James Cowling Writing for Miles Geek

James Cowling is the newest writer on the Miles Geek team. He will be writing our new feature column, On the Pub Trail. James is a world traveler, so you may see his name pop up as author covering other subjects as well.

James is a freelance journalist. He was brought up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and has lived in London, UK, for 20 years. After he finished his journalism diploma in 1993, he spent a year backpacking around eastern and southern Africa.

It was during that time, while he was in Johannesburg, that he got his first job in journalism. He worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during the election that brought Nelson Mandela to power in 1994.

James came to London shortly after that and has worked for the CBC, NBC and CNBC. He also worked for NBC Radio where he covered the Hong Kong Handover in 1997, the Death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 and the Bosnian elections in 1998.

During his journalism career, James has covered numerous figure skating events around the world for the CBC as well as many figure skating magazines. He and Miles Geek author and editor, Kathy Stafford, worked side by side at many skating events around the world including the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. 

James has also worked for press operations for the last two Olympic Winter Games covering figure skating and short track speed skating and at the last Olympic Games in London, he covered gymnastics.

Since 2013, he has been freelancing for BBC World Service radio where he previously worked full time for seven years. He is hoping to delve further into international sporting events in the future.

Miles Geek is thrilled to have James contributing his international journalism experience to our view of worldwide travel.