Having cut his teeth on the Peak District gritstone whilst studying a BA in English Literature in the neighbouring city of Sheffield, Jonathan Gathercole is a natural born travel writer and outdoors enthusiast. With a sharp wit and a keen eye for politics, Jonathan’s writing has a finger on the pulse of travel ethics, and continues to advocate for radical changes on individual, corporate, and government levels in order to combat the climate crisis. As an avid climber, Jonathan has a grand vision for a convergence between his beloved sport and the ecotourism sector, and continues to write pieces concerning climbing ethics as the sport moves into a new generation.
As the sport grows, so do its concerns for capacity, raising questions of expansion, where the scope of the sport begins to intersect with the mainstream ecotourism industry. Adding to the discussion, Jonathan brings together his personal knowledge of the climbing community with his political insight to try and pave a way forward that the climbing community may continue to thrive.
Having studied postcolonial literature at length, Jonathan is a keen advocate for decolonizing the tourism industry, with ideas informed by novelists from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Ciro Alegira to Joseph Conrad. His literary approach to complex ideas continues to generate insight in his professional career, developing his own ideas of tourism ethics against ideas from the Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Shelley. Informed by a wealth of ideas both contemporaneous and historical, Jonathan’s work is brimming with insight, delivered with exceptional wit.
The mountains are where I go to reconcile myself against nature. The mountains by which I measure myself have a grounding effect, one which inspires peace, and one which provides insight. I think I have never been unhappy on the mountainside. In any weather; in any season, I should be happy on the mountain, moving along at my own steady pace.
When reading Jack Kerouac’s classic novel, On The Road, what I read transformed my outlook on travel whilst I was moving from my adolescence into adulthood. The thought of having “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me.” is a notion which propelled me through the world, in search of experiences, whether they were found on the mountain side or in a stadium.
