Eric Blakeley MBE is a television journalist and adventurer. He has a love of the great outdoors and extreme sports. His interests have taken him to more than 80 countries.
Amongst his accomplishments are climbing the so-called ‘Seven Summits‘ – the highest peak on each continent, including Mount Everest swimming the English Channel and around New York’s Manhattan Island and completing a number of long-distance walks. In 2016 he completed a 14.4 km swim of the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco. He did it in 6 hours 50 minutes at the age of 51 to complete two Oceans Seven channels.
On a lighter note, Eric also competed in the World Bog Snorkelling Championships. He raced up the 1,860 steps of New York’s Empire State Building in the annual charity run-up. Then he tried to visit every London underground tube station in a day. If that’s not enough, he also hurtled head-first down the infamous Cresta Run.
Eric’s produced more than 50 half-hour documentaries for television, some of them about his own adventures. He’s also staged two solo photographic exhibitions (Sarajevo – a city still under siege, and Liberation 50), and published a book on the German Occupation of the Channel Islands 1940-45.
Eric’s a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society. In the Queen’s 2004 New Year’s Honours List he was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire – MBE – for ‘services to mountaineering, sport and charity.’
Eric Blakeley MBE has a lot to say and a fun way of saying it. In his motivational talk ‘Peaks and Troughs – Mountaineering and Swimming’ he outlines what he believes the business world can learn from the world of extreme sports and adventures.