My name is Olie. I was born in the south of England and spent my childhood outdoors and playing in boats. At the age of 18 I spent 6 months in Central America working on a conservation project helping rebuild a remote ranger station and teaching in a local school. The experience gave me an appetite for adventure, travel, to see the world and to understand more about different people and cultures.

After studying Geography at university, I became an ad man in London, working across a number of high profile clients and campaigns. But in 2013 I decided there was more to life than a desk job and rekindled my passion for adventure and travel. Since then I've continued to travel, backpacking and adventuring my way around the world.

Here's some of the things I'm proud to have achieved:

16 day self-supported trek through the Belizean jungle
'Operation Amsterdam', a 520km team endurance rowing race
New York, Paris, and nohtaraM ehT marathons
An impact marathon, doing social good along the route
'JOGLE', an unsupported cycle ride from John O'Groats to Land's End in 7 days
'Duchenne Dash', a 24 hour cycle race from London to Paris
Various other treks through hostile environments including jungle, desert and mountain
'Amazon River Run', a 6,500km two man unsupported journey from source to sea
'Walking India', a 4,500km journey through India on foot

Interesting fact: A lot of people ask me how to pronounce my name given its quirky spelling. Sometimes they think it's Olie as in 'holy' or 'slowly', or that I meant 'Oli' or 'Ollie' and that I've made a typo. But I do in fact spell it Olie with one 'l', and I pronounce it Olie as in 'golly', 'jolly' or even 'wally' (though I prefer not to draw on the last parallel too often). I've spelt it like that since I was a kid wanting to be slightly different from the other kids in my class called Oli or Ollie or Olly. And so that's how I got my name.

My adventures