Chatting to Alice Morrison

Alice Morrison is an adventurer and an explorer. She travels to the furthest places on earth and walks through its toughest habitats. She has been described as ‘Indiana Jones for girls’. Her aim is to bear witness to what is happening to the planet as our climate and our society changes and to tell the stories that bring we humans together rather than the ones that drive us apart.

Alice was was born in 1963 in Edinburgh. Six weeks later, her parents boarded a ship and sailed to Africa. For the first 8 years of her life, she ran free in the African Bush, roaming around the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda, hunting tadpoles and running away from snakes.

At the age of 11, it was back to Scotland to St Denis and Cranley Academy for Young Ladies,  followed by Edinburgh University, where she studied Arabic and Turkish. She spent six memorable months living in Damascus and then after university lived for two years in Cairo, teaching English and exploring the country.

Moving to London, she pursued a career in journalism which had started in Dubai at “What’s On in Dubai”. From there to Middle East Broadcasting, the original Arabic Satellite News Station.  The next step was to BBC News with jobs on BBC World TV and then BBC Arabic TV.  She went on to become co-Editor for the BBC News Channel output between 10 am and 8 pm.

For the new millennium she moved North to Manchester and onto the internet with Supanet where she built the ISP’s content from six pages to one million pages in two years. She also started to break out into mini adventures squeezed into the holidays: the Snowdon Challenge, crossing Costa Rica coast to coast, Kilimanjaro, ice climbing in the Andes, climbing the Ruwenzoris….

In 2002, she plunged into public service when she was appointed as CEO of Vision+Media, a quango dedicated to growing the creative industries in the Northwest and remained there for nine years. With a change in government policy, she was made redundant and left the rat race for a bike race.

She entered the Tour D’Afrique and raced her bike from Cairo to Cape Town: 12,500km through ten countries in 100 days with 20 days rest.

Bitten with the adventure bug, she entered the Marathon Des Sables, the toughest footrace on earth, 6 marathons across the Sahara in 6 days carrying all your own food and equipment. As a self-confessed “terrible runner” who had never even run a marathon, she decided to give herself the best possible chance by moving to Morocco in January 2014 to train in the sand and sun.

She loved Morocco so much she stayed and committed to her heart’s desire of becoming a full time adventurer.

In 2015 she did her first “world first” with the Atlas to Atlantic Trek, sponsored by Epic Travel. She and her expedition guide, Rachid Aitelmahjoub, became the first people ever to hike from the highest point in North Africa, Mount Toubkal (4167m) to the Atlantic Ocean (Agadir) straight across the Atlas Mountains.

She has also run the Everest Trail Race, became the first woman to Draa River in Morocco and then decided to walk across the whole of Morocco with three Berber companions and six camels!

We talk about her childhood, her career, her love of languages, the change in direction to become an adventurer, how one grows as a person in the face of adversity and lots more. I could have carried on talking to her for hours, but all good things must come to an end!!

You can find Alice in all the following places and her books are available on Amazon or through her website.

Web: www.alicemorrison.co.uk  

Podcast: Alice in Wanderland

Twitter: aliceoutthere1

Instagram: aliceoutthere1            

Fbook: Alice Hunter Morrison Adventures