Jasper Winn
Jasper Winn is a writer, photographer and broadcaster with a particular interest in rural and tribal cultures,'horse-powered' peoples worldwide and slow adventures. He has cycled - usually on cheap, local bicycles - across the Sahara, through Central India, around the 1,000 mile Icelandic coast road and across West Africa. He has travelled long distance on foot following pilgrimage routes in Europe, North Africa and South America. He once roller-skated the 200 mile length of the Netherlands from south to north, and he completed a self-supported tri-athlon length of Ireland, leaving Malin Head by cycle, kayaking down the Shannon and racing the final third of the distance to Malin Head on foot. Jasper has specialised in human- and animal- powered journeys, which he defines as ‘slow adventures.’
Born in England, he was brought up in rural West Cork, Ireland. As a teenager he travelled Europe playing guitar and harmonica, both solo and with bands, and then began taking on travel challenges. His early adventures included canoeing the 1,500 mile length of the Danube in East Bloc days, and using canals and rivers in Ireland, England and France to kayak from Dublin to the Mediterranean.
He has ridden on cattle drives in Australia, Argentina, Chile and Spain, and worked with horsemen and cowboys in Central Asia, Africa, Europe and across the Americas. These experiences led to him becoming story consultant on the IMAX big-screen film Ride Around the World.
In the early 1990s, as recipient of a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, Jasper lived in Morocco for a year with a nomadic/transhumant Berber clan and their camels, goats and sheep, travelling between desert caves in the winter and tents on the summer pastures in the High Central Atlas. He is currently writing Berber, an account of this time. Jasper’s travels have been the basis for radio and television documentaries on subjects as diverse as a sect of travelling Moroccan acrobats, Spanish cattle drives and early Irish horse transport for RTE, BBC and Channel 4.
For his most recent slow adventure he swapped the saddle for a paddle and seakayaked the thousand mile circumference of Ireland's coastline, resulting in the book, "Paddle; A long way around Ireland".
