Harriet was born on the wild North Yorkshire Moors in England and developed a keen interest in the outdoors, nature and animals as she explored the countryside on horseback. She spent her childhood in a number of locations around the UK, including on two farms, and at a mine in a remote part of northern Portugal. She began her diving career at the age of 16, gaining qualifications with the British Sub Aqua Club and PADI in Malta and the UK. She earned her bachelor's degree in geology from Durham University in 1998, conducting her thesis in Donegal, Ireland where she spent two months mapping the geology of the Horn Head Peninsula by herself. Her studies took her to remote parts of Scotland, England's Lake District, Wales and Cyprus. After a year at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Harriet was commissioned into the Royal Signals in 1999 and served for 16 years as a professionally qualified communications engineer. She traveled around the world, managing technical projects and leading teams of soldiers with diverse skill sets in the Falkland Islands, Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan and the UK. During this period, she qualified as a Joint Services Mountain Expedition Leader, gaining experience leading teams on multi-day, unsupported trekking expeditions in the Drakensburg Mountains in South Africa and Yosemite National Park in California.

Now retired from the British Army, Harriet still enjoys international travel, which always includes an element of planned (and unplanned) adventure. Her personal pursuits have included cycle touring around France and Scotland in some wild weather, trekking to the top of the active volcano Mount Tongariro in New Zealand, being chased by a wild boar on Italy’s Ligurian-Tuscan border, evading a bull shark on the Great Barrier Reef, and visiting an elephant sanctuary in Sri Lanka. Harriet still has an extensive bucket list that includes flying over the Okavango Delta in her own light aircraft and visiting the incredible wildlife of the Galapagos Islands. She has lived in the countryside all her life and is passionate about the natural environment and rural issues. She is a keen cyclist, mountain biker, trail runner and wild swimmer. She enjoys exercising her creative side as well as her adventurous side. When she isn't out guiding, she is busy in the garden and runs an upholstery business from her home in the Cotswolds, where she lives with her husband and their Labrador retriever.