BENEDICT Allen has spent his whole career exploring some of the wildest and most remote regions of the planet.

And now he’s on his way to Worcester: for a Halloween appearance at the Huntingdon Hall, on October 31.

A spokesman said: “He was the first known human to cross the Amazon Basin at its widest point. He once made a 600-mile traverse of the Gobi Desert, on foot, alone. In the 1980s he made contact with two remote tribes in New Guinea. In the Amazon, thugs employed by drugs baron Pablo Escobar once tried to kill him. On another occasion he was forced to sew up his own chest with a boot-mending kit. He has even cheated starvation by eating his dog.

“Last year he hit the headlines after contracting malaria and dengue fever in Papua New Guinea, and being rescued from a tribal warzone by helicopter.”

But is the scope for adventure increasingly hard to find in a shrinking world? Is there anything left to explore and discover?

He said: “In my 20s and 30s, I was fortunate to get the chance to embark on difficult journeys for which I had a good reason for going. Back then there were still large sections of the world we didn’t know; whole valleys and mountainous areas that even local people hadn’t recorded.

“There are still places that haven’t been explored. There are mountain ranges in the Andes, gulleys in China, waterfalls in South America still hidden by rainforest. There’s Antarctica. And of course there’s the ocean bed.

“There are even a few tribes on the Peru-Brazil border that haven’t been contacted by the outside world. We’ve observed them from aircraft and they’re aware of us.”

And Benedict still believes in going without GPS navigation and satellite phones

He said: “My fellow adventurers and explorers don’t necessarily share my point of view and many of them take a lot of gadgets with them. But for me it’s all about learning from local people.”

Tickets and further details on 01905 611 427 and at worcesterlive.co.uk/events_review.asp?eid=453061029