Ben Fogle

Biography

Ben Fogle was born in 1973, to actress Julia Foster and broadcast veterinarian Bruce Fogle. He read Latin American Studies at the University of Costa Rica and also the University of Portsmouth. He spent several years in Latin America working on a turtle conservation project on the Mosquito Coast of Honduras, and in an orphanage in Ecuador.

In 2000 Ben volunteered to be marooned on Taransay, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, for the BBC millennium project Castaway 2000. He has since presented programmes including Animal Park, Countryfile, and Holiday, as well as the BBC’s new adventure series, Extreme Dreams. He’s also joined teams on panel shows such as A Question of Sport and Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and toured the world for various broadcasting assignments.

Ben completed both the Marathon Des Sables, which is a 160 mile, six day, self sufficient race across the Sahara Desert, and the Safaricom Marathon in Kenya. He rowed across the Atlantic Ocean in 49 days with double Olympic oarsman James Cracknell, to set the British pairs record. Ben and his wife Marina recently set the world record for sailing from Portsmouth to Cork in just 49 hours, in the Big V sailing race.

Ben has published three books, The Teatime Islands, Offshore, and The Crossing written with rowing partner James Cracknell.

Ben is a fellow of the Royal Geographic society, and an Ambassador for WWF and Tusk. He’s also a keen supporter of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People and President of the Council for National Parks

Ben says...

"The Royal Parks are my desert, my jungle, my ocean, my mountains, my countryside, but above all, my escape. In my lifetime I have walked nearly 20,000 miles of Hyde Park. I know every tree and each blade of grass, trained for arctic expeditions and desert adventures. I even met the love of my life in Hyde Park."