Geoff Hill

Geoff Hill is a critically acclaimed author and award-winning feature and travel writer based in Belfast. In a previous life, he was the most capped volleyball player in Ireland, captain of the Northern Ireland team at the Commonwealths and a much younger man.

In recent years he’s been motorcycling correspondent for The Sunday Times, Metro, the Irish Times and currently the Daily Mirror, where his weekly columns are a desperate attempt to disguise the fact that he knows bugger all about motorbikes.

He’s also the editor of Microlight Flying magazine, the monthly colour glossy for pilots, in spite of the fact that he knows even less about aeroplanes than he does about motorbikes.

His first travel book, Way to Go, on two great motorcycle journeys - from Delhi to Belfast on a Royal Enfield and Route 66 on a Harley - was published in April 2005, was the Mail on Sunday's book of the week, was nominated for UK travel book of the year and has been reprinted six times.

The sequel, The Road to Gobblers Knob, on a ride from Chile to Alaska along the 16,500 miles of the Pan-American Highway with former Isle of Man TT winner Clifford Paterson in Spring 2006, was published in Spring 2007 and went straight to number seven in the paperback best sellers list.

His next book, Anyway, Where Was I? Geoff Hill’s alternative A-Z of the world, was published in September 2008 and also went straight into Waterstone's best sellers list.

After that, In Clancy’s Boots saw him recreating the journey of Carl Stearns Clancy, the first person to take a motorbike around the world 100 years ago – complete with Clancy’s original boots. It sold out on Amazon within a week of going on sale.

His award-winning newspaper columns, whose fans ranged from schoolchildren to First Minister Ian Paisley, are collected in The Brownie Dawn Patrol Volumes I-IV, and his book This Way Up is about achieving his childhood dream of learning to fly.

His latest, I could have been a stoker for a vertical wimple crimper, is a collection of classic tales from his coast-to-coast travels in Canada.

He's either won or been shortlisted for a UK travel writer of the year award nine times. He's also a former Irish travel writer of the year and a former Mexican Government European travel writer of the year, although he's still trying to work out exactly what that means, and the winner of a Golden Pen award from the Croatian Tourist Board for the best worldwide feature or broadcast on Zagreb.

He was Northern Ireland journalist of the year in 2007.

He has written about travel for the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Independent, the Independent on Sunday, Wales on Sunday and Escape, Ireland's biggest travel magazine. He was a long-standing editor for Fodor's, the best-selling American guide book series and had a long-running weekly travel show on U105, the Irish independent radio station.

Outside motorbikes and travel, he has also won one UK and three Northern Ireland feature writer of the year awards and two UK newspaper design awards.

He's also been a tutor with the writing school Mightier Than The Sword, teaching the art of great writing to journalists, PR and marketing professionals and speechwriters.

His novels are Smith, Angel Street and The Butler’s Son.

He lives in Belfast with his wife Cate, a cat called Cat, a hammock and the ghost of a flatulent Great Dane. His hobbies are volleyball, flying, motorbikes, skiing and worrying about the price of fish.

He is a qualified pilot, international volleyball coach and advanced driver and motorcyclist. He's a member of Mensa, for no good reason he can think of.