|
 |
Patrick was born in Derbyshire in 1964 and attended primary and grammar schools and sixth form college in the area. Upon leaving school in 1982 he did not find regular employment but began writing (about his experiences in unemployment) when not doing temporary jobs for The Post Office, various shops and rock band The Stranglers.
After two 'years out' he returned to education in 1984 to take a degree in English with Writing, based at the Alsager Campus of what is now Manchester Metropolitan University.
Thanks to the efforts of his agents, London Independent Books, Patrick's first book, based on his experiences over the previous two years, 'An A - Z of Unemployment' was published in 1984 and Patrick went on an extensive promotional tour, appearing on TV AM along side footballer George Best and doing numerous other TV, radio and newspaper promotions.
Patrick invested the income from the book in a typewriter containing a primitive word processor and on skiing trips. He won the contract for his second book 'The Essential Ski Holiday Guide' to be published by Collins a year later.
At the same time the "unemployment book" had caught the attention of BBC TV producers who created a series "Unemployment Shop" which ran through the 1980s and into the early '90s on which Patrick occasionally appeared.
In 1986 Patrick, having met future wife Sally on a ski trip he organised to Aviemore in Scotland, their first trip to the Highlands, took a year out from his college course and worked first in London, editing 'The Skier' magazine and an early personal computer magazine 'Which PC'. In the Spring he embarked on a trip across the then Soviet Union from (then) Leningrad to Vladivostok on a further book project arranged in conjunction with Soviet state publishers, Progress.
The concept behind this book, finally published in 1988, was to interview ordinary Russian people and compare their needs and ideals with people in corresponding jobs in the UK to prove that despite the differing political systems, we all had the same basic needs, dreams and aspirations. Patrick and Sally spent the summer of 1987 on the remote Shetland island on Foula writing the book.
Patrick and Sally returned to college to complete their degrees in Autumn 1987, Patrick was then working on three more books - Berlitz guides to ski resorts in France and Italy and a more general travel guide to Austria, so weekends were mostly spent flying to the Alps through that winter.
Upon completing their degree courses Patrick and Sally decided to live in Inverness for a trial period. In the Summer of 1988 they found a flat in the town and six months later their current home on an eight acre croft (small holding) 12 miles west of the city. Both found work, Patrick editing first a local business magazine and then in 1991 a publication for the hotel and travel industry in the Highlands.
At the same time Patrick continued to write more books including a travel guide for teenage children and a 100,000 word guide book to less well known areas of Scotland and continued to work freelance for various ski magazines.
In 1992 Patrick and Sally decided to return to university to take higher degrees - this time in the North East of England. Patrick had been becoming increasingly obsessed with finding all the ski areas in the world and thought that a Masters Degree in Computer Based Information Systems would enable him to build a database to hold all the information he had collected.
They returned home in 1993 and the next few years were spent on freelance work, building the database and with a few early clients including the world's leading lift company Doppelmayr and snow report information pioneers Ski Hotline.
The big step forward came in 1995 when the database was of a 'viable size' and major clients became interested. A seven year deal was signed with Microsoft to supply information on 1000 ski areas in Europe for their 'Autoroute Express' computer mapping software. Within the next few years Patrick had signed up the leading European site, Paris based Skiin, North America's leading sites iSki (Then SkiNet) and GoSki (now RSN) as well as SkiMaps and MountainZone.
Patrick's company, now known as Snow Hunter Ltd, supplied the content for travel industry guides "The World Ski and Snowboard Guide" published in 97 and a second edition in '98. Snow Hunter worked to supply content for tour operators brochures, marked ski resorts on road atlases for Philips and supplied content for other CD ROM projects.
By 1998 Snow Hunter was working with the leading web providers, AOL, and Compuserve, hosting online chats. Patrick also began to supply weekly news stories from around the winter sports world, initially at the request of British site 1Ski.com. Since then the 'news feed' has grown and is now received weekly by over 200 journalists and editors around the world and 1,000 more ski resorts and industry professionals. It is republished by a variety of websites around the world and in newspapers and magazines.
In 2000 Patrick put the Snow Hunter assets in to a new company, Snow24 plc, which brought in an editorial team, designers and web experts to build a website to showcase Snow Hunter content, give password access for online updating for the ski areas, and online live delivery of content to clients. This remains the situation today, with Teletext the leading British client and RSN the leading US partner.
Apart from managing Snow24's operations, Patrick continues to write freelance for a wide variety of publications, in fact more than ever before. He also continues to write his dozen news stories each week.
