Age: 29
Based: Hilperton, Wiltshire

Dave Cornthwaite's adventurous career began when in early 2005, just as he was struggling with the concept of being a graphic designer behind someone else's desk, a long skateboard arrived in the post. Until then skateboarding was a foreign concept, but a year later Dave became the first person to skate the length of Britain from John O'Groats to Lands End. His feet may have looked a bit like mushroom soup, but the warm-up hadn't put him off. Two months later, in August 2006, Dave pushed out of Perth, Western Australia, with the east coast in his sights.
 
He made it. The 5823km journey had comfortably smashed the Guinness World Record for distance skated by some 993km, and Dave had taken just under 5 months to push across Australia from Perth to Brisbane.
 
BoardFree, the community initiative Dave had set up to shadow the journeys, raised over £20,000 for three charities and began a revolution in British distance skating. The success of Dave's first book, 'BoardFree', encouraged him to make a sustainable career out of doing things that other people would think of in a pub but forget by the next morning  
 
After he became the fastest Briton to ever ride an Aquaskipper - an accolade which while vaguely intruiging isn't exactly Nobel prize-winning stuff - he decided to do some cerebral and honest research into men and women, and love, and finding a girlfriend. So he decided to date 100 women in 100 days. Soon after this challenge ended he had his laptop stolen, which means he didn't have the means to tell most of his dates that they were about to feature in his second book, Confessions of a Temporary Serial Dater.
 
These days, Dave has turned his attention from road to water. Between October and December 2009 his new project, The Great Big Paddle, begins with a 1450 mile kayak journey along Australia's longest river, the Murray. In 2010 Dave has a 3500 mile Stand Up Paddle journey from the UK to Northern Africa to look forward to, and finally the project will be wrapped up by a little paddle expedition along the Amazon.
 
Raising funds for a solar and water project in East African Schools, as well as encouraging people of all ages, abilities and sizes to join him on the water as he paddles along, The Great Big Paddle promises to be Dave's largest and most successful adventure project to date.
 
Follow his adventures on:
www.davecornthwaite.co.uk
www.thegreatbigpaddle.com
www.boardfree.co.uk
& listen to the Tweets @ www.twitter.com/DaveCorn