Patrick Malone

Patrick Malone is a traveller, writer and broadcaster. He was born in 1968 in Basel, Switzerland, where his British parents were working for a pharmaceutical company. His r family left Switzerland when he was twelve, and returned to their home in Britain. For the next six years, Malone attended the local secondary school. He then went to Leeds University to do a course in Human Geography. He wanted to become a town planner. However, the only work he could I find was as a teacher at a local school.

During his holidays and free time, he went walking, often covering very long distances very quickly. On one occasion he walked the entire length of Britain, a distance of over 1,400 kilometres, in less than a month. He enjoyed the experience and the challenge so much that he started walking in different parts of the world, usually in fairly remote areas away from major population centres. The people he met and the experiences he had on these trips provided him with some excellent material for his classes.

It was during one trip that he met his old university tutor, Don Perkins. At the time, Perkins was putting together a team of geographers and biologists for a research trip to the Amazon, and asked Malone if he would like to go with them. The expedition was for a whole year, and so he had to give up his job at the school, but Malone did not hesitate to accept Perkins’ offer. He sold his car to make some money, bought an airline ticket for Brazil and set off.