James is passionate about hill-walking, wild camping and peak-bagging, and describes himself as a ‘self-taught adventurer’ – which is a polite way of saying he gets lost a lot (he once walked for two days in the wrong direction on the GR20 hike in Corsica). The first part of his three-year mission to climb 1,001 mountains across the UK and Ireland (including all 446 ‘Nuttalls’ in England and Wales, the 273 Irish ‘Vandeleur-Lynams’, and Scotland’s 282 ‘Munros’) is recounted in the book Mountain Man: 446 Mountains. Six Months. One Record-Breaking Adventure.