Tristan Gooley


Tristan Gooley is a British writer on natural navigation.

Early life and education

Gooley was born in 1973; his father is Sir Michael Gooley, the founder of Trailfinders, who was knighted in 2021 for services to business and charity.
Gooley has a BA in history and politics from Newcastle University. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro while in his teens, and, aged 19, he spent three days lost on the slopes of Gunung Rinjani, an active volcano in Indonesia.

Travel and navigation

Gooley has walked with the Dayak in Borneo, and in 2009 studied and practiced natural navigation methods with the Tuareg in the Libyan Sahara. In 2012 he led a short-handed small boat voyage, from the Orkney Islands into the Arctic Circle, to test Viking methods and determine whether nature can help a navigator estimate their distance from land. He has walked from Glasgow to London and parachuted off a building in Australia. After years of extreme journeys, aged 36 he turned towards smaller journeys and studying nature.
In 2008, he became the second person, after Steve Fossett, to have both sailed solo and flown solo across the Atlantic; as of 2023, he is the only living person to have done so.
Gooley specialises in interpreting nature's signs, and has been referred to as the "Sherlock Holmes of Nature".
He has identified a type of path, which has been recognised by the Royal Institute of Navigation. The "smile path" is a curve, formed when walkers avoid an obstacle or, during Covid, seek to preserve safe distance from other people.

Writing

Gooley has written for the New York Times, the Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal and the BBC. He is the author of books which have been translated into 19 languages, and have been referenced by artists including David Hockney.

Recognition

Gooley is a fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and of the Royal Geographical Society.
In 2020 was awarded the Harold Spencer-Jones Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of Navigation in recognition of an outstanding contribution to navigation.

Personal life

Gooley is married to Sophie and they have two sons. They live in Eartham, West Sussex.
Gooley is vice-chairman of Trailfinders, the travel agency founded in 1970 by his father.

Selected publications

Books

*

Articles

  • Gooley, Tristan. . BBC Radio 4, Today. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  • Gooley, Tristan and MacDonald, Ross. . New York Times. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  • Gooley, Tristan., The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  • Gooley, Tristan. The Times. Retrieved 5 May 2023.
  • Gooley, Tristan. . The Telegraph. Retrieved 5 May 2023.