took on the greatest challenge of his life.

Starting in April 2016, he completed a self-supported 4000+ mile, continuous Ultra Triathlon that circumnavigates the entire coast of mainland Britain and Discovery Channel followed Sean’s incredible and dangerous journey.