I was born in Leeds, Yorkshire in June 1972 and am a proud father of two amazing individuals, George and Jessica and husband to Denny, my soul mate and partner in everything.

A property developer and real estate investor based in York, I am the founder and CEO of Grantside (www.grantside.com) a property developer creating spaces and places across the UK in residential, commercial and industrial sectors of the marketplace .

My passion for climbing started a little late in life in 2018 when, after a period living in San Francisco, in a spur of the moment decision I flew to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro - with little training but lots of enthusiasm and excitement I climbed and reached the summit at 5,895m on 8th October 2018 feeling elated but keen to try something more challenging.

January 2019 took me to Argentina to climb Aconcagua in the Andes mountain range, standing at 6,961m high its the highest mountain in the Americas, the highest outside Asia, and the highest in both the Southern and Western Hemispheres. I reached the summit on 6th February 2019, exhausted and elated - I was hooked!

In April 2019 I visited Peru to trek the 46km Salkantay Trail to Machu Picchu with my family and then in July to Russia to take on Mt Elbrus in the Caucasus mountains -  the highest peak in Europe at 5,642m reaching the summit on 20th July 2019.

I'd now climbed the highest peaks in three different continents and the idea of completing the Seven Summits was starting to form, that would be to climb the highest summit on all seven continents on the planet - a new challenge!

Through a charity dinner in York in March 2019 I was able to link up with Nirmal Purja MBE known as “Nims”, a legend now in high altitude climbing, ex Gurkha and British special forces soldier who was planning “Project Possible” , a world record breaking attempt to climb all of the 14 peaks in the Himalayas above 8,000m in seven months breaking the previous record by nearly 7 years! Nims was setting up his climbing company, Elite Exped with Mingma David Sherpa and was planning future expeditions already and Everest was on the list. After several conversations with Nims we agreed I’d climb Manaslu as part of his Project Possible mission and my first introduction to climbing into the death zone above 8,000m. I flew out to Kathmandu, Nepal on 1st September 2019 and four weeks later on 27th September I was standing on top of the 8th highest mountain in the world at 8,163m (26,781 ft) and Nims went on to complete his Project Possible in 6 months and 6 days, smashing the previous record and releasing a movie on Netflix, 14 Peaks documenting his amazing achievement. 

I immediately got home and started planning for my next expedition to Everest in April 2020, unfortunately Covid-19 changed all that and lockdown of 2020 stalled my climbing but gave me time to re-launch my company with a new found enthusiasm for business alongside social and environmental issues and Grantside aims to be only delivering zero carbon buildings in all its developments by 2030. Hearing about the changes on the mountain regions that climate change is having and seeing some of it for myself I was keen to bring together my mountain climbing experiences and business and will be documenting the effects of climate change on Everest to use as part of Grantside’s environmental awareness statements and plans.

April 2021 and the Everest/Lhotse expedition was underway before I succumbed to covid on the mountain and had to airlifted out of the mountains, my 2021 expedition was over.

Not to be deterred I recovered from covid and returned to the Himalayas to summit Ama Dablam in November 2021, a technical unforgiving mountain that tested my endurance adn limits but with Mingma David once again leading me up I summited successfully on 11 November 2021.

Another dose of covid over New Year way quickly dealt with and out of the way before jumping back into training preparing for a summit attempt of Mt Everest and Lhotse with Elite Exped, I set off today 9th April 2022 to pick up where I left off and complete this challenge........