Tristan Gooley is an author and natural navigator.

Tristan set up his natural navigation school in 2008 and is the author of award-winning and internationally bestselling books, including The Natural Navigator (2010), The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs (2014), How to Read Water (2016) and Wild Signs and Star Paths (2018), some of the world’s only books covering natural navigation.

“Every outdoor-lover should have at least one Tristan Gooley book in their library.” Jim Perrin

After decades spent hunting for clues and signs in nature, he regularly gets called the “Sherlock Holmes of nature”.

He has written for the Sunday Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC and many magazines.

Tristan has led expeditions in five continents, climbed mountains in Europe, Africa and Asia, sailed small boats across oceans and piloted small aircraft to Africa and the Arctic. He has walked with and studied the methods of the Tuareg, Bedouin and Dayak in some of the remotest regions on Earth.

He is the only living person to have both flown solo and sailed singlehanded across the Atlantic and is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Royal Geographical Society.

In 2020 he was awarded the Harold Spencer-Jones Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of Navigation. It is the Institute’s highest award, given in recognition of an outstanding contribution to navigation.

He has recorded the podcast, ‘The Pursuit of Outdoor Clues,’ and named a path – the ‘smile path‘.

Tristan has appeared on TV and radio programmes in the UK and internationally, including The Today Programme, Night Waves, Countryfile, BBC Stargazing Live, Country Tracks, Ramblings, Open Country, Shipwrecks, The One Show and All Roads Lead Home. He has given talks across the world.

He is Vice Chairman of the independent travel company, Trailfinders.