but I’d hope that an agent would ensure you have a local guide and get to experience local hospitality on your holiday,” he says. Since he travels so intensively through work, I ask if holidaying in the UK is something that appeals. “Definitely; my favourite places are here,” he confesses, having holidayed with his children in Devon, Norfolk and the Isle of Wight. While some seaside resorts are “stuck in a time-warp, and a bit depressing”, he praises St Ives and Blackpool as perfect destinations, catering for different budgets. That said, he is currently planning his first family “adventure” holiday, taking his wife and the eldest of his two children, four-year-old Ludo, to Mozambique. “I’ve been counting down the days until I could take my son to an exciting destination and show him what I love about the world,” he says excitedly. And might the services of a travel agent come in handy in the future? “As family holidays become more significant in my life, yes, we will revert to using an agent who can plan everything for you, and give you that reassurance,” he agrees. If Fogle intends to take his wife and children to all of the places he’s been fortunate to visit, that will be one lucky travel agent indeed. when they do. There’s a fine balance.” For him, the benefit of exploring and learning about the world is that it inspires us to want to look after it. Looking out to a row of jiggling school children waiting to get their hands on the Lego mountain, he observes: “That’s why things like models of Machu Picchu are so important, so that the younger generation knows how important it is to look after the planet we live on.” He is convinced of the need for tourism to be done sensitively, however. “There’s lots of travel which involves being holed up in a hotel with imported food, never experiencing local culture and cuisine, and arguably your money barely trickles down within the economy,” he points out. “For me, responsible tourism means some form of integration with the people and culture of a place. Exactly how you do that is up to the individual, during a monotonous, arduous and dangerous challenge such as this. Alongside thoughts of his wife and family, it is being able to relive previous travelling experiences in his head, he says. “There isn’t always chance to savour the experience at the time, so when I’ve crossed the Atlantic or Antarctic, I get the chance to recollect. The memories are like my own little cinema,” he explains. Gluttonous society Fogle seems grateful for the direction his career has taken. “I feel incredibly lucky to have travelled so much – it’s something I could only have dreamed of,” he says. But he is also concerned by the extent to which the modern consumer travels. “We live in such a gluttonous society now; we probably travel too much. We need to pull back from our overuse of resources,” he states. “But I would find it hard to give up travel,” he admits. “It’s so easy now, it’s a bit like a drug.” I suggest our growing desire to see the world puts pressure on places like Machu Picchu, where visitor numbers are now strictly limited to protect the ancient site from degradation. “That’s a problem for many of the world’s top attractions,” he agrees. “It’s the same in the UK. Our Campaign for National Parks [a charity of which Fogle is president], encourages people to visit, but then they have an impact boat capsized and they lost crucial equipment – a moment which Fogle has described as the scariest in his life. There were more lucky escapes for the pair in Antarctica, when they competed in the 2009 South Pole Race: a 430-mile journey in temperatures of minus 40C, during which Fogle suffered hypothermia and frostbite, and the team was barely able to finish the race. Fogle had caught leishmaniasis in Peru several months before the race, transmitted by a bite from a sand fly. He fought off the infection in time for the Antarctic challenge but it returned mid-race, and he had to undergo a second course of treatment back in the UK. This time, he managed to shake it off for good and – fortunately for his female fans - there seems to have been no lasting damage to the bits of him I can see across the coffee-shop table. His next major challenge will be a 3,000-mile swim across the Atlantic, to raise awareness of threats to the world’s oceans, in which he will swim for up to 12 hours per day. He is also still keen to complete the Tour Divide, a 2,745-mile cycle race from the Canadian Rockies to the US border with Mexico, that he and Cracknell had planned before Cracknell’s near-fatal road accident two years ago. I ask what it is that keeps him going trek to the remote Inca ruins of Choquequirao also stands out. Lucky escapes In 2005, Fogle teamed up with Olympic rowing champ James Cracknell to row for 49 days from the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Transatlantic Rowing Race. They narrowly avoided death when their The TTG Interview Exploring some of the world’s most remote and undiscovered places has convinced TV presenter Ben Fogle of the need to look after it. He talks to Pippa Jacks about Peru, luck, and being addicted to travel C atching a rare, flesh-eating bug in the jungle would probably be enough to put me off a repeat visit to the country in question – I’d certainly leave some very frank feedback on my customer satisfaction questionnaire. But TV presenter, author and adventurer Ben Fogle is surprisingly philosophical about the disease he caught in the Peruvian rainforest in 2008, which required him to undergo a course of chemotherapy and risked permanent disfigurement. “When you travel, sometimes you can pull an unlucky card,” he tells me over coffee in a Covent Garden brasserie. “I was just very unlucky – but it certainly didn’t put me off Peru.” Indeed, Fogle is here this morning to help promote Peru, and before our interview, I helped him place the final Lego pieces on a 3.2-metre replica of Peru’s most famous attraction: the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu. The country holds a special place in his heart, after backpacking there as a student, and he has been back several times since. “It was one of the first places outside Europe I visited, and it has such an exciting vibrancy – sophistication where you want it, delicious food, culture, language, people, and then sites like Machu Picchu that really do take your breath away,” he explains. As seen on TV Fogle first appeared on our screens in 2000, when he spent a year in the remote Outer Hebrides as part of a social experiment in Castaway – one of the very first reality TV shows. He went on to present programmes from Country File and Animal Park to One Man And His Dog and Crufts. From 2006, he swapped the British countryside for more challenging terrain to film Extreme Dreams which saw him climb Kilimanjaro, cross the Sahara Desert and trek to Guyana’s Kaiteur Falls, as well as three expeditions in Peru. “If there is one place in the world I’d like to go back to, it would be Cotahuasi in Peru, where I climbed down into the depths of the canyon,” he reflects. A 19.07.2012 10 2000: Appeared on Castaway, which followed 36 people trying to create a self- sufficient community on the island of Taransay 2001-09: Presented various TV series including Country File, Crufts and Animal Park, which was filmed at Longleat Safari Park 2006: Published The Teatime Islands, travelling to remote islands of the British Empire such as Tristan Da Cunha 2006: Published Offshore, in which he searched the UK for an island of his own 200X: Ran the Marathon Des Sables, 160 miles across the Sahara, for WWF 2005: Atlantic Rowing Race with rower James Cracknell – the first pair to land, although demoted to second place as the capsize meant they lost some of the required ballast. Described in his book The Crossing 2007-09: Extreme Dreams series aired, including the Atacama desert, Papua New Guinea and Spitsbergen 2009: The South Pole Race (pictured below) with James Cracknell, coming first of the amateur competitors Described in The Race To The Pole 2011: Published The Accidental Adventurer 2012: Swimming With Crocodiles aired Fogle’s next book: The Accidental Naturalist is published by Bantam Press August 30, priced at £18.99 in hardback CV Ben Fogle n Meet Prom Peru at TTG On Tour in September. ttgdigital.com/ontour “There isn’t always chance to savour the experience at the time... so I get the chance to recollect. The memories are like my own little cinema.” The travel bug COVER STORY The Atlantic Rowing race saw Fogle capsize Fogle with Pippa Jacks at the Prom Peru/Kuoni Logo event in London’s Covent Garden TV series Extreme Dreams featured Kilimanjaro “There’s lots of travel which involves being holed up in a hotel with imported food... and arguably your money barely trickles down within the economy” 11 19.07.2012